Difficult to pinpoint competitive differences
-
Hi moz,
Im currently working with a client that has a number of affiliates that work under similar URLs but operate independently. For example I work with client.com and we are concerned about SEO and ranking competition from affilate1.client.com, affiliate2.client.com etc. As it stands right now, the domain client.com has a higher DA, the homepage has a higher PA, and the equity passing links, both internal and external are much higher as well as number of linking domains, yet for whatever reason for many of the keywords we attempt to optimize for, the smaller affiliates often rank higher.
The only things ive been able to pinpoint is that affiliate1.client.com has a spam score of 2 (rather than 4, for client.com) and the homepage has more total links. External anchor text is pretty branded across the web so i can't imagine it playing into keyword associations. Lastly the sites are constructed and appear very similar so basic on page keyword best practices have been taken care of.
We worry that because affiliate.client.com has been at the SEO game longer, in addition to Google only linking two sites from a domain per search, we will never be able to rank for the keywords we want to rank for.
How else can I go about a competitive analysis if I've taken into account everything said above?
Any help will be very appreciated.
-
They have very, very similar content. Essentially its the same save for some differences due to the region differences.
-
Do these competing pages have identical or very similar content ?
-
Ok to get a little more specific, our client is a telecommunications company but let me still refer to them as client.com. There exist a series of regional sites such as region1.client.com, region2.client.com etc which i guess function as subdomains of client.com.
Our client is specifically client.com not the regional versions so all of our SEO efforts go to ranking client.com
For a given generic, yet important keyword, say "internet," a page on region1.client.com will rank higher than client.com, or sometimes client.com will not rank at all (which may be because of Google's two page rule)
Given all of the information i mentioned above (client.com having a higher PA, more backlinks, etc.) I cannot figure out why this ranking is happening
Please let me know if that clarifies
-
Getting very specific so there is no time spent explaining things that do not apply....
I need an example of the keywords that apply here. For example, if you sell flooring and have ten other branches.... is the problem that one of the branches outranks the main domain for keywords such as "oak flooring" but they are ranking appropriately for "oak flooring pittsburgh"
-
"Affiliate" is a name used for a person outside of your company who sells your products.
Are you talking about "branch offices" or "franchise locations" ?
-
Hi,
Thank you for your passionate response, however now im feeling as if "affiliate" was a touchy word. If client.com is who I am working SEO for, then north.client.com is a regional branch of the same company. However that subdomain outranks the mother tree on many keywords, and wouldn't it be better to navigate from the trunk to branches rather than directly to a branch and not be able to find your way back?
Im just trying to understand what other factors may be playing into the observed ranks when all of the metrics I get from Moz's (awesome) tools would suggest otherwise
-
Affiliates are some of the smartest people on the web -- especially the ones who have survived after Google took a disliking to them a few years ago. They are really good at optimization and they often have strong websites.
As soon as you invite affiliates into your business model you invite competition, smart competition, really smart competition. Most of the time affiliates are so good at what they do that they have no problem defeating the manufacturer, publisher, program site, or whoever offered to pay them to help produce sales. They live and breathe, SEO, optimzation, rankings, traffic, conversions, etc. The program people are usually busy doing other work and generally don't have the time or the smarts to outdo the affiliate.
How else can I go about a competitive analysis
I've been an affiliate for about 20 years. I've sold lots of stuff for lots of businesses. The best situation for me and for the people who pay me is when they value me as a member of their team. I am still with the first program that I joined but many many others have come and gone. What's the difference? The one that I am still with after 20 years values their affiliates as members of their team. They rejoice about the success of the affiliates and enjoy the rain that they make. Even thought they live 2000 miles from me I have been to their homes and to their offices for strategy meetings. I have given them opinions and advice on their products to make them easier to sell. I advise them on how to tweak the checkout process to increase sales. They know my kids and I know theirs. I consider them among my best friends and I am among theirs. Maybe your affiliates can become this valuable to you.
As soon as you start restricting affiliates, maneuvering around them, or giving them a reason to think that you view them with contempt they will start looking for another program. The last thing that you want is for them to start working for your competitor. They can be valuable members of your team, much more than animals who drag in kill for you.
It's not much different than a manufacturer or publisher allowing others to sell your physical products. Actually, most manufacturers and publishers have a higher profit margin from sales produced by affiliates than by resellers.
Affiliates are one of the most effective ways of challenging your competitors... but at the same time there will be some damage done to your own direct sales. You will always be hit with some friendly fire. Competition in search engines works that way.
It sounds like you might have your affiliates on a subdomain. I would probably allow them to use their own websites. I would even offer to redirect the subdomains to their websites as long as they continue to sell my products. Honestly, I would not work on a subdomain because I don't want to work building my fortress on another person's land.
If you have some awesome smart people selling your products, bring them in to closer collaboration. This isn't going to work with every affiliate but when you find one or two or a few like that the cooperation can benefit everyone.
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
-
Moz Competitive Analysis Leaving Me Confused
I'm doing work for https://www.charlestonblackcabcompany.com While I know whey we are only at #2 for Charleston Party Bus as Google treats it as a branded keyword search and I don't know of any ways around that there are other competitors that don't make sense to me. These guys are #1 for Charleston Limo Service and we are further down the list despite having much better numbers across the board for months now with out seeing much gain. https://mza.seotoolninja.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.charlestonlimo360.com%2F&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=1&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site= I'm talking over 6 months and still these guys and some others whose competitive analysis shows us beating them across the board still has us further down the rankings for over 6 months. It seems like the competitive analysis doesn't matter at all.
Competitive Research | | mwaters19790 -
Competitive Keywords on Adwords
We are in a very competitive industry for adwords and would like to know what is the best way to find low searched keywords with a low cpc - it is the low cpc we are really after. Thanks
Competitive Research | | webguru20140 -
Beating the Big Boys: help analyzing keywords in a very competitive space
Hi all! Long time Pro member first time question asker! We are in real estate in Barcleona and, although we create tons of content (daily blogs, free ebooks, videos) we have never properly optimized our root domain page for any keywords that might bring us specifically real estate related traffic from Google. Our website is www DOT SuiteLife DOT com. My question is about keyword analysis. We've had this sort of paralysis whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords. The problem we have is that most all keywords in our space are VERY competitive. So far the two tools we've used are: Google Keyword tool: About the top 20-40 keywords we'd like to go after are rated as HIGH competition. SEOmoz Keyword tool: Only the really too-obscure or long tailed keywords related to our business fall under a 50 rating. We were wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to further analyze keyword possibilities for our homepage when it seems like anything with any decent search traffic is super competitive. Please let me know if there's any important info that I've left out! Thank you SO much in advance for any advice/help. The SEOmoz community is so amazing! Rock on guys and gals! ~ Benny
Competitive Research | | SuiteLifeBarcelona0 -
Effort for "moderate competition" keywords
I'm rather new to this, and while I'm getting some sense of everything I'm trying to figure out what kind of scope of work lays ahead of me. The keywords I'm looking to rank for are "moderate difficulty" -- somewhere between the 45%-55% "difficulty scale" on seomoz's keyword difficulty report. Assuming I have a number of "A-grade" (according to SEOmoz's reports) optimized pages for these keywords, how many links of a given quality level should I be looking at building up? I mean, of course, the more the better, but if I'm gunning for high DA/PA pages, am I looking at dozens here or hundreds of such links? I can imagine that any answer isn't going to come with much specificity, but if there was just an "idea" of the scale of backlinking involved here, that'd be great!
Competitive Research | | yoni450 -
Competitive Domain Analysis
What is the best way to improve this in reference to my competition? My site(s) are formatted well, returning no errors or warnings. I have removed my keyword meta-tag and tested my sites against the keywords that we want to appear under. Now I need to close the gap on the competition.
Competitive Research | | bobbabuoy0 -
Your Favorite Tools for Competitive Analysis?
When you review your competitors online presence, what are some of your favorite tools? I like Open Site Explorer's domain comparison tool. SEMRush is great too but the data is often inaccurate.
Competitive Research | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Discrepancy in Competitive Link Analysis?
I currently have a campaign set-up that monitors a few competitors compared to our site. When I look at the Root Domain Metrics I see that Company A has 2,053 total external links, and Company B has 1,632 total external links. I wanted to view these links in more detail so I ran Advanced Inbound Links reports. The reports returned 432 results for Company A and 693 results for Company B. Shouldn't these numbers match up with each other, or am I missing something? Also, I noticed that in the Inbound Links analysis for my competitors there are a number of results listed that are not actually inbound links, but are internal links from there own site. Is there a reason these are appearing? I am having problems because I am trying to use this campaign to show the improvements in our site vs our competitors. However, OSE shows dramatically fewer total external links for our site (about 260 vs 3200 in Webmaster Tools) and I cannot tell if the competitor data is accurate? Thanks
Competitive Research | | zazo0 -
What are the competition's Google Places pages optimised for?
I'm doing some work on a client's Googe Places page, and wondered if there's any way to see what a completitors Places page is currently optimised or categorised for? Basically, we're trying to rank for 'Bathrooms Edinburgh' and almost all of the page 1 SERP's are (unsurprisingly) full of Places results, with #1 Organic slot right down at the bottom of the page. In short - we NEED to get our Places page kicked into shape, and pronto! So, is there any way to find out how the competition's Places pages are ranking so well? e.g. What have they categorised themselves under? Cheers in advance folks, JM
Competitive Research | | JamesMio0