Why is this site ranking 1st?

[pburwell]

I'm a relative SEO newbie, so please go easy on me.

I've been an SEOMOZ pro user for a few months and have used it to dramatically improve my organic rankings.

However, for the life of me, I cannot determine why the site that currently ranks number one, does so.  For the factors I can determine, they shouldn't be ranking where they are, but reality is different.  Could someone please offer me some ideas?

My target keyword is "photography classes edmonton"

My site is www.bsop.ca and I'm targetting the Google Canada engine.

Any and all assistance is appreciated.

[itrogers]

I am assuming you are trying to rank against the first results www.cplc.ca

If you look at the links in open site explorer, you can see that this website has targeted exact match anchor text from pretty high domain authority domains (in the 50s and 60s). You can see all externals links pointing to that domain here:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.cplc.ca&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=external&target=subdomain&group=0

Your backlink profile isn't as diverse and targeted as theirs. Try looking at their links and try to get the same ones pointing to your targeted page, which looks like your home page.

Hope this helps!

[pburwell]

Thanks for the information.

But when I look at Opensitexplorer.org and compare the two sites, I see that they have 28 links from 4 domains (highest domain authority is 61) while my domain has 122 inbound links from 14 domains (highest domain authority is 97.

So, I know I'm still learning, but I guess I'm still missing where the deficiency is?

Thanks,

Paul

[itrogers]

Site age could also have a lot to do with it...also, is your anchor text the exact keyword you are trying to rank for?

[jimmypader]

Hi Paul, I took a quick look at the OSE for your site and your competitor. It seems to me that we are both running into a similar issue. How old is your site? When did SEO work on your site begin?

Your competitor has forum posts from 2009 here: http://www.thephotoforum.com/

Have you considered joining and posting on this forum?
Perhaps there's another one that you could join as well?

check out this thread that I started for where I'm coming from.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/aged-sites-or-5-year-old-seo