Why does website rank? PA-39 DA-24

[dmac]

This website is pretty nice, well done. The few links they do have are nice and clean, from his brothers website, very much white hat. However, it appears that they aren't doing much of anything from an SEO standpoint.

This site, is PA31 DA21 is also doing unusually well.

In both cases, these guy are outranking the best know, most famous, and most trusted company in the industry who is PA84 DA81. This is a HUGE company that wins the most awards and gets tons of media coverage both in print and on televisiton shows.

I'm also noticing that the websites that are ranking well in my niche (every keyword) all have the name of their company at the beginning of the title tag, those with the name of the company at the end of the title tag are consistantly a few ranks lower. This seems to be consistant across all search terms.

My niche is highly competitive for a very low amount of traffic. Adwords is crazy expensive for some of these keywords! That said, one valid sale generates a significant amount of money.

Would love to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking the first company is being treated so well becase G considers them to be virgins, the purist of white?

[evolvingSEO]

You should DEFINITELY use the info in Rand's recent post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-best-kept-secret-in-the-seomoz-toolset

It tells you how to put the search term in the keyword competitiveness tool, and do a detailed SERP analysis for all the ranking factors.  You might get some answers there.

-Dan