SEO Question

[Pab]

We have a professional services company and website...

A competitor has optimised their site for a highly competitive keyword with 200k monthly searches - let's call it 'design services' - and they're now 1st place in Google for 'design services'. The page optimised for this keyword is their home page, the H1 on their home page is 'design services' and so on. The home page is a PR4.

If I were to optimise our website in the same way, which is a PR5, would I rank above this website? I doubt SEO is that simplistic, but surely if they can do it, we can do it.... especially if our site has a higher page rank initially?

I initially thought achieving a rank this high for this keyword would be totally unattainable unless significant amounts of money was spent, but now I'm not so sure :|

 

[aidan1980]

ignore the little green bar for now mate

 

[Pab]

ignore the little green bar for now mate

Why? That's exactly what my question is about. I know PR means nothing on its own, but is it relevant in this scenario... ie when two competing sites optimise for the same keyword. Is PR then a decisive factor? Surely that's a valid query?

 

[Matt Gent]

Hi having a high PR is not the be all or end all, sure a pr5 COULD beat a pr4 but then again a pr0 COULD beat a pr5.
Its more down to content, good onpage optimisation and of course good back links, remember quality links over quantity
To beat your rival doesn't mean it has to be a huge expense but with out comparing your sites and links its hard to tell, but its never quick with Seo so whatever you decide to do be patient.

Regards
Matt

 

[MASSEY]

Why? That's exactly what my question is about. I know PR means nothing on its own, but is it relevant in this scenario... ie when two competing sites optimise for the same keyword. Is PR then a decisive factor? Surely that's a valid query?

It is pretty relevant because he is right just ignore it. You wont ever know the decisive factor of two sites, that is unless you happen to have a copy of googles algorithms?

 

[unet]

just make sure your content is more relevant and add a few thousand more backlinks. your right, its not that clear cut and simplistic but you could outrank it over time. Also, look at where they are getting thier backinks from and replicate it.

GL BTW

 

[sigmais]

PR is still one of the factor that affecting your SERP
High PR site basically have some advantage because high PR site mean they have more quality backlink. High PR site get beat by low PR site might due to the on-page SEo or the backlink anchor text. Generally we can see that high PR site are doing better in link building. To beat your competitor, just need to make your keyword as anchor text in the backlink and optimize your on-page SEO

 

[upsite]

I wouldn't get carried away with PageRank. Google themselves have stated that it's not really an SEO consideration in it's algorithm. More of an indicator as to the site's authority in their eyes. Low PR sites can and do outperform high PR sites on many millions of searches.

Content, relevant, and plenty of it, will be the key to outperforming your competition.

 

[MASSEY]

just make sure your content is more relevant and add a few thousand more backlinks. your right, its not that clear cut and simplistic but you could outrank it over time. Also, look at where they are getting thier backinks from and replicate it.

GL BTW

What sort of improvment do you see wih 1000 backlinks from profiles. Have you got any examples you could enlighten me with?

 

[aidan1980]

remember about the relevancy of links, thats very important

 

[unet]

What sort of improvment do you see wih 1000 backlinks from profiles. Have you got any examples you could enlighten me with?

again massey you jumping on every comment i make.

just to break it down for you.

"just make sure your content is more relevant and add a few thousand more backlinks." content and a few thousand more backlinks ( does not mention forum profiles ) it goes hand in hand.

"your right, its not that clear cut and simplistic" again just for you. because the op have not mentioned the site its hard to ascertain the comp etc and the whole story.

p.s in relation to you comment about outranking with forum profiles - i have plenty of my own and clients that have outranked big comp. thanks

 

[MASSEY]

again massey you jumping on every comment i make.

just to break it down for you.

"just make sure your content is more relevant and add a few thousand more backlinks." content and a few thousand more backlinks ( does not mention forum profiles ) it goes hand in hand.

"your right, its not that clear cut and simplistic" again just for you. because the op have not mentioned the site its hard to ascertain the comp etc and the whole story.

p.s in relation to you comment about outranking with forum profiles - i have plenty of my own and clients that have outranked big comp. thanks

I was asking a genuine question.

I was thinking of buying a thousand to see what the improvment (if any) would be.

But you only take paypal :|

 

[clairejarrett]

Why not just run a test? Optimise your metatags and page copy and see what happens? Won't do any harm! Ask us if you need advice on what to change it to?

 

[cristina5448]

Tell me how to avoid Spamming in Blogs and forums?

 

[fisicx]

A competitor has optimised their site for a highly competitive keyword with 200k monthly searches - let's call it 'design services' - and they're now 1st place in Google for 'design services'. The page optimised for this keyword is their home page, the H1 on their home page is 'design services' and so on. The home page is a PR4.

If I were to optimise our website in the same way, which is a PR5, would I rank above this website? I doubt SEO is that simplistic, but surely if they can do it, we can do it.... especially if our site has a higher page rank initially?

I initially thought achieving a rank this high for this keyword would be totally unattainable unless significant amounts of money was spent, but now I'm not so sure :|

The toolbar PR is irrelevant - it has no connection with the actual rank of a page so ignore it.

Page structures are very important, the more semantic the information flow the better. Look at the page without images or styling if it still makes sense you are OK.

Consistent use of keywords in the page title, headers, content, footers and internal linking is vital.

If you are now aligned with your competitor the only real difference is going to be inbound links. They may have one stonker hidden away that is keeping them at #1. You need to find a similar link (and getting it may be expensive).

Consider as well that you could be just below them on the results page but if your page title/meta description is better you might pick up all the clicks.

 

[Fresco_Creative]

We have a professional services company and website...

A competitor has optimised their site for a highly competitive keyword with 200k monthly searches - let's call it 'design services' - and they're now 1st place in Google for 'design services'. The page optimised for this keyword is their home page, the H1 on their home page is 'design services' and so on. The home page is a PR4.

If I were to optimise our website in the same way, which is a PR5, would I rank above this website? I doubt SEO is that simplistic, but surely if they can do it, we can do it.... especially if our site has a higher page rank initially?

I initially thought achieving a rank this high for this keyword would be totally unattainable unless significant amounts of money was spent, but now I'm not so sure :|

Having a PR of 5 does help however, it does also help to have the web page set up properly

Don't however, go and stuff loads of keywords all over the page in an effort to try and leapfrog this competitor as this simply will go the other way for you

 

[unet]

I was asking a genuine question.

I was thinking of buying a thousand to see what the improvment (if any) would be.

But you only take paypal :|

we take CC through paypal - should not be an issue

If you want a 1000 backlinks just shoot me a PM with keywords and the URL and I will be happy to do a freebie.

 

[Mike22]

We have a professional services company and website...

A competitor has optimised their site for a highly competitive keyword with 200k monthly searches - let's call it 'design services' - and they're now 1st place in Google for 'design services'. The page optimised for this keyword is their home page, the H1 on their home page is 'design services' and so on. The home page is a PR4.

If I were to optimise our website in the same way, which is a PR5, would I rank above this website? I doubt SEO is that simplistic, but surely if they can do it, we can do it.... especially if our site has a higher page rank initially?

I initially thought achieving a rank this high for this keyword would be totally unattainable unless significant amounts of money was spent, but now I'm not so sure :|

Yes, you can achieve pr 5 but you should do proper on-page and off-page activities to achieve this target.

 

[Chunkford]

People only bang on about Page Rank because it's the only metric from Google the public can see.

 

[aaronangelle]

For good backlinking you should improve your SEO tips and techniques like forum posting, blog commenting and social bookmarking etc...

 

[Mike Morrison]

PR is one ranking factor out of, like 250. And the Toolbar PR is not representative of a pages actual PR (They tend to update the toolbar once a year at best, and even then, they put in a limited dataset). It doesn't factor in things like Domain authority, content, URL age, 'freshness'.....if all things were equal a PR5 would outrank a PR4. But the chances of all things being equal are slim.

In answer to your question, if your competitor is higher than you for important keyphrases, yes, they have done a better job optimising than you. You can either

A) Improve your optimisation. You may not beat them mearly by changing your onsite efforts alone, but you'll never beat them without doing this. If it doesn't work, build better content, network more, get your name out further than your competitior and get more links.

B) Do some keyword research. Maybe you'll get more, better qualified traffic ranking for 15 lees competitive, longer keyphrases than one main keyphrase.

Hope that helps.
Mike