How? with this page title

[agua]

Whilst searching for some new clothes to look pretty slick in, I search for "Designer menswear" and came up with this site:

mainlinemenswear.co.uk

Now looking at that page title, it looks like it is totally keyword stuffed and goes against everything I have ever learnt about SEO page titles.

Looking on wayback machine, it appears they have been doing it for around 4 years.

I know there are other factors involved here... but shouldn't they have been banned or penalised?

How can that be?

[Blue Cat Buxton]

They are probably doing well because they have been online a long time with a host of backlinks. They are possibly low enough under Googles radar not to be penalised for any infractions.

Interesting that you got a UK site from a search from Australia though.

[agua]

They are probably doing well because they have been online a long time with a host of backlinks. They are possibly low enough under Googles radar not to be penalised for any infractions.

Is that really true?

Interesting that you got a UK site from a search from Australia though.

Not really - I searched using google.co.uk. What is interesting is that when I now search for the same term in google.com.au, it is now number one, whereas it wasn't before, different browsers, IP's, locations...

that is interesting

[Chris]

Google would never penalize for keyword stuffing.

They penalize for sites trying to hide things from them or users. Cloaking, and paid link manipulation, are basically the only two things.

And you can't really keyword stuff your title tag either, there is a length limit, and it is used as your link in SERPs so you have to weigh clickability with searchability. It is in fact a very good idea to put as many keywords as possible in your title tag, I know I've never recommended against it. I don't find theirs that bad.

What you don't do is fill your footer with a paragraph of font size 4 keywords. That is spam, and while you likely wouldn't get penalized, it wouldn't help you.

You gotta remember, for a lot of things it isn't a penalty that'll hurt you, but rather if the search engine sees something they don't like, they ignore it, and factor it out, so it isn't helping you.

[BGray]

It's not all that bad actually.

I think the key factors for this high ranking is this:

1) 22,943 backlinks (Yahoo) - I noticed a big change in the last big Goog update that seems to have increased the value of the number of backlinks and (maybe) devalued the quality of backlinks. Maybe to reduce the gaming of paid links? Softwares like SENuke are starting to look attractive. Not sure if this will stick or not.

2) 2003 domain registration - Age plays a factor for sure. Seen this first hand many times. 7 Years is a decent age.

3) In the title tag the weight of the keyword seems to be slanted to the order - first (left) = the heaviest factored keyword (which happens to match what you searched)

Just my own observations.

[davidrankin]

Google can't ignore the diversified anchor text links and the age of the domain. I see many site in the SERPS ranking in a buyer keyword with 90M competition who don't even properly optimized his site (meta tags, title, description, etc)

[seattleseo]

Domain age is a really bad ranking factor, in my opinion, considering how easy it is to buy a 5+ year old domain these days. As it sits, I outrank the exact match keyword domains by going after the higher DA and out SEO'n the exact match (who thought they'd only need to do a "little" link building)

[AJKpeter.]

What role does domain age play?

[Cathy Duncan]

Domain age is a really bad ranking factor, in my opinion, considering how easy it is to buy a 5+ year old domain these days. As it sits, I outrank the exact match keyword domains by going after the higher DA and out SEO'n the exact match (who thought they'd only need to do a "little" link building)

Agreed with your post, because facts can never be denied!