SEO Question
 

2 hypothetical sites
key-word.co.uk and unrelatedkeyword.com

unrelatedkeyword.com comes high in serps for key-word but the domain containing key-word comes very low for the same term.

would it be better to
1. clone unrelatedkeyword.com and also use it as index.htm for key-word.co.uk
2. forward or mirror the domain key-word.co.uk to unrelatedkeyword.com
3. re-write key-word.co.uk altogether
4. none of the above

your thoughts and or suggestions are appreciated

forgot to mention both url's are static pages

No copying the ranked site will not do shit for you.

There is little chance the ranking site is ranked their just because of its onpage content. Its more likely a combination of the links and theming of the pages linking to it, and then some onpage content to back it up.

The keyword in the url may or may not help, but again, even if we could say positively it was a determining factor in the sites rank, its still only 1 of hundreds or thousands of determing factors.

But simply put, copying a site listed in serps will never get you results like that page. Its not the page design, layout or content alone that makes the page authoritive.

thanx for that Jdoughs.

any more ideas anyone?

Just want to make sure I understand you ... you have two sites

Site A and Site B

Site A has the desired keyword phrase in the domain name
Site B does not have the desired keyword phrase in the domain name

Site B ranks higher in the search engines for the desired keyword than site A does.

Correct?

Well not knowing anything about either of the sites it's hard to say why but here are a few things you should consider ...

How old are the domains? Google tends to favor older domains. Can't really fix this and magically make domain a older than domain b. But it is a deciding factor.

Does site B have a listing in places like Yahoo and DMOZ directory? That tends to help. Not a lot mind you but somewhat. If so, try and get domain name A listed in these places.

What is the page rank of either site? I don't want to put to much emphasis on this because time and again I've seen lower page rank sites get better placement than higher page ranked sites but all the experts swear up and down page rank matters so does site b have better page rank? If so, try and improve your page rank.

Does site B have better meta and title tags? Page design and amount of content plays a large part in your ranking so look closely and try and see what site a is doing different than site b.

We already know that site A has the relevant keyword in the domain name itself and site b doesn't so that gives site a an advantage. From there just look closely at what they are doing that you aren't and you should be able to spot a few things you can improve to push you above them.

Does site A have their own IP address? Sometimes "virtual" or "shared" IPs from web hosting companies can hurt you. In short, if you don't have your own IP, get it.

Does site b have more content than site a? Search engines love content! Make sure site a has more relevant content for the desired keyword phrase and that in itself should help push you up there.

indeed you are correct.
site a is 6 months pr0 144 incoming links (google stats)
site b is 12 months pr2 166 incoming links (google stats)

both sites have what i would say is very low content 50/50 text/iframe
(ifarmes are not read by spiders?) both have appropriate meta and wc3 compliant html and very low outgoing links, hosted on the same shared hosting acc.

what you say makes sence to me :thumbsup