Ranking below my competitors when I should rank higher

I have created a website that is having a hard time ranking for it's own keywords.. I am thinking this is because it's PR is pretty lousy at the moment. What can I do to boost my PR?

The reason I think so is that a competitor with a forum is ranking better than me only because the PR is better - its really annoying because I should rank top for my keywords... I'm afraid this other forum is going to continue to rank better while I'm trying my hardest to build inbound links pointing to the forum.

Thanks guys

 

Site age is an important factor in the google algorithm. PR, in itself, isn't important (it's backlinks from sites in the same sector). Why do you think google should rank your site higher? It's "votes aka backlinks" that google will use to help them make that decision. They also have 10,000 manual reviewers that visit sites and give them a quality score. Spend a day or two reading as many of the posts on the forum regarding google rankings - all the information you need has already been posted.

 

What is the site in question? Mind sharing ? Then we may be able to help you out.

 

Try to get backlinks from higher pages with that keywords in anchor text.

 

maybe try getting qualities backlinks

 

The site in question is super sport camaro. I have about 200-250 backlinks... it is lacking content because I haven't been able to spend much time on it but for some reason yesterday the hits were flooding in, and then it stopped. I had a couple people register and post but then... nothing was happening... So I did a search and I found I wasn't ranking in the top anymore. It all happened in a day. Anyways, I was in a hurry to get the thing going and now I'd like to spend today working on it.

 

Not necessary you'll need to have a forum to get good position in google. If you have more relevant and quality backlinks, with good SEO, you can beat your competitors.

 

Too often people focus on inbound links, and forget to optimize their site in the first place. Need to make sure you start with good relevant copy. Make sure you optimize on page for the phrases you want to index for. Make sure your site is coded very cleanly (bad coding can impede your ability to rank where you'd like to be ranked). THEN focus on your link building and other activities to drive traffic and improve SERPs.

Do NOT focus on your PR as it is irrelevant.

We study our competitors, and what they do to get good SERPs. The company in our industry doing the best job in SERPs and driving organic traffic has a lower PR than we do. I'd trade our PR for their traffic and SERPs any day of the week

 

"it is lacking content because I haven't been able to spend much time on it"

Yet you expect to be ranking high?

Your site is new. A new site usually ranks well for a short period of time, maybe two weeks, and then will fall out of the rankings. It may take a year or more before a site will start ranking well. You need patience, content, and relevant backlinks.

 

ok thanks guys.. its tough to learn all of this stuff if you're doing it all on your own. it takes quite a bit of time to be able to build a site, do the design, manage the content, and also do the seo... Thanks for the advice and I'll keep working hard.