I'm confused & would Appreciate some help

I'm a little confused and was hoping that someone could help me. (sorry if it's a little lengthy).

Within googles search results (Australia so .com.au) for the word "wigs" we currenlty sit second within the search results

For most of Jan 07 and Feb 07 after 3 years we jumped there site into first position for the search term of "wigs" but within the last 3 weeks we have moved back to position 2.

During this time nothing changed for either site backlinks, anchor text etc and we were wondering if with the Dmoz not being updated since October to the middle of Feb did this affect the search results ?

We of course are not listed within the dmoz but are trying to be active into optimizing our site for better search results (mainly in Australia) and we are stuck for anything else that we could do for securing the number one result.

This then leads to me the second part of my question which is about One Way text links.

When I search on the backlinks for the website sitting in position one they have backlinks via the Dmoz which have PR of around 6.

So my question is how much weight of paid backlink from PR7 or PR8 site would carry against the backlinks supplied by being lucky enough to be listed in the dmoz ?

Thank you for any information you could pass on.

Regards
Kylie

You should look at the sites that you compete with, if they had changed content or gained backlinks then it could be the case that they have climbed above you through their actions.

You cannot stand still once you hit the top spot (or any spot) you have to keep optimising, refreshing content, gaining new links, if you don't then your site will drop.

One or a few payed links from important and relevant sites (I avoid saying high PR sites) can indeed make you move back to #1 unless your competitors are working continuously as well. The recent changes indicate that you're not all that far away from the current #1, so keep on going!

NO doubt dmoz is important but as ur question goes i think getting links from high PR sites with PROPER ANCHOR TEXT is very important.even if you have paid links i wont be of much use without a proper anchor text....may be thats why ur ranking dropped.

lemme explain it.........uhmmm

lets suppose i am selling red cars in australia,then the anchor text that i would go for would be "red cars australia" or "buy red cars in australia" or "your primary keyword",the latter is the best though.if your anchor text is something like " buy german cars in australia" or " congo made blue cars" it would simply deviate from the course.....

inbound links are important but more important is the anchor text..

Do a link check on ur competitors and see if they are using any specific anchor tags or using ur primary keyword...if yes then maybe thay are also optimizing their websites at a better rate than u are doin.....

if thats not the case then have a martini and enjoy it just another weird google phenomena.