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
-
Hi Parvesh, there could be lots of reasons why I can list a few for you and tell you about my personal experience.
Reasons why a new domain could be outranking a well established domain
1. There site is just plain better, users like it more, it has a higher CTR (click through rating), and could be running a multichannel marketing campaign that is driving users to their site more then others in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page).
2. The site is using a black hat aggressive link building which provides short term gains at the expensive of long term gains.
3. The new site is actually just a new domain for an old established competitor who is 301 redirecting their old site to the new site (passing all their link juice).
4. The new site has a higher domain authority / page authority. I know this may seem somewhat unlikely but imagine I launch a website tomorrow and my brother at CNN writes an article about it, which gets picked up by MSNBC, FOX, ALJAZEERA, MASHABLE, YAHOO and several other popular sites, my domain authority just went up big time.
Last year we had a competitor obliterate us for some keyword terms during a 4 week stretch of time. Their website was new, their design was poor, and they were clearly paying somebody to do link building for them. Because we had them marked as a competitor here at SEOmoz we were able to view historical data about them, it turns out them went from about 30 in-links to 70,000 in-links around the same time we noticed them killing us in the SERP's. The following month they were off the first page for nearly every single one of those keywords, and we were easily out ranking them once again.
The moral of this is there still are black hat tricks that can get a new site ranked very high very quickly, but it will not last. Maintain focus on the long term goal of being the industry leader, and let the black hats fill up with rabbit droppings.
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
-
Sudden disappearance from google organic ranking
I have been ranked in top 5 for all relevant search terms for years. I have been in business for 25 years and am modestly speaking the best in our field. The name of my company is "Alaska Yacht Charters" and suddenly I have disappeared from Google search. Google "alaska yacht charters" and I am nowhere to be found. This all occured within days of my suspending my adwords account which I felt I didn't need because of my great organic ranking. What has happened?Geoff Wilson www.alaskanyachtcharters.com
On-Page Optimization | | akstory0 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Entire subfolder not ranking.
I'm currently running an ecommerce site on which an entire subfolder namely the: /category/ extension is not ranking for any keywords.The category pages are being indexed within Google. Pages with very similar content are however being ranked for keywords on extensions such as /pages/, I created a new page to test this and within a week it was ranking for the keywords where /category/ pages have not for months. I was wondering if anyone had come across this issue before and had any solutions or suggestions? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | JMoran0 -
Ranking report problem
Hello, I have two things that I'm a little concerned. Ranking report is not working because all these keywords were on google first page but the report is showing the calendar sign
On-Page Optimization | | angeloweiCrawl results, I just went from 5000 warnings and errors to 4 in two weeks. It seems a little crazy
0 -
Can you change meta description at any time without loosing rankings?
I'm wondering if it is possible to change the meta description of a page on your site at any time without it affecting rankings on google? Is it only changing how my SERP looks? Or could bad things happen to changing your meta description? Appreciate all opinions on this one, thank you guys!
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
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 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website. Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu). So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders? And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0