Ranking Oddities
-
In my local marketplace, I have competitors who have the following:
- unoptimized title tags and description tags (really long using keyword stuffing),
- stuffing keywords into the Meta keywords tag,
- lacking keywords in the body copy,
- using spammy footers or sections of text with a lot of local cities listed where no physical business is located,
- unattractive design (in my humble opinion),
- lower page authority,
- lower domain authority,
- lower number of back links
and are organically outranking my site that I have tried to optimize using the MOZ tools, Market Samurai, other tools, and other great advice provided by people much more knowledgeable than myself about SEO.
I don't understand how these sites that lack SEO continue to rank in the #1 or #2 spots in Google for my main keyword phrase + location, while my site is either not in the top 50 or in the top 40s range.
How is it that sites with little to no optimization, no blogs, and very few backlinks, continue to rank quite well?
These are not all new sites. Domain ages range from 1 to 10 years. What I am seeing appears to go against the grain of SEO recommendations.
Any general thoughts?
-
AJ,
I took a look at your backlink profile and it's pretty clear what the problem is. You basically have nothing but spam backlinks (I will PM you examples). It looks like there was a big influx of links around September 2013. Did you pay someone to do SEO about 6 months ago?
Your site doesn't look bad, but it's got some instances of over-optimization (again, I'll PM you examples).
You should definitely verify Google Webmaster Tools, if you haven't already, and check to see if you have a manual action against you from Google. After looking at your backlink profile, I would be surprised if you don't have one. However, if you don't, it may be coming soon. If you don't know how to do the backlink cleanup and reconsideration request yourself, it would be a good idea to hire someone with experience.
-
I sent you a PM with the URLs for the sites.
-
These sites are in a boring industry; divorce lawyers.
None of these sites are "popular," nor do they have any user interface experiences that are cutting edge or fund or exciting. Each site provides information about the law firm, the lawyer(s), and the services offered. None of the sites utilize much media, such as video or audio.
I can provide the URLs for the sites, but I don't know if that is acceptable to do in this thread. If not, I would be happy to send them via private message.
None of the sites are providing anything truly unique, however my blog does provide information for people that goes beyond the stereotypical divorce information blog. The information is related and relevant, and I would like to think it is somewhat unique.
-
Do they offer information of value to the people who visit the site? Are there some user-facing reasons why the sites are popular?
-
What's your backlink profile look like? There's literally a million questions that I could ask you but without being able to see the query, the websites, or the backlink profiles, it is really REALLY tough to pinpoint the issue.
-
How old is your domain? Is your site speed good?
-
As far as I can tell, these other websites are not updated frequently. There are no active blogs on any of these sites. Google+ accounts are non-existent or not active. Facebook business accounts are non-existent or not active.
-
curious if these site that are ranking higher than you update their content more regularly than you? and how active are their social media communities (especially their Google+ account)?
Chris
-
I literally was just about to type this same question. I'm baffled too. The only conclusion I arrive at is perhaps the other sites receive more traffic. Hopefully a zen master chimes in on this one.
chris
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
-
Sale page ranking for "[blank] for sale" keywords
My company's Ecommerce site has a sale category that is currently out performing some of our normal categories in the SERPs for "[blank] for sale" keywords. For example the sale category landing page is ranking for the keyword "vegetable seeds for sale" rather than the vegetable seed category. Has anyone ever dealt with a similar situation to this? or does anyone have general advice for optimizing (or weakening) sale pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Scoleman1 -
I have lots of articles on my website. Should I add myself as the Author Rank for seo purposes
Hi All, We have lots of articles on our news page of our website. Should we add one of us as the author to gain Author Rank points so to speak ?.. Have not done anything previously with this but just wondered if we were missing a trick here thanks Pete
On-Page Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Rankings going down and down. Help!
I just joined a company as an in house seo. When I looked at their rankings I noticed a downward trend. How can I reverse that? I'm currently working on their onsite optimization, but is there anything more that I can do? edit
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Competitor rank
Hi We have been doing SEO on one of our properties for 4 years now. We had a new competitor jump in and is now ranking above us within 6 months. I verified various parameters including link backs/etc. but cannot see as to why Google would rank them above our page despite us following all ethical SEO practices/updating content etc. Do you guys have an experience/thoughts on this? P
On-Page Optimization | | Parvesh0 -
Does anyone know of a Domain auction site that includes MOZ rankings?
Trying to locate a site that has this as part of the search criteria
On-Page Optimization | | hooopdream0 -
Will deleting excess self serving links from old posts damage established ranking
My SEOmoz report showed many posts with "too many links." I can easily go back into wordpress and delete self serving links. But is there a downside to this if these posts are already ranked well on google search for the desired key words? Or will deleting the excess self serving links improve ranking
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?
I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?
On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet0 -
Main landing page does not rank as good a single news article - why?
We are running several special interest websites in the German speaking market, covering outdoor sports and vacation topics. We are trying to focus on one main landing page for events and keywords, this should be number one für search engines. Besides we are producing numerous content (news, pictures, videos), which are supposed to rank well and to be found on Google News, but not to rank higher for the specific keyword than our designated landing page. It seems, that we fail with this attempt. Example one: The main page for the alpine Ski World Championships on our skiing portal www.skiinfo.de was supposed to be this one: http://magazin.skiinfo.de/3170--ski_wm_2011_garmisch-partenkirchen.html for the Keywords 'ski wm 2011' in Germany. We missed this goal. Many of our own news articles ranked higher. When searching for 'ski wm 2011' on skiinfo.de only directly after the World Championships, the main page was ranked on 33rd position - 32 of our own articles ranked higher. Why does the landing page rank worse than an article like this: http://magazin.skiinfo.de/3173-ski-wm-2011-tina-maze-gewinnt-riesenslalom-keine-deutschen-medaillen.html ? Another example: Our designated landing page for the Event 'International Mountain Summit' (a major mountaineering and climbing event in Bressanone/ITA) is this: http://www.bergleben.de/klettern/2148--international_mountain_summit.html (Keywords: international mountain summit, IMS). We are experiencing that our news articles rank higher, when they are 'fresh', this one still does: http://www.bergleben.de/klettern/2149-international-mountain-summit-4.html. Why? It would be perfect, if good content would strengthen the designated landing page. We are linking back to this landing page from each article in the breadcrumb, but this does not seem to be very successful. How can we achieve this?
On-Page Optimization | | Beatbuster0