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
-
Duplicate content affects on overall rankings
Hi guys, I have a website that has 23 pages with duplicate content. These pages serve the same function, which enables customers to upload their images. There is not much content on each one but we require a different page for each of our products, here is an example page: http://www.point101.com/giclee_printing/upload#/upload I don't think it makes sense to use a canonical tag as each page is for a different product and I think its going to be difficult to differentiate each page. I was wondering: 1. If this has a negative effect on the ranking of our homepage and other main product pages or if its an issue we do not need to worry too much about. 2. If anyone has any other ideas as to how we can resolve this issue. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | KerryK
Kerry0 -
How is this page ranking?
Hi. A client of mine is being outranked by a competitor whose landing page does not include the keyword within their page content AT ALL. Nor does their URL. Nor do any image alts. And their page title features the keyword in the middle of it, not at the start. Their link profile is not great with directories and the like. They are not socially active.. I am confused! I thought content on a page absolutely had to include the keyword to get ranked for it. Here's the page: www.springsoft.ie, keyword is "water softeners" Any thoughts I would appreciate. Many thanks.Christoffa
On-Page Optimization | | Christoffa0 -
Why is this page not ranking?
Can you please tell me why this page is not ranking. http://goo.gl/BqoRT The page doesn't rank at all for keywords but even if I copy a line or 2 of text it still doesn't rank for that text. Any help will be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | JillB20130 -
Ranking for competitor brand terms
We're looking to rank for competitor brand terms and have created competitor brand pages for some of our main competitors. My question is where would be most effective to place these pages on our site? Also, would this be classed as grey hat?
On-Page Optimization | | Sayers1 -
Does hosting server location affect my local google page rank
Hi All, This is my first (of many I would say) questions. My clients site is in Ireland but the hosting service is in Canada. So when i use the MozBar it states that the IP is in Canada. Will this affect my page ranking in Dublin, Ireland? The company is a plumbing service so we would only want local Dublin customers. Thanks so much and I hope someone can help me out. cheers, Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Boosting page authority/rank by linking from blog
We're developing several blogs and I was wondering if it would make sense to periodically create blog entries that 'naturally' link to certain pages on the main site. For example we have a large amount of 'partners' across the country, and we wanted to do an interview series on the blog, and insert a link into the interview, such as "partner bob services the Boston area", or something more elegant than that. Would have have any significant impact on the 'boston page aside from the pass through traffic from the blog?"
On-Page Optimization | | ilyaelbert0 -
Does microformats improve my ranking?
Hi, does Mircofromats like schema.org improve my ranking? If so, just because my products are listed in google/products? Regard
On-Page Optimization | | censeo0