Ranking better with worse figures
-
Six months ago a competitor e-commerce site appeared in the top 10. Now six months later he is at #2. (for the main keyword in my sector in Dutch language, competition +4 million)
My site is 4 years old and since three years ranks at #1 or 2. I'm now at #3, behind the competitors site.
My competitor has a HomePage PA of 36 with 2295 links from 26 domains, root domain DA 23 with 175000 links from 30 domains.
My site has a HomePage PA of 49 with 6975 links froms 238 domains, root domain DA 40 with 310023 links from 269 domains.
I have more specific landing pages, better and more content, code W3C checked ....
Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?
-
Thanks Marek for the usefull words. Yes I still use meta-keywords as there is also Bing and Yahoo. But of course you are right about differing the description tags. I will change them asap.
Actually all this is about the Dutch version where I have "only" +4.000.000 competition for the keyword Lighting in Dutch. I don't even want to try to compete in English with that word. But then I compete with the Brand names
and get my English speaking customers anyway.
Thanks again !
-
Sometimes it is been hard to understand but never give up
you still using meta-keywords ... they can only help the competition not google position.
meta - description tags are all the same for different pages.
If yes it can be a main reason. You have to diversify descriptions and they have to be consistent with title and page content.
e.g. for <title></span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span><span> </span>Buy LED lighting at the best price.</span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span></title>
in description use: name="Description" content="LED lighting is the latest craze. ..... an so on about LED up to 140 characters">
Marek
-
H-tags, titles,speed, and much more, I am very aware of the importance and using. What worries me more than being dropped on #3 is that a site, appearing from nowhere, in 6 months can get to the top. This site is in all ways inferior to mine, I mean inferior in terms of what google thinks is important. Their content is fresher of course and they have less nearly dupicate content. But it seems to me that history has no weight anymore. It seems that once you are ther for three years, you are damn dificult to be caught. Seems I am wrong.
For my understanding, analysing the results for years, sooner or later the mechanism, the algorithm behind (from Google) must become clear. Thousands of people are on top and after making an inventory of everything possible that can be important, I don't discover new things anymore. It seems that they have some secret arguments left as, as you told yourself, in many cases the logic based on what is known is far far away.
And no, their domain is as bad as mine
I started my site without knowing that a keyword in a domain name is important.
What I see is that in the top 10 there are 9 .be domains and only mine is a .com. Maybe Googles starts to give importance at local domains.
And no again, I don't have many G+1, but they don't neither. I have many pages on Facebook, a page on LinkedIn, a blog with my Google identity, an author link on my site pointing to this identity .... I'm getting out of arguments !
-
Maybe, I never got attention for PA and DA. Only after starting to use SEOmoz that I became aware. But my links are good, are many, my content and keywords optimal, my code good, my speed fast. I have some nearly duplicate content as I have 27000 products on my site and the difference between product A and B can be very small giving nearly identical product pages. But this was as such since the beginning. Maybe Google has more attention for this now than some years ago.
-
Thanks for your answer. No, I am quiet sure that my platform is the best what I can get in my country. I was aware that a platform can be important for ranking as speed is important for google.
-
I have many examples of such a situation. In my work I won with Nikon Academy (akademianikona.pl) - site supported by Nikon with huge number of links and better statistics.
Refresh you content.
I agree with EGOL and Gordon. What I want to add ... think that internal consistency of the site is very important. Good content structure (H -tags, content with keywords) - title - description - url should be the first elements of the subjects of your mind.
Also very important is competitors tracking. What do they have that you do not have? Maybe they follow some (local ... global) trends? Social impact is another area to check - do you have many G+1, FB shares, votes etc...
Check technical issues like page load speed and other
And last but not least - what is their domain name - is it better that yours?
some other ideas to improvement (simple report) link
Good luck Rik
-
Just a hypothesis here, it could be based on the platform you are using. Some ecommerce platforms rank better in google, an example of this is that the ecommerce platform "magento" is seo friendlier than other ecommerce platforms. That could be a reason that it is ranking better with "worse" statistics.
Another hypothesis is that their onsite is better with less errors and less duplicate content and therefore being penalized less.
Hope that Helps
-
I can only echo EGOL.
Keep working at quality content, relevant links etc. if your efforts continue, there is every chance you will be back on top.
-
Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?
Maybe because the figures that you are looking at are different from what google is using to rank the pages. I think that the figures that you are looking at are good for tracking your progress over time but they obviously are not what google is using.
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
-
What to do about one site dominating search results? (multiple pages ranking)?
Anybody have thoughts on dealing with search results where the same site gets listed multiple times? "weebly vs wix" is one example (same site #1-3, repetitive articles, not crazy high authority), but I see this now and then. I know Google likes variety, so it's weird for me to see results like this dominating search results. Thoughts? What gets these sites to take over the top rankings for a specific term? Any way to rise up in this situation, outside of the usual? Any tips on duplicating this kind of success?
Competitive Research | | davidwaring0 -
Possible google sandbox issue? Organically ranking page 1 for our number 1 keyword, but page 5 sometimes 6 on google?
What are some things I can look into to figure out why google is ranking us on page 5 sometimes page 6, with some slight rank boosts to rank 36 from 48 but then falls right back. While Yahoo and Bing rank us page 1 consistently, without these big drops back. I use google search ( webmaster tools ) daily, fix 404s and make sure to fetch new content I create. Our site is within the Sandbox issue time frame, google 1st indexed the site about a year and a half ago, the site has been through various SEO service checks, and has had those issues fixed ( some bigcommerce won't allow, such as full sitewide ssl and a few other small factors ) but all the big stuff was handled or will be 100% handled after this redesign is complete. But just still seems we're stuck in the google hole again. We do use adwords, but no clear signs as to why we'd suffer such hardships with google ranking, only thing we don't have optimized in terms of on page optimization from moz is keyword in url, of which will be changing within the next month or two, as we're rolling our a new redesign with SEO 100% at the forefront, nice url paths, with keywords in their url, much more responsive site that uses less resources. But before we release this redesign, I'd like to find out what toe we stubbed of google's to give us such a ranking blackeye... We don't have that many backlinks, and I know these are a huge factor, however, building quality backlinks it's harder than walking on water at time and on the same level as spinning hay into gold. Any ideas community...
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
Why is this site ranking so well
I just took over an SEO campaign for a company we recently did a website for. The old company created individual landing pages for each city they service, but they didn't have any original content except replacing the city name. We are in the process of creating completely unique content per page. My main issue is that there is a company with no link profile, duplicate content on every page, no social media presence, etc - but consistently ranks for city + fence company The company we are starting to work with is: http://betterdecksandfences.com/ The company that is ranking for everything is: http://www.alcovyfence.com Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | BeardoCo0 -
SERP rankings consistency
I have a website which is showing different serp rankings. On one computer, he's on the first page, on another, he's second page and another person from outside our office sees him ranked differently. What would account for the inconsistency in rankings?
Competitive Research | | priceseo0 -
Why would a site with virtually no external links and low authority rank very high?
Hey there: I'm not sure anyone's going to be game to answer this but... I have designed, done on-page optimization for and done ongoing content marketing and linkbuilding for a local fitness site. The site is about nine months old and I am attempting to achieve rank for the keyword "personal trainers in philadelphia." We've made progress; having taken a new site from +100 to 19 in about four or five months worth of content creation and linkbuilding on a very modest budget. I'm not complaining. What has me confused though is that there are one or two sites that are ranking very high for this keyword string with considerably shoddier metrics than our site and I'm wondering how a stock WP theme site with very few inbound links can rank top five for a reasonably competitive keyword? Our site is http://vtrainersinc.com. The site I've noticed that ranks top five and seems to have an inferior SEOMoz profile is bodycrafters.net. Anybody got any ideas as to why these things seem to occur? I have this feeling this site has stumbled upon a magic SEO elixir which I'd like to get my hands on!
Competitive Research | | splatdude0 -
Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
Hi, I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days? According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL. You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain. So what are we supposed to do here? Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...) Do what they do? Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
Competitive Research | | Gamer070 -
Any chance to out rank Google flight data for company name?
If you search any number with "co" after it you get Continental Airlines flight information of the corresponding number. So you if you search "4co" you get the current flight details for Continental flight 4. Is there any chance if you have a company called 4CO and you own 4co.com that you could get the number one spot for that term or will google flight results always trump the "organic" results? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | 2comarketing0 -
"keyword" - rank the home page or sub page domain.com/keyword?
One of my clients has a pretty decent website that ranks 1st place for most major keywords in their line of business. EXCEPT one keyword that i've been struggling to get 1st position on Google (currently 2nd). My problem is: let's say "tennis shoes" as a keyword the home page of course has several other shoes listed but I've seen that Google took my home page and made it 2nd position (on 1st page). Where the section domain.com/tennis-shoes is on 2nd page of Google. My question is should i rel cannonical from the /tennis-shoes section to the home page so it focuses more on the specific keyword that i need to get the home 1st? Or should i leave the home page generic and focus more on /tennis-shoes to get that 1st position? What do you Moz'ers Think?
Competitive Research | | mosaicpro0