something that constantly evades me is how the big sites get persistantly high rankings. it might seem like an obvious answer due to the size of their budget, but i spend a LOT of time on the net looking at related sites/blogs to mine. for example, i run a clothing website that is nipping at the heels of ASOS.com - an online fashion giant. now i'm proud to say that we even ranked higher than them for 2 keywords, but generally it whoops my sites ass. but i have never come across a link to ASOS.com on any website, or any blog. so just HOW do they manage to rank top for pretty much every keyword?
To start with, that site has over 86,000 backlinks...on lots of high PR sites. That keeps them ranking very high in the SERPS. If I were you, I'd look at where they have their links and see if you can get some links on the same sites. It can't hurt. If you're getting beat by the competition, find out why, and then copy what they did to beat you. It's tough I know...but keep grinding and you'll make it.
Agree with Christian231... use Yahoo Site Explorer to look at your competitors backlinks. And make sure you link to your site using your keyword phrases as your anchor text.
Mostly they are doing better, because of their resources and budget. You are may be one or two working for your site, but a team of professionals can bring far more better results.
yea i have checked their backlinks and i'm aware how many they have, but more often than not i cannot find their link(s) on the referring sites and as i said, i'm on loads of related fashion sites daily and neve see their link, yet i do often find links to my direct competitors (the sites that are above me but below ASOS).
The drawback is that site explorer will not give you the information on all those links, but it is a good place to start. You might want to start posting on industry forums. They should be very useful in provide a wide range a marketing and link building opportunities.
Just keep at it!! These large companies have the budget to pay lots of people what you are trying to do alone. It takes time and you can get there.
sometimes its more than just back links .... how old is there site??? and how old is yours??? If they are 10 yrs old, and your only 2 yrs old, then there’s one problem .... secondly, if they get way more traffic than you do, there is the second problem I bet right now, if your site made front page headlines tomorrow, and as long as it was nothing bad that they had to shut you down, i bet your become bigger than most sites.
It certainly is a factor of traffic. How much traffic do they get out of people going to them without a search, or without having to look for them. Are people just typing in the site, or do they have it bookmarked to go to often? If so they will have far more traffic, and a higher ranking than you.