Ranking Q

[tbay2005]

I have been reading on this forum for a while now, and I keep seeing people say "Find out what what the top 10 sites are doing to rank and do it a little better. It really is that simple."

My question is, what do you look at to see what the other sites are doing? How do you find out how the are ranking in the top ten?

I know these questions may sound stupid and I might feel like an idiot after I see the answers but I am a newbie and have never been able to figure this one out.

Thanks.

[Linda Buquet]

"I know these questions may sound stupid and I might feel like an idiot after I see the answers but I am a newbie and have never been able to figure this one out."

Please don't worry about that. You know what? None of us knew it either until we asked someone,
or read about it. We all started where you are at right now.

We have a couple members, jcorkern comes to mind, that could answer this much better than I,
but I'll take a stab at it.

You'd look at all the factors that attribute to high rankings. Number and type of inbound links, meta title, H1 font structure, keywords, keyword density and things like that.

[jcorkern]

Sorry for running behind Linda.

When we say to find out what the top sites are doing is exactly what Linda stated, But a little more. Take a look at their code, check and see what they have in their title, h tags and content and try to get your page as similar as you can as far as the title and tages goes. But this accounts for only about 20 % of what you need to find out.

The other 80 % is where their inbound links are coming from, what the majority of anchor text is, and how relevant the links are. For the beginner, i would suggest that you do a search for "Brad Callen SEO Made Easy" it is a free pdf that will give quite a bit of info on seo. It will walk the beginner step by step info.

DO NOT use his link exchange program called link metro. You will want to use articles, social bookmarking sites, blogs, and directory submissions ect... to get your links.

Remember that he is giving this info away for a reason, he is selling his software and promoting linkmetro.

But it will teach you how to find out what you need to beat your comp. By the way, SEO Elite is great software. I use it everyday, so if you want the software, it is worth every penny, just avoid linkmetro and link exchanges all togather unless you are a PRO.

[Linda Buquet]

Really good points Jim, I was hoping you would weigh in.

tbay2005 if you can't find that free pdf, contact jcorkern and he'll help you out.

[fitnfree]

Thanks for the heads-up Linda, Jim. I found the book in a flash by just googling the title. SEO has always been one of my weak areas because I'm always studying up on coding and of course, working, working, working.

[lovekissing]

well if in its literal meaning you may its back link by googling
site:url of the site

then see how many backlinks it has and what kind of sites it linked with...