A Little Analysis
 

I've been looking at the top 12 sites on Google for "Free Porn" and found these results

SITE #1 pr4 lb 8180
SITE #2 pr3 lb 3070
SITE #3 pr5 lb 3000
SITE #4 pr4 lb 2130
SITE #5 pr4 lb 4150
SITE #6 pr3 lb 2390
SITE #7 pr4 lb 5130
SITE #8 pr4 lb 6100
SITE #9 pr3 lb 48 (freeporn.com)
SITE #10 pr5 lb 2380
SITE #11 pr4 lb 658
SITE #12 pr4 lb 210

(lb=linksback)

none of these pages seem to be optimized for the term.

A few cautious conclusions:

PR is important but not all important.
LB ..the same
Having the domain name = term is very very good
There are other factors I don't know about, maybe type of links back or the overall site optimization or ...?

Any thoughts?

1. Link: command does not show you all the links, so the 8180 figure is totally useless.

1a. Not all links are created equal, so you cannot compare a site A (800 backlinks) against site B (10,000) and conclude merely based on those numbers that site A has a better link profile.

2. SERPs are not a reliable SEO tool because factors can't be isolated.

3. There are hundreds of factors.

Knowing all the factors will not help you nail #1 ranking; at the end of the day its a popularity contest and anchor bomb game. Rack up links that pass juice = you win. Waste months collecting links that will be devalued by Google in 1 or 2 years = you lose.

I agree anchor text that pass juice is probaly weighed heavier imo and if one way link even heavier.

#4. Free porn is a shitty term to rank well for. Plenty of traffic, sure. Will that traffic lead to sales? Probably not.

True. Don't think the person searching the term free porn has their credit card ready to go when surfing.

Free Porn = Huge traffic and it seems these days that traffic = power, power to get link trades , power to sell advertising etc. Its not all about conversion.

I personally don't think there are as many factors as we are led to believe either. I think it is more likely a case of randomly rotated simple algorithms and therefore the trick is to optimize for each of them which is almost the same as one complex one except that in some cases the factors may contradict.

I don't base this on any hard evidence but it would explain why rankings seem to come and go so much for some and not for others.
This is also how I would do it if I worked for google.

Anchor tags are obviously an important factor so cooperative link partners have to be the way to go.