Help me get this (again)...

I've been trying to learn SEO, so I've read and watched a LOT of content on the matter and am trying to put together the puzzle... However, every now and again a curve ball is thrown at me that seems to go against what my learning materials are teaching me... I'm here to ask you why.

My learning was moving right along, until I noticed this site which is ranking #1 for a ton of terms in my industry. I pulled these keywords from the site's META Description and META keywords tags... they are both crammed full with keywords, and there is some duplication of keywords from the description to the keywords tags.




I've read about how to pick the best keywords, and how to form the best META descriptions and such, and this guy isn't following what my sources have told me. He's crammed as many as he can fit in there, using very broad terms such as "Sales" and "customer service"... and yet he's ranking so much better than any other competitor out there, who seem to be following a more "natural" way of SEO.

What gives? Am I being mislead when i read that the best Meta descriptions should be readable and flow etc? Should i actually just be cramming keywords in these places? What about his random 1 word keywords?

Thanks all,

Chocko

Meta description is only really useful for display in the SERP's and keywords have pretty much had no impact on ranking for a long time now.

Focus on blasting out as many links as you can get with your target keywords. Rinse, and then repeat.

ZC

Keyword metas have nothing to do with it. He could delete that meta and still rank.

Shitload of backlinks. That is the explanation.

hmm thanks for your replies, fellas. Serves me right for reading something a year old... shit changes so quickly in this industry.

At least it's a small thing.

The advice above is solid...

But there's more...

What you witness is a snapshot of that moment.
But how will it look when you check again next month?

Even using bad tactics you can rank fast and good. Problem (most of the times) is that it won't stay.

Before every campaign I decide if I need short term or long term effects.
Both require different techniques and tools.

blackhit said:

The advice above is solid...

But there's more...

What you witness is a snapshot of that moment.
But how will it look when you check again next month?

Even using bad tactics you can rank fast and good. Problem (most of the times) is that it won't stay.

Before every campaign I decide if I need short term or long term effects.
Both require different techniques and tools.

Click to expand...

Cheers, mate. Thanks for filling in more blanks.

Another question, though slightly unrelated: How do I track down my competitor's backlinks?

I saw in Market Samurai that the site in the picture above has 8 PR 8 backlinks using the anchor text "Music On Hold" (absolute money for this niche). That sounds pretty pimp right?... i want to see what they are!!

chockomonkey said:

Another question, though slightly unrelated: How do I track down my competitor's backlinks?

I was in Market Samurai that the site in the picture above has 8 PR 8 backlinks using the anchor text "Music On Hold" (absolute money for this niche). That sounds pretty pimp right?... i want to see what they are!!

Click to expand...

Use Firefox with the SEOQuake plugin, that will give you most of the backlinks plus stacks of other info.

letterman said:

Use Firefox with the SEOQuake plugin, that will give you most of the backlinks plus stacks of other info.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I grabbed the addon, seems pretty similar to SEObook's addon... anyone care to comment on any possible differences? They seem to cover pretty much the same things.

With regard to my previous question, I'm not entirely sure which part of this addon you'd reccommend for my backlink searching. I'm trying to find their 8 PR8 backlinks... would i have go to each one from yahoo's explorer manually?


EDIT: I just noticed that the SEO Quake Plugin adds all the information to the Yahoo site explorer page!! The SEOBook addon doesn't do that (at least by default, heh)...

I explored my competitors site on there and didn't find any higher pagerank links!

- I read somewhere that Yahoo's service is simply an "overview" and doesn't cover all of them... could this be why?
- Could market Samurai be wrong? (and they actually don't have 8 PR8 backlinks?)

Any chance someone can comment on the above?