Can someone explain how a site with no DA, links or MozTrust, MozRank can rank #1 in the SERPs?
-
I do SEO for a legal site in the UK and one of the keywords I'm targeting is 'Criminal Defence Solicitors'. If you search this term in Google.co.uk this site comes top www.cdsolicitors.co.uk, yet in my mozbar it has 0 links, 0 DA etc, I noticed it top a few weeks ago and thought something spammy was going on; I thought if I was patient, Google would remove it, however it still hasn't.
Can someone explain how it is top in the SERPs? I've never seen this before.
thanks
-
Hello Friend!
Could be a stretch but since the SE can't read the flash version and that is the only version with domain authority the only thing they would be seeing is the title which is Criminal Defence Solicitors which could cause the SE to find the site most relevant? I'm not sure, it looks very strange, good luck on your quest for knowledge though!
Justin Smith
-
There's a few likely explanations, but it's hard to know for sure which of these (or what combination) is at work.
#1 - They redirected other pages/sites to this one recently and Linkscape hasn't yet seen it (or they're hiding it from all bots except Google/Bing). That could explain the fast rankings on a low quality site, and why we haven't seen any links to it.
#2 - The site recently started gaining links that are helping them rank that Linkscape has yet to catch. This is certainly possible, as the latest index launched earlier this week with data crawled the first 2.5 weeks of November. Lots of spammy sites will often get ranked based on crap links for a few days or weeks before being caught and pushed out of the SERPs. The next Linkscape update (likely mid-end of December, possibly as late as early January) should show it. You might also check Majestic's "fresh index" which doesn't offer metrics, but does have pretty fast updates.
#3 - The site's doing something very shady (cloaked redirects as mentioned above or links that only the engines' bots can see).
Hope that helps!
-
I initially thought it was anomaly also, however it's been hanging around for almost a month now.
I just would've expected it to drop some rankings already, wouldn't you?
-
but it's not an exact match domain!
-
well check out how many exact match domains rank #1 with no PR
-
Well, I don't think there is any SEO going on. That site has not been made to be more accessible to search engines (or users), however still ranks number one.
The exact match title, domain age and legit info on the site appear to be the only significant factors as I don't see a much else going on I'm not convinced they're doing anything dodgy though, just lucky.
Possibly an anomaly or perhaps as other factors catch up with it the site will drop in rank.
-
Thank you both for taking the time to answer however I'm not convinced with your answers. Domain age by itself is not really a powerful ranking factor (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-age-how-important-is-it-for-seo/7296/); if a domain has been around for a while it's generally acquired authority through links and social shares, these are the key factors with domain age.
The title does match the keyword I'm searching but there is absolutely no other content on the page.
SEOmoz may not be Google but it's only a pagerank 1 site according to my SEO book toolbar.
It just doesn't seem right, and I'm convinced there is something spammy going on here. If this is legit SEO, why isn't everyone doing the same?
thanks again
-
Well, the simple answer would be that SEOmoz isn't Google.
Just because SEOmoz haven't crawled any relevant links, etc doesn't mean that Google hasn't.
It is a horrid little site though, the HTML version has "INSERT TEXT HERE" all over it. I would say activitysuper may be on to something with the domain age, plus the fact that it's for a real company (lots of contact info).
-
Well the domain was registered in 2004, its using a .co.uk domain and its title tag is exactly the term.
I think the age of the domain is playing a big part of it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should we remove our "index" pages (alphabetical link list to all of the products on the site)?
We run an e-commerce site with a large number of product families, with each family having a number of products within it. We have a set of pages (26 - one for each letter A-Z) that are lists of links to the product family pages. We originally created these pages thinking it would aid in discoverability of these pages to search engines, of course as time has gone on, techniques like this have fallen out of favor with Google as it provides negligible value to the user. Should we consider removing these pages from the site overall? Is it possible that it could be viewed by Panda as resembling a link farm? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI1 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
11 000 links from 2 blogs + Many bad links = Penguin 2.0\. What is the real cause?
Hello, A website has : 1/ 8000 inbound links from 1 blog and 3000 from another one. They are clean and good blogs, all links are NOT marked as no-follow. 2/ Many bad links from directories that have been unindexed or penalized by Google On the 22nd of May, the website got hurt by Penguin 2.0. The link profile contains many directories and articles. The priority we had so far was unindexing the bad links, however shall we no-follow the blog links as well? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | antoine.brunel0 -
Multiple Versions of Mobile Site
Hey Guys, We have recently finished the latest version of our mobile site which means currently we have 2 mobile sites. Depending on what device and Os will depend on which site you will be presented with.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seekjobs
e.g.
iPhone 3 or 4 users on iOS4 will get version 1 of our mobile site
iPhone 5 users on iOS5 will get the new version (version 2) of our mobile site. Our old mobile site is currently indexed in Google and performing pretty well.
Since the launch of the second mobile site we have not see any major changes to our visibility in Google and so was curious My main concern here is duplicate content so I am curious can Google detect that we have 2 mobile site that we serve depending on device? And if Google can detect this, why has our sites not been penalized! Thanks, LW I know the first thing that comes to your mind is Duplicate content0 -
SERP dropped Today ??
Hi, Long story shot. my 2 main keywords 'makeup artist sydney' and
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EdsonGroupMedia
'sydney makeup artist' that have fluctuated in #1 - 4 position for the last year even after panda, have now moved to the 2page as of last night 23 May 13. I have checked webmaster tools and have no messages or error, i have checked Bing and still rank # 3 for the keywords. I am all out of ideas! am I being paranoid ? there hasn't been any major changes to the site and I don't seem to have major duplicate content issues! Any suggestions and Ideas would be great, website is www.sparrowmakeup.com.au Thanks.0 -
Can anyone tell me why this site ranks so well?
Site in question: cellphoneshop.net From what I can tell from their link profile, the links they garner don't appear to be particularly high value but they dominate organic listings for my vertical (cell phone accessories), esp. in the last 2-3 months when Google was supposedly increasing the quality of their search results. Can anyone tell me why in particular this site ranks so well for competitive short and long tail terms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugeneku0 -
How to rank internal pages?
Hello, I have a website about consoles, on the homepage are a few thoughts about what consoles are and a short history. The main attraction are the pages about Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PSP Vita. So, I want to rank my homepage and my internal pages about the consoles ranking for "xbox360", "play station 3" each one on a separate page of course. Basically I want to rank brands. My main questions are: 1. How much link builing should I do for my homepage considering that I'm not really interested in ranking it as much as the internal pages? In percentage how it would look like? Random (stupid) example: 60% links to homepage, 10% to each internal page? 2. I guess I must do links for internal pages otherwise they won't rank good, only linking to homepage. 3. Considering the penguin update, my main keyword should be around what % of the overall anchors to each internal page? Thank you very much for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corodan0 -
A domain is ranking for a plural key word in SERPs on page 1 but for the singular not at all?
What could the reasons that a domain is ranking for the plural version of a key word on SERPs page 1 and for the singular version not at all? Google knows that both key words belong together, as in the SERPs for one version also the other version of the key word is being highlighted. If I search for the domain with the plural keyword it shows up on the first page in SERPs, but If I search for the same keyword as singular (in German it is just removing an “s”) I see the plural version highlighted many times but I cannot find my domain. What could be the reason for this behavior? penalties?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SimCaffe0