Question about a competitors site

[macdesign]

I'm trying to figure out how this guy got his wife's web site to get so many rankings in Google for the search marriage counselling toronto

He gets's the following showing up all in the first 10

www3.sympatico.ca/beth/
www3.sympatico.ca/amares/
individual.utoronto.ca/mmares/ -- using taxpayers money that fund the university's web site :confused:
www.psychotherapists.ca

www3.sympatico.ca is Bell Canada's site - it's hosting service but it's only got a pagerank of 6

[minstrel]

<edit>please ignore... low caffeine warning... brain slip</edit>

[rainborick]

www3.sympatico.ca/beth/
www3.sympatico.ca/amares/


Main listing and a sub-listing from the same domain. Because these are in subdirectories, its not unusual for Google to display two pages from the same site.

www.psychotherapists.ca is a mirror of www3.sympatico.ca/beth, so you could always do a SPAM report on it and see if Google does something about it. I wouldn't count on it, though.

www3.sympatico.ca is Bell Canada's site - it's hosting service but it's only got a pagerank of 6[/QUOTE]

I only see www3.sympatico.ca/beth/ getting a PageRank of 5, but since there's only 14,xxx relevant pages for this search term, PR5 is likely to be a winner as long as the pages and links are done well (and this one is, despite the use of frames, its got a DMOZ listing and relevant links from the other sites). By the same token, it doesn't look like insurmountable competition as long as you're willing to put in the scut work and amass some targeted text links. Good luck!

[SEbasic]

I don't get it Minstrel...

Is this an industry joke or something??? ;)

[minstrel]

Um... no... not a joke... more like "a momentary lapse of reason". Please ignore -- I got a couple of site names confused.

Thanks for watching my back, SE! :D

[macdesign]

I'm wondering if he benefits from
www3.sympatico.ca having a lot of incoming links. If so, I was considering doing the same thing. Since I have an account with them, I could stick in a page cross referencing the site I'm trying to push up.

[Tapanti]

Looks like a clever but dangerous cross linking strategy.

He uses fairly high PR sites to send links to each other. Most of the sites only have backward links from the other sites, except for www3.sympatico.ca/beth/ which also shows backward links from some article related sites and a couple of directories.

I suppose that competition for that specific search term is not very hard if he can get 4 sites ranking in the top 10 with such a basic technique.

By that way… What is the site you are using to “compete” against his wife?

[macdesign]

Actually I'm not trying to compete that hard, it's not an ideal key phrase - it's just that I used to get in the first 10 for it, and it bugs me that what he's doing gets him those multiple hits. Consider it more an educational effort - to understand why and try to beat him as an excercise in SEO.

My "competing site" is Sarah Chana Radcliffe - Psychological Associate (http://www.sarahchanaradcliffe.com/)

I used to work hard on keeping it up to date and high in searches - but I got lazy over the last year - I used to have about 300 sites linking to it - and I never asked anyone for a link. But somehow those links and.or sites have disappeared.

Alexa had hundreds of sites linking to it within the last year , and now thats down to 24.

[macdesign]

And that other guy also has www3.telus.net/amares/

which shows up along with the rest if your search for Personal Coaching of Canada


and I discovered a Zeal listing http://ca.zeal.com/website/profile.jhtml?cid=851754&wid=40598366

[Tapanti]

Seems to me that you have the SEO picture very clear. You have #1 position for your major keyphrase, which I assume is “Psychological Associate Toronto”. ;)

If it is just to understand why, first of all, you don’t even have the whole phrase "marriage counseling toronto" anywhere in your whole site, and you only have "marriage counseling" as a phrase once in your site (in your FAQ’s), and the other guy has the whole phrase included in all the titles of the pages showed in the Search Results.

That’s only one of the reasons, but hope this can help. :cool:

[macdesign]

The Canadian spelling is counselling -- marriage counselling site:sarahchanaradcliffe.com - your point is good, and it's not a phrase I push for since marriage counselling is not the main target. I think there are just more sites out there now that are pushing to get that phrase, I think I'm around #90 at this point.

I do well for some other more precise phrases that are targetted

emdr Toronto
eft Toronto
BSFF Toronto
Callahan Techniques Toronto
Energy Psychology toronto
tft treatments toronto
emdr therapy toronto etc.etc.

all #1 or in the first 10