Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?

[Eblan]

I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site;

My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's)

Has 1 backlink.

Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP.

It's a 1 page site made with Flash.

They do not have FB or Twitter accounts.

So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company.

And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more.

Any ideas?

[Eblan]

Hey Matt,

Thanks a lot for your quick response. You're right, I was just considering those 4-5 factors. I really liked your theories and I appreciate the "How Garbage Ranks" link.

Cheers!

[MattAntonino]

I'm waiting for my YouMoz post to go live so I can just start linking that to these discussions but in the meantime, I'll try to answer it.

You're looking at just maybe 4 or 5 factors out of maybe 200 that Google may use to rank sites.  We could speculate on what this particular competitor is doing but nobody will be able to tell you for sure.

1. They could be using a 301 redirect from a site with a lot of juice - or perhaps multiple sites they owned in the past that they have now redirected.

2. Google likes some variety in SERPs: check the keyword viagra.  You'll see a few DA0, links 0, PA0 sites. That's one of the more competitive keywords online.  My article will deal with credit cards - the same thing happens in that space all the time.  They do rank because of the title, URL, and basic on page stuff.

You can see more reasons on my answer here:  http://www.seomoz.org/q/competitor-out-ranks-my-site

One other answer: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-garbage-ranks-in-the-serps-a-case-study

Hope those help!