But sometimes checking out a site that has high alexa ranking does not work, because no successful SEO is going to give away their little tricks and such
, not many anyway. Few leave their site optimized after they get high pr and ranking,and others use cloaking even so what you see isn't what the SE's are getting.
So sometimes going back and checking googles cashed links or sifting through the archives can help you to see how some sites progressed.
Although some SEO's even add tags top prevent their pages from being archived too.
Just have to learn as you go and don't depend entirely on what others tell you
