Hello. I found a pretty good keyword with a pr0 site with <50 backlinks in the first spot on google. Only ~20 of his backlinks have the keyword in the anchor. The spots below it are >pr4 stores selling a lot of variations of this product, and I dont have the skill to take on those yet. Am I correct in assuming that those store sites are simply are not optimized for that keyword? To get the top spot I only need to create better/more backlinks than the number one spot site with the right keyword? Or did he just get there by some kind of fluke? thanks!
In isn't necessarily how many links that is important. It is often more important how strong/trusted those linking sites are. In your scenario it does sound like those >pr4 stores are not optimized for that particular keyword. It should be easy enough to check if they use that keyword on their page or in their links. I think you should be able to rank very well just by trying to outdo that top site. You can always check the other sites' backlinks for more ideas of where to get links from.
Make sure the site you are getting is having high PR and you get a dofollow link with hyperlinked keyword. Also, check total outgoing links from that particular page. Make sure it is less than 100 in total.
A follow up question. If the top site on google is a subpage as in 3w.domain.c0m/keyword and has around 20 backlinks to that page but 500 backlinks to the domain, do I need to beat the backlink quality/amount of the whole domain or the page only? The domain page doesnt show up at all for that google listing.
My rough suggestion to you would be to not think too much about the number of links coming into the entire site and instead look at the PageRank of the page you are trying to beat. So you want to try to beat them both in the page rank department and in the link building department for that specific page.
Hmmm... Google Ranks depends on the following factors... 1. Domain Age 2. Site Architecture 3. Backlinks 4. Fresh Contents 5. Unique Contents 6. Traffic 7. PageRank 8. More Don't just focus on backlinks.. Other factors also affect rankings.. Not only one.