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 -
Competitors SERP's
One of our competitors is routinely achieving excellent SERP for brand related keywords within only a couple of months of adding the respective brand to their website. Full details are explained in the attached image to avoid the competitor being notified of this post via Google Alerts. Can anyone identify how they are achieving this and point me in the right direction? The other thing is that I was also achieving good SERPs for these and other brand related keywords but I seem to have dropped off the face of google for them, where my competitor has not and who continues to achieve the seemingly impossible. Thanks TOfVHD8
Competitive Research | | UnderMe0 -
What is a desirable range for a keyword's difficulty rating?
Hi all! I am new to the world of SEO and just getting started. As I am doing keyword research I am consistently finding difficulty ratings in the 40%-50% range. Is this considered a "par" rating or should I be looking for "a longer tail" rating? Thanks
Competitive Research | | jclayton180 -
SEO's done, 301s in place, old site STILL outranks new site. What to do?
Since Sep 2010 I have had a site up with minimal SEO optimization (www.chrisbrushmusic.com). Oct 29, 2012, I launched a new site on a new domain (www.chrisbrushdrums.com) with more content and tons of SEO work behind it. The content of the new site is significantly different from the old site, and I wish to keep the old site around. I have 301's in place for specific URLs on the old site that point to the new site. I have submitted xml sitemaps for the new site. As of now, the old site still outranks the new site (i.e. Google search for "nashville session drummer" and my old site is #9 - my new site is nowhere). What should I do? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | cbrush0 -
Raise your hand if you're doing SEO for manufacturers please.
When you're working for a manufacturer it's not exactly the same as working for a company that is flat-out informing people with content and links and revealing a lot of information (relatively speaking). Please tell me what you do when you're working with a client that is not willing to reveal too much because competition = fear of the unknown (like if you take a chance and post something online that your competition may use against you). I would appreciate less speculative and more informed answers from people who have actually done this kind of work - as opposed to those who think theoretically they may know the best way to go because they work for other types of businesses that are not as proprietary as manufacturing is. Thank you.
Competitive Research | | karlseidel0 -
Tool to scan contents of a page and see it through Google's eyes?
Does anyone know of a tool that can be used to input a URL and have it spit out keywords of how Google could possible see what the contents of that page is about?
Competitive Research | | shawn810 -
How to estimate what traffic you should be getting?
Hey guys i have a question in regards to targetting seo results. A lot of my customers will me SME and most have visitors of under 50 per day. My question is how do you judge the amount of traffic a website of a small local business should be getting? For instance i have a site that gets average 22 visits per day, i would love to know how much their competitors get per day so i can know what targets to strive for. I feel that is 22 is ten times more than the compeitors website then the amount of seo time needed is less than if it is 10 times behind what competitors get. Thoughts?
Competitive Research | | buntrosgali0 -
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