Another how the *%#^ is this site ranking question
-
I saw a question posted by someone a while back asking how a certain (in their opinion crappy) site was ranking in the top then.
It happened that there were some good reasons for that site ranking.
Well.... I have stumbled on a site that seems to be ranking for (almost) no reason at all:
-
relatively low DA/PA
-
very few inbound links (none seem to be that special)
-
thin content
The only thing I can think of, is that the site has the keyword in the domain name. But looking at the search results, there are other domains with exact match keyword in URL and somewhat stronger metrics that don't rank.
-
-
I am sure those reasons are part of the answer.
When ran the site through OSE, I saw 18 inbound links. That is fewer links than other sites ranking in the top 10. So, I thought maybe the site has a high domain authority. That was not the case either.
I think I figured out the reason (in addition to what you listed):
-
They have a lot of unique content on their pages. Even product pages.
-
When I run a backlink analysis on Majestic, the number of links are much higher.
Mystery solved!
-
-
This site does not look that bad to me, why should it not rank?
a) pr3 homepage
b) a large amount of pages indexed with unique anchor texts and title tags
c) good breadcrumbs and decent url structure
d) no obvious keyword stuffing
-
What's the URL?
-
Probably because google has killed all their competition and they are the last ones standing.
-
Interesting. I guess you are right. There are only two domains in top 10 with those two keywords in the domain name. I don't think Exact Match is a huge factor anymore but that's the only explanation in this case.
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
-
Lost Search Ranking - how to fix spammy backlinks
I have a health niche website ( grocare.com ) Recently I subscribed to ahrefs and moz and found out so many spammy backlinks to my site (which i didn't create). Someone told me this is a common competitor tactic. To create bad links for your website to drank it. My question is - in ahrefs now, there are a LOT of spammy anchors and it seems more backlinks are being created by spammy websites automatically. I have lost many rankings because of this. I tried diluting by creating more normal anchors but it doesnt seem to be working. How do I fix this ? Any help is apprecciated xVrvj1q
Competitive Research | | grocare2 -
I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website is doing on google ranking
Hello, I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website (flyhy.co) is doing on google ranking and I have no clue why even though I have been doing my homework regarding SEO. Just a bit of background, I have created a new website about 6 months ago for the paragliding community, the primary goal is to provide a platform for people to publish their ads (osclass), but also to provide some interesting reviews and tools to help paragliders chose their wing. We have been putting a lot of effort to provide a nice user experience and tio build the tools mentioned above. Our main channel to connect with the community is Facebook, and we have been quite active there. I have looked at many SEO articles and I made sure the website provides a good UX, the URLs are SEO friendly, good meta data, etc. Also have been using the google search console and analytics to monitor all of this. But here is the thing, all these does not seem to change anything in our ranking for important keywords such as "paraglider for sale", "paragliding equipment", etc. We seem to only rank (looking at Google’s keyword tool) for very specific wing model names that people have mentioned in their ads. I have ran out of ideas on how to improve our SEO !!!!!! I know the website is only 6 months old, but by now we should get some results. As an example, I will mention one our main website competitors: www.paraglidingequipment.org. OK the URL is pretty obvious and this website ranks in page #1 for "paragliding equipment" (but also for "paraglider for sale" and other paragliding related key phrases). OK there is the URL (paraglidingequipment.org), but I thought nowadays google bots are smarter than just that. The website is 1 year old (so not really much older than us, and was ranking high anyway even 6 months ago). The website looks like it was clearly made by one person and then quickly just left it running, so no content has been added (except for people putting their ads), there is almost no activity on the Facebook account. I have run some test such as "pagespeed insights" and we both rank the same. On "seositecheckup.com", we are clearly better with more 10 points. Is there anyone out there who can tell me what is going on? Have I missed a very important aspect of SEO? Is our website somehow compromising the robots crawling (although I can see about 80 pages have been already indexed in google search console)? I know content is king, but in paraglidingequipment.org the only content I see are ads, and we have ads and other interesting (ie reviews and tools) for paragliders. To conclude, I am basically completely clueless of what to do to rank at least on the first couple of pages of google for the key phrases above. I need help. Hichem. PS: in Moz bar our score is non existing (PA=1,DA=10), on paraglidingequipment.org (PA=23,DA=15). So it looks that essentially we are not apparent on the web! PSS: We have also tried to build some backlinks on few important paragliding community websites.
Competitive Research | | hichemboudali0 -
Why do keyword competition rankings differ between Google and SeoMoz?
I am a novice at keyword ranking etc. so I appreciate your patience! I checked a longtail keyword - how do i get out of this relationship - in Google AdWords and it came back 'low competition.' When I entered it in SeoMoz it came back as 'very competitive.' Any thoughts? I appreciate your help.
Competitive Research | | UncleTodd0 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
Working through the slides on my first seo project, I'm trying to determine the most popular content on competition sites.
From the video, I understand I should be looking for unique opportunities. But is there a baseline for product qualification, ie., a min. PA,LRD, Inbound LInks, social shares, etc. I guess I'm asking what I should be looking for in the data provided on each competing site? What determines THE most popular and unique product?
Competitive Research | | AhmadS0 -
Local Real Estate Site vs Larger National Sites
Hello all, I am a local realtor that created my website with an idx feed. I am on page one but at the bottom. Question is how can a local real estate website rank better in the SERPS than the larger national brands? Any tips out there from those who have worked with real estate websites and seo? I'm trying to out rank the larger sites for my main keywords. Thanks all.
Competitive Research | | bronxpad0 -
How can a site rank higher when you beat them by A LOT on virtually every SEOMOZ factor?
Any insight into what's driving these results would be appreciated. Another site ranks #6 and we rank #22 on a keyword that scores 67% for "Keyword Difficulty", but we score significantly higher than them on almost every ranking factor including having nearly 10 times more backlinks along with higher PA and DA scores,etc. Here is a comparison from the Keyword Difficulty Tool report. Question: What could be going on? Factor and ranking comparison (us v. them) with our higher rankings are listed first. PA: 61 v. 39, mozRank 5,85 v. 4,54, mozTrust 6.00 v. 5.49, mT/mR = 1.0 v. 1.2, total links = 4,198 v. 90, internal links = 4198 v 90, external links = 275 v. 57, followed links = 4171 v 85, no follow links = 27 v 5, linking root domains = 46 v 30 on-page grade = A v B broad keyword usage in title: yes v yes broad keyword usage in document: yes v yes keyword used in url = no v no keyword used in domain = partial v no KW exact match - no v no exact anchor text links = 2373 v 13 %links w/ exact anchor text = 56% v 14% linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 7 v 8 % linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 15% v 26% partial anchor text links = 0 v 0 Domain Authority = 54 v 27 Domain mozRank = 5.4 v 3.2 Domain mozTrust = 5.8 v 3.7 DmT/DmR = 1.1 v 1.2 External links to domain 9261 v 63 Linking root domains to this domain = 355 v 33 linking c- blocks domains to domain = 267 v 30 tweets = 4 v 3 FB shares = 13 v 11 Google Plus one shares = 1 v 0
Competitive Research | | rickt0070 -
Whats the best way to see why your competitor is out ranking you?
I am trying to rank in the number on position for Part Time CFO. Currently we are in 2nd and 3rd. We have way more quality inbound links then the site in first position, more content etc. How would you go about investigating why they are ahead of us?
Competitive Research | | b2bcfo0