Can anyone explain this top-10 ranking?

[BenHuntLtd]

How on earth can http://www.plimun.com/ be at #6 for "web design", with only 15 total linking root domains, and no mention of the term in link text?!

See: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.plimun.com

This is one of the biggest anomalies I've ever seen.

[SEOExecutive20]

Anytime! yw

[BenHuntLtd]

Thank you! Impressive.

[SEOExecutive20]

I sent you a message!

[BenHuntLtd]

Hmm. OSE only reports 323 external links site-wide. But I get 1620 from SEO Spyglass (which are likely to be mostly trash).

[BenHuntLtd]

Quality over quantity - again!

And links from pages that will visited, that will get you clicks and referral traffic, are therefore likely to be the most valuable (in the real world and in the Google algorithm).

Thanks for your help,
Ben

[SEOExecutive20]

Hello Ben,

They have over 58,000 backlinks (recorded) and most of them with the anchor text "web design".  I think that should answer your question.

[Highland]

I tend to gravitate towards content first, then links. And, as this site proves, having a few popular links is more important than having a lot of allinanchors with your keywords. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google has devalued allinanchors since most social signal links rarely, if ever, have them.

[Highland]

Authority is also a function of diversity. If I were the owner of that site, I wouldn't be resting on my laurels. At this point, a gust of SEO wind could probably knock them from their perch.

[BenHuntLtd]

Also, none of the inbound link text includes the keyphrase. All the link text is the domain name, according to OSE.

So is Google really just combining the on-page "aboutness" with the high value of the handful of inbound links, and assuming this is more about "web design" than the plethora of other sites?

(I'm not competing on this, just using it for research.)

[BenHuntLtd]

Thanks Highland. So they've developed a couple of extensions and get a few backlinks from a DA:100 site.

If that's enough to get to #6 on Google, I wonder why it hasn't also raised the Domain Authority of plimun.com?

[Highland]

They have several one-way links from joomla.org, which is a naturally popular site (they have a Moz authority of 100, which is the highest you can get).

They also have a dedicated content page for web design

http://www.plimun.com/web-design-development