A friend asked me the other day to take a look at a web site and tell him why it ranked so well ... the site is cooptravel .co .uk i had a look at the on page seo is ok and they have a number of back links but not really much more then any other site. I performed a number of searches and for just about everything they appeared on page 1 for google??? the term cheap holidays which they dont even have on there page is on page one? can anyone shead some light on how they are doing this? there must be something that im missing???
"the term cheap holidays which they dont even have on there page is on page one?" The term "cheap holidays" is in the site's title So that is why it ranks high for this keyword. The site is PR 4: so I am guessing it has some solid backlinks?
Cheap titles may not be on the first page, but it is in their Title tag. Home page rank is 4 with very little content other then their Nav stuff. This normally means they do have tons of back links or, just a few from higher ranking sites. I suspect it is that since you have already checked the number of backlinks.
Maybe they have a relative that works for Google? What about the number of outbound links? I can see them ranking good for cheap holidays in the US because most Americans would use cheap vacations. Wonder how that site ranks in the UK?
Running them quickly through backlink watch and I can see they've got 'cheap holidays' as anchor text a lot, and although the majority of their backlinks are on low PR blogs, they are all on relevant travel topics.
magda, could you send me a copy of the backlink watch report? think it would help my friend? any other ideas why you think it ranks well?
I know that this is a little OT, but could someone tell me how I check backlinks? (Tried YSE, but it only does the first thousand.)
coop is a really well established brand in the UK - the coop is a chain of stores that also have a travel outlet. I believe this is the offical site and therefore will have very strong google credibility and good backlinks
For a simple check on google just type in site:www.YourSpammyAffiliateSite.com and Google will give you some idea of what backlinks they recognize. However there's a lot more that google hides than they actually let people know about because they are weenies. If you want a complete picture of your backlinks just google "backlink checker" and something worthwhile will probably come up. Alan