Much better authority and content than some competitors, why do they appear first?
-
On august we have lost the top positions for some keywords. Our website authority is 62 (google page rank 5), and some quite small competitors appear first now (some of them have authority 22, google page rank 3!).
Our only big change was the DNS server, from godaddy to dnsimple.com, which seems to be some milisseconds slower.
Every other metric is in our favor: from on-page repports to site speed. Sometimes by a factor of 3 or 4. What can be happening? We have also realized that, in private browsing, rankings will change a little bit in different cities, even if they are quite close to each other.
-
How long has it been since DNS change?
-
Thanks William. But WMT does not say a single word about penalties for this domains.
-
I would check WMT if there are any penalties on your domain.
Switching DNS usually will not cause any problem, there may be a delay due to DNS propagation and maybe Google crawled your site when it was down.
And authority and pagerank does not necessarily mean you will rank better but are just numbers to give you an idea. You can totally be in penalty with Google and have a PR7 and DA 70.
You need to see what your WMT says in messages and search impression numbers.
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
-
Competitor reporting
We are in the process of creating customer profiles, conducting in-depth keyword/competitor research, fleshing out a content strategy, addressing old content, meta data etc, and researching sites (particular industry news sites) relevant to our industry who could be sources of authoritative backlinks. Once we receive approval from the powers that be, we'll start putting our strategy in motion. However, we are looking at SEO efforts as a long-term plan the entire organization understands is necessary. If our strategy is sound, I would think we'll start seeing results and some competitors will begin to take notice (and action.) So here is my question: How easy is it for a competitor to "report" a small/medium size business as breaking Google's rules i.e. could a competitor claim we are scraping their content (or content off of any site for that matter) and anonymously email Google? I think the answer to that question is "yes." How closely would Google look into the claim? We have zero plans on doing anything shady or underhanded but I was wondering if it is a simple process for a competitor to impact our efforts this way? Thanks for any insight.
Competitive Research | | SEOSponge0 -
Ranking better with worse figures
Six months ago a competitor e-commerce site appeared in the top 10. Now six months later he is at #2. (for the main keyword in my sector in Dutch language, competition +4 million) My site is 4 years old and since three years ranks at #1 or 2. I'm now at #3, behind the competitors site. My competitor has a HomePage PA of 36 with 2295 links from 26 domains, root domain DA 23 with 175000 links from 30 domains. My site has a HomePage PA of 49 with 6975 links froms 238 domains, root domain DA 40 with 310023 links from 269 domains. I have more specific landing pages, better and more content, code W3C checked .... Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?
Competitive Research | | noordhout0 -
Why would a site with virtually no external links and low authority rank very high?
Hey there: I'm not sure anyone's going to be game to answer this but... I have designed, done on-page optimization for and done ongoing content marketing and linkbuilding for a local fitness site. The site is about nine months old and I am attempting to achieve rank for the keyword "personal trainers in philadelphia." We've made progress; having taken a new site from +100 to 19 in about four or five months worth of content creation and linkbuilding on a very modest budget. I'm not complaining. What has me confused though is that there are one or two sites that are ranking very high for this keyword string with considerably shoddier metrics than our site and I'm wondering how a stock WP theme site with very few inbound links can rank top five for a reasonably competitive keyword? Our site is http://vtrainersinc.com. The site I've noticed that ranks top five and seems to have an inferior SEOMoz profile is bodycrafters.net. Anybody got any ideas as to why these things seem to occur? I have this feeling this site has stumbled upon a magic SEO elixir which I'd like to get my hands on!
Competitive Research | | splatdude0 -
How much do internal links help?
So I noticed in Site Explorer that my competitors mostly have internal links all over point to a page with the term I want to rank for, while very little external links. How much do internal links help? Should I have a link somewhere on every page pointing to my target page with the keyword, and then grab some external links? I link internally only when I see relevant, but maybe I'm not doing it enough. Looking forward to replies!
Competitive Research | | endlessrange0 -
How do I know top pages (first on Google) for one website?
Hi! I'm SEOMOZ PRO user and I want to know which pages of other website are ranking on top on Google, Yahoo, Bing, ecc... with relative position (rank). Is there a features of SEOMOZ for it? Regards
Competitive Research | | jadlib0 -
How do I go about removing low authority, crappy, backlinks?
How do I go about getting rubbish backlinks on a clients websites removed? The links were created by a previous companies link building campaign, and I believe this (along with a few other things) could be the reason for their poor SERP's as they are an established website. Can I alert Google and get them to discredit the links, or do I manually have to try to make contact with the owners/webmasters of the websites to get the links removed? All help appreciated! Thanks
Competitive Research | | JustinWalmsley0 -
Content Ideas in a limited market
I've hit a road block of sorts and my mind is having trouble thinking out of the box. I'm in a relatively small niche with a roofing product called snow guards. I am struggling with ways to build links and content for my website at www.roofthings.com. I've used some forums, blogs, and directories. After going through my competitors link data, it seems that one of the biggest links they have that I don't is a DMOZ listing, but that can take awhile and I have submitted about 7 months ago. It also appears that a lot of their links I cannot get are coming from construction magazines they paid to be in. I don't have that kind of budget at this time and so I'm trying to compete via organic rankings. My biggest thing I am struggling with is how to gain more back links. My biggest competitor has over 40,000 links compared to my 2700. I'm somewhat new to SEO and am just looking for a couple suggestions. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
How much does exact match or almost exact match affect the difficulty score?
If a keyword get 50% difficulty on the keyword tool what would it be if it was an exact match domain. Would it go down to 30% What if it was just one character off an exact match or one word? Thank you in advance!
Competitive Research | | OxzenMedia0