How do they do it?!!?

[simonr]

We do pretty well for our keywords (presentation skills forum) and we're usually on page one of google - sometimes page two. It's not a problem 'cos we've go enough work but this has become something of a presonal quest of mine to get to spot one, just for fun..... or rather a matter of pride!

Acutally, what's spuring me on is a company called skills-studio (who probably do perfectly good work, I'm sure) who are not only consistently number one for those key words but for dozens and dozens and dozens of variations and related things (such as "public speaking").

I've not seen them in any of the relevant fora building links etc, nor on any of the social networking sites, nor anywhere else for that matter.

I have two questions - related to each other - how do they do that?!!? And rather more usefully, how do I find out what they're doing that I'm not??!

I'd love to find out where their links are coming from and so on!

Simon

[peterjhale]

Simon, it's best to see their link profile in Yahoo.

type in linkdomain:www. thedomain.com -sfsddd

Make sure you add the negative nonsense on the end as yahoo does the query slightly differently

[simonr]

Thanks - oddly that suggests they've only got about 20 inbound links, which caaaaaaann't be the whole story....

Curiouser and curiouser (said Alice).

S

[peterjhale]

4500+ for me

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search;_y...ei=UTF-8&rd=r1

their first word of their domain is singular no? This is the company I get if I search for "presentation skills"

[simonr]

D'oh! Stupid me - sorry! I looked for .com Thats what you get for working too late in the day!

That's double us, so it looks like I've got my work cut out! This could take over my life as a rainy-day hobby.....

S

[TWD-Tony]

I haven't had a real good look at their links but 1st glance looks like they have a high proportion of directory backlinks... Just food for thought

[Alby]

It's not just the amount of links, it's the quality and relevance. IMO, what you need to do is use a backlink checker that gives your the information on the backlink, such as anchortext(if any) and pr of page , you may find that the majority of links are of no real use, and you may also find that you may be able to beat your competition with a smaller number of links but focused and relevant with good anchor text