Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Search Engine Conundrum

Posted by Markitek on 8/5/2005 at 1:03 PM ET 750 Points
For reasons not important, I wanted to see who showed up in Google when I entered "advanced access" without quotation marks.

First listing was an SEO and web development outfit named advancedaccess.com Easy to understand that.

Second was a real estate outfit. I searched the page and found only one instance of the phrase advanced access--at the bottom where it read:

Web Site Design and Hosting Provided By: Advanced Access © 1998-2005

I checked the source--again that was the only place that phrase appeared.

And it was sloppy source . . . for instance, a keyword tag that contained 552 words (and Google ignores them but no engine is going to find any relevance from a list that long).

So . . . looking at the site, how did it get ranked so high. I'm imagining there's some trickery involved . . . can anyone look through the site and see if they can discover signs of what that might be? Or if there is no trickery . . . can anyone figure out how they are placed so high?

Thanks to all
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 8/5/2005 at 1:36 PM Accepted
    It's placed high because the phrase appears on every site that they do, which could be a lot. In addition, the phrase probably has a link back to the site, making it even more powerful.

  • Posted by Markitek on 8/5/2005 at 1:48 PM Author
    I checked and you are right...they do have that phrase on every site and there are a lot of those sites.

    Mystery partially solved and thanks.

    But . . .

    That being the case, what's so unique about this particular client's site that it gets ranked so high . . . and all the other sites they do are not.

    BTW it looks like they offer cookie cutter sites to realtors . . . which means one imagines that a lot of the html is identical from site to site.
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 8/5/2005 at 2:05 PM Member
    Hi Michael,

    There is nothing unique about this particular client's site that gets it ranked so high.

    What is happening is that with Google, it is all about relevance, and with all the backlinks they have from all their customers, combined with the popularity of their customer's sites (real estate is big) Google's algorithm is determining that their site has more relevance to "Advanced Access" than any other site using that keyword phrase.

    Backlink quantity is important, but backlink quality (popularity and relevance) is much more so with Google.

    Another example is type in the name of a top contributor on this forum, either their full name or company name, you included.

    You'll see everybody ranks high usually with an MP link, and in fact when you are searched your name in MP links comes up #1 & #2 out of all the people in the world with your name, and before links to all your other contributions on other websites.




  • Posted by Markitek on 8/5/2005 at 2:32 PM Author
    Forgive me for remaining dense . . .

    First . . . I'm interested in the Sarasota Realty Site not the Advanced Access site . . . number two on the list.

    The question I still have is: why isn't phoenixhomes.com anywhere to be found on Google even though it has about 1000 sites listed (including all the duplicates of course). That ought to be enough to please the relevance algorithms, no?

    KSA
    I used the simple link:sarasotagroup.com query in Google and came up with about 5500 backllnks (including duplicates). Can you share how you derived such different numbers.

    Thanks to all and best wishes
  • Posted by Markitek on 8/5/2005 at 2:37 PM Author
    I should mention . . . I used phoenixhomes.com as just one example of advanced access' client list. Pulled out of a hit . . . I could have picked any one . . . no unspoken agenda there.
  • Posted by Carl Crawford on 8/5/2005 at 2:51 PM Member
    What google does is "rank" the sites that link to the site, the sites that link to the site in question will be given a ranking. If the site that links to it is regarded as "good" your ranking will improve but if is is considered "bad" (eg link farm) your rank goes down.
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