I don't get it
-
Hi...I'm new here....not a professional SEO at all....just been teaching myself as much as I can about SEO on my own as I'm a small business owner desperately trying to make something out of herself. Could use your thoughts on this...please forgive me if this isn't your usual type of question you get here:
so...I've been going through all the suggestions for on page optimisation and researching competitors links given through this lovely SEO Moz pro account . One competitor in particular....has spammed A LOT of sites...I think she's hired some company to do it for her. There's article submissions that don't even sound like they are written by someone who speaks English and very low quality sites for back links including some with adult content...however she's got thousands of these links so she ranks extremely high on all keywords. All her pages have very high keyword density and could be accused of keyword stuffing big time. I put her website through the SEOmoz grader....she's got a C and I've got an A. She's completely catered her site to Google not the customer and its obvious. But other competitors in my product have started doing the same thing as this gal and low and behold their sites are popping up in google searches also.
Beginning to feel frustrated with my hours of efforts and wondering how I can compete with people like this when I'm trying to be a good girl with Google and focus on creating a great site. My hits per day are increasing slowly, my Alexa rank (hoping this matters) is improving rapidly and you can actually find me on the google search when I couldn't before (I'm page 10 now yay) so I don't feel like a total failure but still am wondering if hitting page 1 for my keywords will happen this lifetime.
Why does Google seem to reward people who go against all these countless books and resources on SEO I'm reading? Could use any thoughts/suggestions you might have on this matter.
Thanks for your help. x
-
EGOL----you mention a lot of your spammy links are gifts from blackhat....is there a way I can prevent this from happening to my site or is this unavoidable?
I don't know of any way to prevent that. I know some people who try to block all robots except the good ones but that is only partially successful and still does not block other types of link hunters.
I do not believe that these links are harmful. Instead they are natural and almost every busy site has a lot of them. Google knows this and I don't think that they will penalize you for it. Some of these links might be very slighly helpful.
-
Thank you for your kindness in your responses...I was a bit apprehensive about posting in here as I'm not a pro and you guys have taken the fear out of asking for help another time...so thank you. You've all earned major brownie points in my book.
Despite feeling frustrated yesterday....feeling hopeful today and wanting to move forward and kick some butt in internet land. Going to use this as an opportunity to learn as much as I can....to learn from mistakes and make a great site.
I'd rather not post the competitor links just in case they happen to actually be on here---really doubt they are but just being careful of mentioning them just in case....but my link is www.ldnwicklesscandles.com. I did everything myself like most of us do with this particular business (I told ya I was small business!) ...just used a blogging platform--squarespace. If you type in the main product name into google you'll see my top 3-5 competitors. Yep have set up a campaign, attached google analytics and working through everything trying to fix things that it has flagged and whatnot and teaching myself everything its saying so I understand and can move forward.
EGOL----you mention a lot of your spammy links are gifts from blackhat....is there a way I can prevent this from happening to my site or is this unavoidable?
Thanks again guys for the responses.....some lovely people in here!
-
You've heard from two of the most knowledgeable and good men in Pro. One of the things I like most about this membership is not only the knowledge shared, but the character of the people who share.
My takeaway is this: keep doing what is best practice. Keep doing what is best in principle.
Along my journey I spent 11 years in the television news business. One evening during a news meeting one of the senior anchors said we need to spend less time worrying about what the other guy is doing and spend more time worrying about what we are doing.
Do your research. Do your competitive analysis. Do best practice. Do what is best in principle and you'll have success.
-
I bet you are looking at one of my sites.
When I go into Google webmaster tools it has over two million links!
Guess how many of them are spammy? About two million. Honest.
These are gifts from the blackhats.
You can't always assume that the links to a site are intentional. In fact most of the links to all of my sites are junk links that I have had nothing to do with.
I'm trying to be a good girl with Google and focus on creating a great site. My hits per day are increasing slowly
You are on the right track. Hang in there!
-
Christine,
First, don't allow frustration to get in the way of moving ahead. Mainly, because you don't know why they are ahead, yet. Don't assume it is due to spammy backlinks from spun articles. Now, if you are open to sharing some urls, that would make it easier for some of the mozzers to assist you. Short of that, I will give it a go:
Remember that you have a competitive advantage over your competitors........
Great, your on page is ahead of the competitor on page. That is a good start. Now, to get a feel for where you are and need to go, are you running a campaign in your pro account and have you picked out your top competitors to look at? Make sure you put in three as you will learn more.
Have you attached Google Analytics to the campaign so that you can derive more actionable data? This can assist you a lot of ways, and one is in exploring different keywords, etc.Next, go to this link and do not leave until you understand it Best Kept SEO Secret-SEOMoz toolset.
Remember, you don't know why they are ranking until you dig really deep. It is human nature (OK it is my nature) to look at where I am excelling over a competitor as opposed to what I need to do to improve myself and get ahead of them...forever.
Next, SEO is not a billboard ad on the freeway at rush hour. Single, call 800-find-Luv. Where once the billboard is up you will know if it works in a short amount of time. SEO is a labor that pays off incrementally. Those of us who do it for a living see everyday where a client is used to TV spending, print spending, PPC spending, etc. and having an instant result (unfortunately, they typically remember the good and forget the bad). Those clients want the same from SEO and must be managed if they are to win. Treat yourself as your client and manage the desire to want it now. Focus on building a foundation that will be strong. Good on page, good content, quality links, etc. You can get ahead.
Oh, yeah, the competitive advantage.....you are a mozzer, you are on the team. We will smoke 'em.
Best
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
-
Is my client's site penalized and if not, why are other lesser quality sites ranking with lower metrics than my client's?
Hello, I'm trying to explain to a client, as to why certain websites that appear in the top 50 listings for a keyword are there when they don't have very good backlink profiles, and for this keyword, seems you need a high PA above 20 or DA above 25, just to page for page 2 - 3. Running a full SERPs report, I have seen that backlinks to the page that's ranking seems to be as high of a factor as PA, followed by DA and overall backlink profile. Having a high score in one of these 4 areas seems to increase your ranking. However, going into page 3 and beyond, seems that things kinda take a weird turn. After comparing the client's site to those ranking on page 2 I could see that all of them had better PA and more links to the page ranking for that keyword, so page 2 I understand why we don't rank on yet. However, looking at page 3, I see that the client's site in question has better PA, DA, links to page and overall links to domain. Which leaves me to think we have a penalty that's keeping us ranking 50 or beyond. Since our metrics across the boards for what MOZ is showing as ranking factors. The more odd issue is that looking at the line graph, shows right at the time we implemented sitewide https our ranking for this one keyword dropped, while rankings for our other keywords increased. Am I to assume it's a keyword density penalty? What penalties are there with a outcome of ranking limits?
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?
I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site; My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's) Has 1 backlink. Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP. It's a 1 page site made with Flash. They do not have FB or Twitter accounts. So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company. And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | Eblan0 -
Why does my site get sandboxed but this one doesn't?
I'm currently working on an entire website redesign and restructuring. My current website is extremely spammy. I really worked on it before I knew much about SEO. Now that I have a better foundation I have been remaking my site to get rid of duplicate content and to have a much better UX. With this said, I still depend on the current site to bring in my income while I'm working on getting my new site up. Google seems to constantly kick me out for about a month at a time and then let me back in. The few other times I thought it was because the new site I have been working on is on a different domain and was exactly the same for a while (I don't want google to find this new domain it's just for testing purposes). So I removed the new domain from google and in a couple weeks my main site was back in. Problem is yesterday google hit me again. I'm out of google for all my search terms. Before I was ranking on the first page for just about every "keyword + city" phrase I was trying to rank for. I can find plenty of reasons why google would give me problems with my current site. For example I have TONS of duplicate pages with just the keyword/city changed. Pretty spammy. I did buy about 5 links a year ago or so but they are pretty nothing sites. My question is if google's going to ban me why don't they just do it? They keep taking me out and putting me back in. No messages in webmaster tools. My domain is below: http://yourmusiclessons.com Also when I just started out I got the idea of "keyword + city" from a competitor that ranks for EVERYTHING which is also found below: http://www.musikalessons.com All of the links I bought were the same links the above site bought. I tried buying a link from classical.net which has a high page rank and links to musikalessons.com on each page of their site. As soon as google found the links, I was kicked out. I had them remove it. My question is musika has basically the same "spammyness" as me just on a much larger scale and yet they never seem to be kicked out of google and still rank high. I've thought about reporting musika, but I'm afraid Google will ban me as well because my site is just as bad. Again I'm working all day on fixing my site and doing a 180, it's just taking a long time and I can't launch quite yet. I live off the income from my current site though, so it's very disheartening when this happens. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | BrianJenkins0 -
Keywords and Getting Started with them to the top of the Search Engines
We are an online Saas Based startup. Strongly 70% of our daily users come directly to us since they know us by the url . Now there these 30% who scout for software's like ours online. Get to us by some hook or crook and then maybe end up giving the trial a shot. Our Main site is only of say 5-6 pages. These pages have basic info about our product , pricing and contact etc. What I wish to understand is that when one says" getting those keywords to the top of the engines rankings" who do you mean by these - I presume one means that get the keywords you want to compete for and then push in "Adwords" or better content pages? So If I want to rank well - then my websites should have good content pages you mean? Is that correct-? That means now I have to write good content on those keywords or around those keywords- without that there is no hope to come on good on engines right? Correct me here if I sway away from the actual meaning. Next I wish to have campaigns setup in google adwords keeping in mind those competitive keywords - here again does content on my website play a role? If I have no content and then have google adwords setup does that help? Please advice How long before I add good content pages and expect them to show up in my analytics etc? Thanks
Competitive Research | | shanky10 -
How can I obtain analytics and social data for a site that I'm not authorized on?
I'd like to get traffic information and facebook /twitter stats for a company. Don't know their ua, logins or have access to any of their pages. Where can I find this information? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | brandonschultz0 -
What's the best way to make sure a link is worth getting?
I know what tools to use and I use all of SEOmoz's tools daily. PA, DA, MR, & MT are all things I take into account, but sometimes all you have to do is look at a site and you can tell it's not worth it. I'll analyze the page's backlink's and everything in between. Are there any tricks out there that can help the decision making process? I'm tired of trying to get links on sites that clearly are not worth it, but all of their stats say otherwise. So do you stick with stats, or is it a judgement call? I'm particularly curious about determining the amount of possible traffic from a link. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
How can I estimate a domain's overall organic search traffic - any tools?
Most of my analysis revolves around looking at rankings for specific keyword phrases that I've identified as important/relevant. But it'd be nice to be able to look at a domain and get a sense for how much organic traffic they get overall. If they're not ranking for the keywords I'm researching but have a lot of organic traffic that would be a nice signal to me that they are probably targeting other phrases more or have a big brand presence or something. Any suggestions? Thanks! Jeff Gibson
Competitive Research | | jeff.gibson0 -
Can anyone suggest how they're #1
Hi, I'm really struggling to see how these guys are number one on google (from the UK) when searching for "picture framers york" Their SEOMOZ on page grading for the term is an F, so on site SEO is minimal if any. Their backlinks are almost nonexistant, take a look at the competition report (attached) through market samurai. Everything I thought I understand about SEO is currently being turned on its head because with the information available, they shouldn't be there. I thought maybe its the proximity to 'York' center, but they aren't that close to be honest. So any advice greatly appreciated as to why they are #1 so I know what it is I can do as an SEO. Thanks, Dave samurai.png
Competitive Research | | davebrown19750