How does a competing website with clearly black hat style SEO tactics, have a far higher domain authority than our website that only uses legitimate link building tactics?
-
Through SEO Moz link analysis tools, we looked at a competing websites external followed links and discovered a large number of links going to Blog pages with domain authorities in the 90's (their blog page authorities were between 40 and 60), however the single blog post written by this website was exactly the same in every instance and had been posted in August 2011.
Some of these blog sites had 160 or so links linking back to this competing website whose domain authority is 49 while ours is 28, their Moz Trust is 5.43 while ours is 5.18.
An example of some of the blogs that link to the competing website are:
http://advocacy.mit.edu/coulter/blog/?p=13
http://pest-control-termite-inspection.posterous.com/\
However many of these links are "no follow" and yet still show up on Open Site Explorer as some of this competing websites top linking pages.
Admittedly, they have 584 linking root domains while we have only 35, but if most of them are the kind of websites posted above, we don't understand how Google is rewarding them with a higher domain authority.
Our website is www.anteater.com.au
Are these tactics now the only way to get ahead?
-
Thanks for the info guys
-
If the links that are passing juice are media related, government related or edu type links then those can carry a ton of weight. They are worth Morty than a thousand crappy links combined.
-
Also, out of those 500 plus links they have coming in, they might have 10-20 really high quality links mixed in that are really passing juice.
-
Domain age can also be a factor. Also remember that when Panda was released an astounding 12% of sites were impacted. This either means the rest of the sites on the net are all white hat or just slipped through the cracks. Googles algorithm is by far one of the most advanced in the industry but the web is vast and it might take a while for your competitors to get caught for there tactics. I agree with EGOL, focus on your site. Social promotion and conversions. In time white hat will prevail.
-
I am not trying to be a wise guy... just saying what I would tell a friend or an employee... and the opinion that I hold for myself.
I think that you have discovered that the trust and authority numbers are not what google is using to rank websites. In fact google in the past couple of months has dramatically altered the way that they consider links.
Panda, nofollow, and google information never yet revealed make the link metric waters really muddy. There is a really good chance that lots of links have been made worthless... and others are depreciating assets.
I am betting my money elsewhere.
So, the most reliable way to advance the success of your website is to focus your efforts on increasing the appreciation of your website by your visitors.
Name the most successful sites on the web. This is what they do first and foremost leaving SEO as a five minute job for each page of content.
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
-
Any Website SEO Benefits from SAAS Linked Content?
An installed software application has a help section for users, and that help content is housed on the software company website. Would the links from the software application to the company website benefit the websites SEO efforts? Or, would no referring URL mean no SEO value?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sysprousa1
Thanks!0 -
Domain authority a better metric then referring domain count?
Hi Guys, When reviewing competitors what would be a better metric - Referring domain count OR domain authority. From my understanding DA is a indication of the quality of the link profile. So if a site has a high DA this is a better metric for comparison then referring domain count. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
International SEO and Website Redirection
Hey there Mozzers, If you have a website for example www.example.com and you wanted to target Australia and UK and you owned the .com.au and .co.uk. Would that be ok if everything redirected to the .com ? I know that having the .com.au is a signal for Google but the redirection is causing me troubles. Would that be huge of a difference if everything redirected to the .com version of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Do authority brand (business name) anchor text links still drive SEO rankings?
i have a question about links....if you get a link from a really good authority e.g. bbc.co.uk - website but the anchor text for that link is only your business name e.g Moz and not a chosen SEO keyword target..do you still stand to gain in terms of your overall SEO rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Any SEO penalties for hosting a site on a sub-domain.
Hi, A client of ours has previously been hosting their main website on a sub-domain of their primary URL. They currently have a training application being hosted on the main domain. They also currently have a redirect in place so when you go to www.xzy.com, you're redirected to xzy.xzy.com. If need need to stick with this set-up for the website relaunch later this month, my question is: are there any SEO drawbacks to having the entire site hosted on a sub-domain? Should we fight to get the training application off the main domain, at which point we can host everything on the main domain? Many thanks! Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThisisPlanB0 -
Canonical links apparently not used by google
hi, I do have an ecommerce website (www.soundcreation.ro) which in the last 3 months had a drop in the SERP. Started to look around in GWT what is happening. Google is reporting a lot of duplicate meta-tags (and meta-titles problem). But 99% of them had already canonical links setted. I tried to optimize my product listings with the new "prev", "next" tags and introduced also the "view-all" canonical link to help Google identify the appropiate product listing pages. SeoMoz is not reporting thos duplicate meta issues. Here is an example of the same page with different links, but with the same common canonical and reported by GWT "duplicate title tag": http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10-pageall/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10_999/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-electro-acustice-cid10_1510/What could be the issue?- only that gwt is not refreshing as should be, keeping old errors?- if so, then there is an other serious issue because of why our PR is dropping on several pages?- do we have other problem with the site, which ends up with google penalizing us? Thank you for your ideas!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjutas0 -
How to move website to new domain?
We have a website that has run under the same domain name for the past 10 years. We have built up a decent amount of SEO "mojo" (and traffic) over time, however, the original domain name no longer applies to the business model. A little over 1 year ago we started using a new brand name for the website and created a landing page for that domain name. Everything on that landing page links over to pages on the original domain name (to preserve the SEO value that we have built up over the years). We would like to move all (or most) of the pages/content to the new domain name. Would using 301 redirects be the safest, most effective way of doing this? I have heard of other people doing it this way, and often they will see their traffic drop for a few weeks before it eventually comes back. Anyone else had experience with this? What worked? What didn't? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-mojo0 -
Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
My understanding of domain authority is that the more links pointing to any page / resource on a domain, the greater the overall domain authority (and weight passed from outbound links on the domain) is. Because URL shorteners create links on their own domain that redirect to an off-domain page but link "to" an on-domain URL, are they gaining domain authority each time someone publishes a shortened link from their service? Or does Google penalize these sites specifically, or links that redirect in general? Or am I missing something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay.Neely0