Pagerank and sitemap question :)

[allstatetransmission]

As most of us are, I am working on pushing my page rank up and in that I have been looking at some of the pages ahead of me to see what they may be doing.

I noticed one of my main competitors has some different sitemaps than I am using.

My sitemaps consist of:
Using Yoast WP PLugin:
Posts
Pages
QA/FAQs
Testimonials
Categories
and FAQ Categories

Using Google Images Sitemap WP Plugin:
Images Sitemap

http://1stimpressions.com/sitemap_index.xml

Their sitemap has:
Posts
Pages
Attachment
Portfolio (Next Gen Gallery)
Category
Post Tags
Next Gen Gallery (NGG) Tags
Portfolio Type Sitemap
Author Sitemap

http://smartwrap.com/sitemap_index.xml

Could adding in some of these sitemaps help in page rank?

I have looked at their links and on page optimization and we are just about par in comparison if not ahead of them, but they still are a whole page ahead of us in google searches for phoenix vehicle wraps, or car wraps phoenix and related searches.

Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.

Cheers!

(edited spelling)

[dotlineseo]

I think now a days page rank is not matter. If you are interested to increase page then you should focus only  link earning.

Thanks,

Akhilesh

[David-Kley]

No problem! Sometimes, the tools are just that. Tools for providing some insight, and not actually providing the answer. I have seen errors in every tool there is from Raven, MOZ, etc etc. However, they do give you a good baseline of a site, and can highlight any potential problem areas.

[allstatetransmission]

Ok, I will check it out. Thank you for your help

[David-Kley]

We wrote an article of how to break down a competitor's ranking step by step. It involves a lot of the same strategies we use here for new and existing clients. Includes pictures for easy comprehension. Illustrated SEO Guide. Print it out, and follow the steps. Will probably help you out a great deal, as I think you are looking in the wrong places for answers.

[allstatetransmission]

Well I have done the comparison and besides some social metrics we out rank them in many of these factors. According to the http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ we are "green" on a lot more items then they are.

The main reason I was focusing on the sitemaps is because when we look at their "indexed pages" in a tool like SEO powersuite it shows they have a ton more pages indexed then they actually have on their site. So I was wondering how they had so many pages indexed vs how many actually exist.

Here is a screen shot from some different analysis. For our site the too long titles are still less than 70 char, and the missing meta or titles, or duplicates are due to pagination, such as blog listing page 2, 3 etc.

seocompetition-comparison-opensiteexplorer.jpg 1stimpressions-seoaudit.jpg smartwrap-seoaudit.jpg

[WilliamKammer]

The number of sitemaps you have is not a big concern, as long as you have the ones the need and they include the pages you want indexed. You might be barking up the wrong tree here. There are a lot of reasons why a competitor might outrank you, but competitive analysis of a sitemap is not high up on that list of things to check. Be concerned with our own sitemap and make sure all of the pages you want to be in there are in there. It's more than likely that he is beating you for another reason.

[David-Kley]

Rather than focus so much on your competitions sitemap, I would run a backlink profile check on their domain. Google is giving them extra authority with users, and I think that is a good place to start looking. Could be that they have a ton of great backlinks, citation sites, blog posts, etc linking back.

Try it out, and see what you find. I would analyze both the domain your are referencing, along with your own, then compare results. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

Hope this helps