I've come across a site that officially has me stumped as to why it ranks so high in Google.

Doing a search for "web promotion" (no quotes) in Google produces the following results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=web+promotion. At the top of the list is webpromotion.com.

Visiting this site, I couldn't help but notice that its image links have no ALT text (and therefore, no relevance), and it does not have the term "web promotion" listed a single time! The website name, webpromotion (one word), should not have any positive effect on its rankings for the two words when seperated. The word "web" appears in the text twice and in the title once, and "promotion" appears once in the text. The phrase, once again, doesn't even exist.

The most important thing, however, is that the site's domain name is the keyphrase. Could this single factor give it a first-place ranking in Google for such a highly-competitive keyphrase?

Then I realized that backlinks could be a positive factor. However, when I checked them (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...omotion.com%2F), I was once again surprised to see that there are only 138 backlinks for this site!

So what do you all think? How does this site do so well, and how can we learn from it?

With not all that much content on the page it does seem unusual that it should have a # 1 ranking.

Things to mention -

The keywords metatag shows the word "web" 7 times BUT no mention of "promotion".

The Title has it and so does the meta description.

More importantly - It seems to be in the SE's since 1996 and it has 3 seperate listings in DMOZ which could be the driving factor.

Maybe, just maybe - it ranks #1 becuase it was designed more for the visitors who view it than the search engine robots. It has quality back links and the DMOZ listings to give it the helping hand to rank well in Google. The Google Pagerank of 7 doesn't hurt either.

I don't think there is a definite answer. (Is there ever with SEO?) But maybe the fact that they followed the basics for a number of years has paid off for them with a 7 PR and #1 rank for a highly competitive keyword.

I'd offer that the site has many one-way incomming links with "web promotion" as hot text. An experiment was done where a webpage about George Bush was uploaded. Approximately 150 bloggers then hotlinked that page with the text "miserable failure". The GB web page returned #1 for the phrase 'miserable failure', without that phrase or separate terms contained anywhere within it.

The experiment confirmed the critical value of the one-way incomming hotlink text for SERPs.

miserable failure

Very good points; I hadn't even checked it's PageRank or META tags.

However, recent discussion on this board and elsewhere has all been about how Google does not actually put much relevance on PR or META tags for its rankings.

Perhaps metho's theory is correct? I had heard of this before (chain letters going around via e-mail saying that Google was biased, and to type in "miserable failure" and hit "I'm feeling lucky" to see for yourself). It would be interesting if we could organize a similar test on Webmaster-Talk, by getting a lot of the members here to put up links to someone's site. This time, however, we'd use a competitive keyword--something that, to my knowledge, has never been done before.

Or maybe I'm just nuts.

Originally Posted by DevelopedWeb

I've come across a site that officially has me stumped as to why it ranks so high in Google.

Doing a search for "web promotion" (no quotes) in Google produces the following results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=web+promotion. At the top of the list is webpromotion.com.

Visiting this site, I couldn't help but notice that its image links have no ALT text (and therefore, no relevance), and it does not have the term "web promotion" listed a single time! The website name, webpromotion (one word), should not have any positive effect on its rankings for the two words when seperated. The word "web" appears in the text twice and in the title once, and "promotion" appears once in the text. The phrase, once again, doesn't even exist.

The most important thing, however, is that the site's domain name is the keyphrase. Could this single factor give it a first-place ranking in Google for such a highly-competitive keyphrase?

Then I realized that backlinks could be a positive factor. However, when I checked them (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...omotion.com%2F), I was once again surprised to see that there are only 138 backlinks for this site!

So what do you all think? How does this site do so well, and how can we learn from it?

This is the top four keywords from webpromotion.com:

Keyword--Weight--%--Total-Title-Hd-MetaK-MetaD-Alt-Link-Body
web-------9.500-4.781-12----1-----0----7------2------0----1----1
design----9.500-4.781-12----2-----0----8------1------0----1----0
promotion-6.000-0.797-2----0-----0----0------0------0----2----0
website----6.000-0.797-2----0-----0----0------0------0----2----0

They do seem to be targeting "web promotion" as well as "web design", "website promotion" and "website design". The rest of the keywords rank REALLY low, making these the top. This is taking the advice "one or two taget keywords" to heart and it seems to work for them. I wonder how they fair with the other key terms.

I'd be interested in participating in such an experiment DevWeb. However the site whose page is the target of the experiment should make no commercial gain from to make it fair.

It would be good to take this idea to the next level and get expressions of interest from other board members.

Originally Posted by metho

I'd be interested in participating in such an experiment DevWeb. However the site whose page is the target of the experiment should make no commercial gain from to make it fair.

It would be good to take this idea to the next level and get expressions of interest from other board members.

I agree, metho. We should try to find a member who has some basic, informative site on a competitive topic (nothing web-related, to make this unbiased toward most of the people here). If we get enough support for it, we might be able to make something really happen. Perhaps it's time for a new thread?

Originally Posted by kline11

This is the top four keywords from webpromotion.com:

Keyword--Weight--%--Total-Title-Hd-MetaK-MetaD-Alt-Link-Body
web-------9.500-4.781-12----1-----0----7------2------0----1----1
design----9.500-4.781-12----2-----0----8------1------0----1----0
promotion-6.000-0.797-2----0-----0----0------0------0----2----0
website----6.000-0.797-2----0-----0----0------0------0----2----0

They do seem to be targeting "web promotion" as well as "web design", "website promotion" and "website design". The rest of the keywords rank REALLY low, making these the top. This is taking the advice "one or two taget keywords" to heart and it seems to work for them. I wonder how they fair with the other key terms.

Even though it is the third most used keyword, promotion still only weighs in at .8 % of the total, which should hardly be enough to give it such a boost. Does anyone know of a way to check the number of sites that link to a given site with a given phrase as the anchor text? That would be something interesting to look at.

www.webpromotion.com -site:www.webpromotion.com
If you use the above term to search then you will see it has lots of links then just 138

Also if you Google for the keyword Failure you will see http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html but if you search the source code of the page foor the same will not see an occurence so the google Algo has most importance on Backlniks Anchor text than anything else.

Thanks
Shabbir Bhimani