How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?

[ScottMcPherson]

Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left:

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[ScottMcPherson]

That's interesting, and thanks for the insight on that ratio. I had a feeling the quality of the links might be playing a factor. I have one sight sending me literally thousands of links, and even though the site is very high authority, and I'm paying them top dollar, I'm beginning to suspect the link juice coming from that site is not good.

[Chris_CM]

Hmm, are both domains roughly the same age and authority?  Also, there might be a collection of additional page or domain factors that your competitor is excelling at but don't appear on most SEO analysis tools.  To try to identify some potential ways the competitor site might be gaining an advantage, try checking this infographic for some less often looked at ranking factors.

Regards,

Chris Wilson

[ScottMcPherson]

That makes sense. They're definitely beating me on domain authority. So I guess I just need to get more quality links to more pages on my website.

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[ScottMcPherson]

Thanks Chris. Strange thing is: I received a B for the keyword I'm being out-ranked on, and my competitor received an F.

[Davenport-Tractor]

Scott,

I'm not sure if its the right answer but here is what we found.

Our compitation out ranks us at times as well, so we did some research into the ratio MozT/MozR in your case 5.42/4.38=1.23744 your compeditors MozT/MozR is 5.37/4.23=1.2695

So their ratio is much higher than yours which we presume means that somone may have more links but their just junk links as shown by the ratio. You can see this ratio come into play at MOZ Tools rank checker.

We will kill John Deere in everything but still rank lower because of their MozT/MozR ratio.

[Chris_CM]

Hi Scott,

Though a good guide for how well your page is building rank, the open site explorer is not going to tell you how well you are optimizing on-page for your desired keywords.  It is possible that your competitor is out-optimizing you in terms of on-page efforts.  Check the On Page Keyword Grader to make sure you are doing everything you can on the page to help you rank for your desired keywords.

Hope this helps,

Chris Wilson

[Schwaab]

What are the domain authorities of the two sites?  If that page is on a domain with higher authority, though it has fewer external and internal links, the internal links the page does have may be passing higher amounts of authority.