SEO experts, check this out! Advice please!

[RobertoGC]

First, hi to all the members and contributors of this forum!
I have been a member for some time now on DaniWeb, and I'm not new in website engineering.

I'm sure that some experts in SEO can answer my question, and I think that this example will be also useful for others.

I'm making a travel guide, and trying to rank for the keywords I need. Open google(dot)com, write is the search "taurito gran canaria". This site I'm actually interested in, currently on position 5:
http://www.mallorcafact(dot)com/canarias/taurito/taurito.htm

Open the page. There is almost NOTHING there! 3% keyword density for "taurito", no H1, basically a couple of dozen of words (99 words actually). No backlinks to that page. Home page PR2, page in question PR N/A. Eeeh????!
I should add that the site is listen in DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory (7 links) and it's 10 years old.

Still, could anyone explain me how is this page ranked so high in a highly competitive niche? What is going on there? Is it possible that the DMOZ and Yahoo! dir links have such a kick?
After 2 years of messing with SEO I can toss all my knowledge to the garbage? Where is all that we know about keyword densities and other stuff? Not to mention mister big G yapping about quality articles/pages... Is this a quality web-page? It looks like the whole thing is based on lies...

Man, this one is driving me crazy!

Thoughts?

Thanks,
RobertoGC

[Dani]

Hi,

Thank you for being a DaniWeb supporter :)

I recall an announcement about a year ago or so saying that Google was significantly increasing the weight they put on the age of domains, meaning that a site listed in DMOZ and the Yahoo! directory for ten years carries a lot of weight.

Many people also say that keywords in the URL are significant, and this URL has the word 'taurito' as both the directory name and the file name. I'm sure that plays a very large role as well.

Additionally, even though the title 'Taurito' is not wrapped in an H1 tag, it is in its own paragraph distinctly separated from, and above, the body content, and it is all in caps. Google's algorithm is probably smart enough to detect that, even though it isn't in an H1 tag, it is most likely the page's heading.

Page title also plays a significant role, especially in combination with the URL and the distinctive heading.

[RobertoGC]

Hi Cscgal!

Yes, the URL is crucial. I did some experimentation meanwhile on my test site, trying to rank with very similar URL structure and content as the site in question.
The test site have absolutely no links to it, and thus have no power in PR terms.
The keyword search gave 170Th position in Google.

So, with that site which I was wondering about has DMOZ and Yahoo! directory links and quite a bit of age, it is natural to rank high, even with silly content. Which proves us that quality content in some cases is not that essential, if at all.

I did some site URL restructuring and now I'm positioned around 50th in Google. I already had the page title, KW density and h1, h2... set by (known) SEO rules.

Also, I'm delighted to be helped by The Queen of DaniWeb. :)

Thank you!

Sincerely,
RobertoGC

[jalicia18]

Always promote your website through article submission, forum posting & blog commenting with your signature. In your signature, put your target keyword with link to your website homepage. Find any high rank websites for the backlinks.

[shayaristore]

You should try to get backlinks from articals submission to get high link value

[sslguru]

Here are your why answers:
1. the title have 100% density for the search keyword.
2. Domain is 10yr old.
3. Very Low competition (50000 only, I can bring any website on top with in 2 month of work for such a low competition)
4. whole url have the keywords
5. Website is listed in Yahoo Paid and Dmoz
6. Few backlinks but all related.

[linkwheelpower]

DMOZ used to have such a high value as a backlink. I think nowadays it is not as good as it used to be. And it is only one backlink. I suppose that website has been around for a long time and has been listed in DMOZ so Google sees it as an authority site. I think that it would be fairly easy to beat nowadays. IMHO

[sarah newton]

The key to SEO through backlinks is to use the <a href="URL">KEYWORD</a> tag in your content, which brings traffic to your website through the keyword.