How did this little site rank #2?
-
Keyword: "adoption agency"
Site: http://www.opendooradoption.org
These guys are ranked #2 for this very competitive term in all US regions. They're beating Bethany (and my company) who are orders of magnitude larger in both company size and link profile. Their domain authority is 40, and they have less than 200 links pointing to them with "adoption agency" in the anchor according to OSE. Their on-site is pretty much nonexistent.
Does anyone have any theories as to how they accomplished this?
-
Good point donford. I first noticed this maybe a week ago... knowing that rankings can shuffle like you described I bit my tongue and waited a bit. For some reason today it popped back into head and I did a search in several regions and found them still ranking.
Maybe I'm asking this too soon? I'm not sure how long the google shuffle lasts.
Honestly I don't mind that they rank #2, I just want to know their secret
-
Ryan out of curiosity did this just happen, or have they maintained this position for awhile (weeks+)?
As you may already know, Google randomly ranks or serves sites which have no business being in the top pages. This is more of a Google test on how people perceive a site, and typically only last a couple days.
We recently had a new site come out of the blue ranking #1 for a keyword we have dominated for many years, within 3 days they were gone out of the top 50.
I personally would only be alarmed if this positioned had been maintained for extended periods of time.
Hope that helps
-
heheh yeah I wasn't impressed when I clicked through to the site either. I guess the 13k pages may have something to do with it, although amazingly many of them just 404 like this page http://www.opendooradoption.org/china_girl.htm (and wth were they going to have on that page anyway??). My site only has 2k+ indexed in comparison, but I don't feel good about churning out crap content, so that'll have to stay the same for now.
-
Thanks for the reply Phil! I may give that a try.
-
good lord that site is the worst site i've seen in a long time! It was all pieced together, the directory structure is all over the place. It looks like a couple of sites were combined to make one site which may be helping it reach critical mass.
This first URL is the same as the second one and both are indexed:
http://www.opendooradoption.org/Content/Default/13/207/0/pregnancy-gps/pregnancy-gps.html
http://www.pregnancygps.org/Content/Default/13/207/0/pregnancy-gps/pregnancy-gps.html
It's a complete disaster but for some reason Google is giving it a pass.
Two things going for it:
a) the homepage is PR4
b) they have 13,500 pages indexed in Google.
-
This is very interesting.
This might be showing the power of their title tag and URL. They have "adoption agency" in the title tag and "adoption" in the URL. Bethany.org doesn't have either. Still a bit baffling though.
If you're up for a test, try changing your title tag to start off with "adoption agency". Of course, only do this if it's right for your business.
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
-
Many SEO tools donot allow me to check my site with https?
Hello All, Many seo tools I am using in that few tools do not allow me to test my site with https but it force me to check with http and then give report. So my query is do these tools give accurate report with http same like https? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | wright3350 -
Is my client's site penalized and if not, why are other lesser quality sites ranking with lower metrics than my client's?
Hello, I'm trying to explain to a client, as to why certain websites that appear in the top 50 listings for a keyword are there when they don't have very good backlink profiles, and for this keyword, seems you need a high PA above 20 or DA above 25, just to page for page 2 - 3. Running a full SERPs report, I have seen that backlinks to the page that's ranking seems to be as high of a factor as PA, followed by DA and overall backlink profile. Having a high score in one of these 4 areas seems to increase your ranking. However, going into page 3 and beyond, seems that things kinda take a weird turn. After comparing the client's site to those ranking on page 2 I could see that all of them had better PA and more links to the page ranking for that keyword, so page 2 I understand why we don't rank on yet. However, looking at page 3, I see that the client's site in question has better PA, DA, links to page and overall links to domain. Which leaves me to think we have a penalty that's keeping us ranking 50 or beyond. Since our metrics across the boards for what MOZ is showing as ranking factors. The more odd issue is that looking at the line graph, shows right at the time we implemented sitewide https our ranking for this one keyword dropped, while rankings for our other keywords increased. Am I to assume it's a keyword density penalty? What penalties are there with a outcome of ranking limits?
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
How on Earth are These Sites Outranking Us?
Hello all, My colleague and I have been doing a lot of work to optimise our companies site (www.allseasonshire.eu/). The project is still massively work in progress. While we've been analysing the SERPs for KW's we're trying to rank for we've noticed two sites that are outranking us and we can't work out why. The sites in question are www(dot)nationwide-boilerhire(dot)co(dot)uk & and www(dot)nationwideboilerhire(dot)com. They're both very small sites, with hardly any content and basically zero external links pointing to them. When we compare the root domains in OSE our site comes out on top on every single competitive metric as well, most of them by a long shot. I'm just wondering if anyone can help shed some light on why these two sites would be appearing so high in SERPs and why they would be outranking us? Any input anyone has is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ryan Edit: Keyword in question is 'boiler hire'. Thanks for your answer Nishadha, would that alone really be enough though?
Competitive Research | | allseasonshire0 -
One client - 2 domains / same business - good or bad idea?
This is a follow up to a previous question actually: My client has one domain that has 'hardwood flooring' in it and one that has 'concrete polishing' in it - both services they offer. **Would it be wise (for seo purposes) to have them both point to ONE domain (more general of course) ** **- They only have a few local competitors that aren't doing anything to rank well. ** **- They aren't trying to rank nationally. ** If the smart thing to do is to have them point to one (more general) domain using a 301 direct will there traffic drop significantly? (at least for a short time) Does it matter if they continue to keep the existing domains they are using now on their literature, business cards, etc. and let them continue pointing to the new domain or should they really start promoting the new domain name? (They do NOT want to do this). My only concern is saving them time and money by not having to build links, submit articles, social media, on and on for two different sites OK, that's like 3 questions Thank you VERY much for any thoughts or opinions on the matter! 🙂 Have a great week everybody! Matthew
Competitive Research | | Mrupp440 -
Open Site Explorer is not showing dmT. Where do I go to get this metric.
Just trying to understand the video I watched on Link Building w/ Open Site Explorer. I'm not seeing the dmT metric in the live version. Has it been replaced by something else. Or is there someplace else I need to look for it?
Competitive Research | | AhmadS0 -
Why my site is not crawled by open site explorer?
Hello friends, Im new here... I just create a campaign for my site www.electrosecurity.com.ec , but when I try to use open site explorer to see anything there... I receive a message saying that my site is not crawled... What can I do? I have a few links coming to my site.. but these links does not appears on my campaigns details.. for these links my site is PR3, but i can not see any of this links on the general view of my campaign. Sorry for my english....
Competitive Research | | lans27870 -
Site Ranks Better than Comp...but why?
My site is ranking better than some of the competition sites even though the Moz Rank and Moz Trust are lower, anyone know why?
Competitive Research | | CalgaryRealtor390
