How have they done that? DA20 site in p2 for very competitive search term
-
Not sure whether to actually name the term and site in question, but basically it is a very big term for a popular type of home furniture.
Since the algo change, there is a site thats appeared in p2, right behind the market leader in google uk. The site has a domain authority of 20, and only 84 links - none of which even have the anchor text in question, and infact well over 90% have the same anchor text which is related but different to the search term.
The search term appears on the home page 3 times - once in a 120 character+ keyword stuffed home link title, once in a 100 character+ keyword stuffed h1 tag that isnt even visible on the home page and one in a paragraph that is visible.
The site is badly made and buggy, but its outranking John Lewis, Dunelm Mill etc - very big players in the UK market.How on earth does that work? They are doing so much google tells you not to and winning big rank!? What is Google doing?
-
sorry you're absolutely right that h1 is visible. looks stuffed to me though!
-
First, it looks like Google is considering "oak furniture" synonymous with "oak beds" since they are bolding the word "furniture" even though i searched for "oak beds". This is pretty common, but that would answer your questions about anchor text and keyword use.
I see the H1 tag on the page. It isn't too terribly keyword stuffed compared to a lot of sites out there. It isn't hidden. As you can see, Google crawls that bit of text just fine:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Xim_4vDniwMJ:www.oakfurniturewarehouse.co.uk/+oak+beds&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ukI agree that their link profile does not seem good enough to merit the #2 position for such a competitive phrase, but links are not the only thing that matter. Searching on the Google.co.uk site means their ccTLD is going to help them over John Lewis and Dunelm Mill for that particular ranking factor. They may have really good user experience metrics, which we can't really tell much about. Above all, the site is very relevant since it has "oak furniture" in the domain and is specific to "oak" furniture, whereas some of the other sites sell lots of other types of furniture. I notice the #1 site is also oak-specific, has oak furniture in the domain, and is on a .co.uk ccTLD.
The truth is there is no way of knowing what exactly they are doing to rank above another site since there are so many variables, both known and unknown. However, from what I could see there isn't anything overtly spammy or blackhat going on, and the fact that they rank well for that phrase is certainly not outside of the realm of possibility.
-
just checked ahrefs - and as usual it shows more links than OSE, but a rapid recent decline and same story - no anchor text matching the search term.
Ok, ill give it up - search term is 'X!X!X!X!' and the site is X!X!X!X!X! (removed)
-
Hey there
Without knowing the keyword or the website, I can't give you a definitive answer.
But it may be a case that Open Site Explorer has not detected all of the new links yet - OSE updates roughly bi-weekly, and it takes a little longer for those discovered links to make their way into the index.
So you might be able to get the info soon. If you have access to MajesticSEO or Ahrefs - you'll probably be able to see the information now, as they update their indexes hourly.
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
-
Removing bad/poor quality links from the site
Sometime back my site was penalized due to unnatural artificial and deceptive links. Then we got removed the penalty by uploading file in Disavow Tool. Bad links are decreasing gradually now . What i am concerned to ask is that: 1: For how long i should wait till Google removes all the requested bad links 2:Second, i believe there are still many bad links that I dont want to keep. How to remove them now onward? Should we send Google a reconsideration request for removing the remaining bad links (site has been recovered already and no more under penalty banner) Tanveer
Link Building | | Sequelmed0 -
On-Page E-commerce Site Optimization
Hello everyone! Just started on a new job as in house SEO and PPC but it is also my first job as such, got little experience and for what I know the site needs a lot of work in terms of optimization. I would like to ask some help and some opinions about what I think should be done in order to rank higher because at the moment the highest ranking page doesn't go higher than the third page for general but high traffic volume keywords. All the titles tag are too long, some of them are up to 100 characters The meta tag isn't optimized properly to attract people and get clicks the content on the product pages is laid out badly and there aren't many keywords a lot of duplicate content there are little inbound links there isn't a section for content such as a news page, a blog or anything like that which makes link building even harder Here my challenges: Create well optimized product, category , subcategory pages to improve also the PPC landing pages Improve the rankings at least to get on the first page for general keywords Choose the right keywords to optimize the site for increase the number of inbound links. I also have to manage adwords and given my little experience I can't seem to prioritize things so any suggestions would be really appreciated. Also if you don't mind to take a look at the site and leave me comments on things that I should improve, I'd be grateful . The main problem also is the niche I work in is not the best, I know nothing about it which makes things worse. repsole.com Thank you for reading Oscar
Link Building | | PremioOscar0 -
Open site explorer does not work
Hello, we are trying to work with http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ but it does not work both in chrome and IE, what seem to be the problem? thanks, Sam.
Link Building | | bwrecycling0 -
Competitive Domain Analysis Observation
Hi Folks I have been doing some analysis via SEOMOZ tools of www.anglianhome.co.uk which shows that in their linking root domains they have links from apple.com wordpress.com bravenet.com Are these genuine links or have Anglian managed to spam/black hat the process some how because I cant find any reference to their home improvement firm website on any of these major global websites? But it is obviously working because for searches here in the UK it appears prominently on many competitive search phrases.
Link Building | | idv1 -
Google penalizing sites because of press release pages?
Does anyone know of situations i can look up where Google penalized a site because of press release pages (hosted on a non owned major site like prweb or whatever), where the prweb page obtained back links from a group of sites that Google felt was part of a "farm"?
Link Building | | joemas990 -
Is it a bad idea to build unique sites to build credibility for your main site?
It is hard to sum up the question in one line, but basically my company has bought several descriptive domains that we would like to build out into microsites that link back to our main site. For example...say we are a florist. Our main site talks about all the different kinds of flowers we have and the work we do. So the idea is to buy weddingflowersdallas.com (example only...) and have a mini site that has the same look and feel as our main site, but has unique content that talks solely about our wedding flower business and has a few links back to our main site. 1. Is this a no no from a google perspective? 2. Is this a good strategy in general? Thanks, David
Link Building | | ciinc1 -
Why does Open Site Explorer list Twitter and Facebook links for one of my sites and not others
One of my sites has the nofollow backlink listed for Facebook and Twitter while 2 other sites do not. All 3 sites have had accounts for over a year. Does the amount of interactivity with the social media profiles have to do with it? I know it is a nofollow link but I was just curious as those profiles might help with the brand signal etc.
Link Building | | 4wheelparts0