Answering the question: “how are they getting ranked so high” is what Competitive Ranking Attributes are all about. Although it‘s a simple question, attaining an answer with reasonable confidence is very difficult. It requires attaining significant ranking attribute information for each website page currently ranking for specific keywords and then creating a search engine model to score these attributes.

Fortunately, SE ANALYST (www.seanalyst.com)  provides this data for the SEO community. SE ANALYST (SAMPLE report here) produces over 40 search engine metrics for each top ranked website by keyword and consolidates these metrics into 3 basic groups:

• On-page Factors expressed as Keyword Density with special breakout for Body and Title tags.
• Link Reputation derived from backlink anchor text.
• PageRank metrics and contribution calculations.

An algorithm modeling search engine rankings combines each metric and produces a total score value.
Reports allow users to segment keywords into levels of completion.

Search engine rankings for tier 1 keywords are represented by website pages having strong on and off-page optimization attributes. These keywords typically require optimization on pages that have strong backlink reputation – most often, the home page.

Tier 2 keywords lack the backlink reputation requirements but still have strength in other metrics. 1st level interior pages may be well suited for these keywords.

Due to their weaker competitive attributes, 3rd and 4th tier keywords may be placed deeper within the site and still can produce reasonable ranking results.

Although optimization efforts may not be able to attain superior metrics for each ranking attribute, it is the combination of all attributes that produce rankings. Since page Title is an important attribute and within Webmaster control, higher Title keyword densities are often a necessity to compensate for other weaknesses. Unfortunately, higher keyword density in the Title necessarily compromises the number of keywords that can favorably compete on a given page.

This condition is most significant for Tier 1 keywords requiring link reputation and home page status. With added requirements of high Title density, the number of Tier 1 keywords that can achieve strong rankings is often limited to 2 or 3.