Ranking better with worse figures

[noordhout]

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?

[noordhout]

Thanks Marek for the usefull words.  Yes I still use meta-keywords as there is also Bing and Yahoo.  But of course you are right about differing the description tags.  I will change them asap.

Actually all this is about the Dutch version where I have "only" +4.000.000 competition for the keyword Lighting in Dutch.  I don't even want to try to compete in English with that word.  But then I compete with the Brand names and get my English speaking customers anyway.

Thanks again !

[mad2k]

Sometimes it is been hard to understand but never give up

you still using meta-keywords ... they can only help the competition not google position.

meta - description tags are all the same for different pages.

If yes it can be a main reason. You have to diversify descriptions and they have to be consistent with title and page content.

e.g. for  <title></span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span><span> </span>Buy LED lighting at the best price.</span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span></title>

in description use: name="Description" content="LED lighting is the latest craze. ..... an so on about LED up to 140 characters">

Marek

[noordhout]

H-tags, titles,speed, and much more, I am very aware of the importance and using.  What worries me more than being dropped on #3 is that a site, appearing from nowhere, in 6 months can get to the top.  This site is in all ways inferior to mine, I mean inferior in terms of what google thinks is important.  Their content is fresher of course and they have less nearly dupicate content.  But it seems to me that history has no weight anymore.  It seems that once you are ther for three years, you are damn dificult to be caught.  Seems I am wrong.

For my understanding, analysing the results for years, sooner or later the mechanism, the algorithm behind (from Google) must become clear.  Thousands of people are on top and after making an inventory of everything possible that can be important, I don't discover new things anymore. It seems that they have some secret arguments left as, as you told yourself, in many cases the logic based on what is known is far far away.

And no, their domain is as bad as mine I started my site without knowing that a keyword in a domain name is important.

What I see is that in the top 10 there are 9 .be domains and only mine is a .com.  Maybe Googles starts to give importance at local domains.

And no again, I don't have many G+1, but they don't neither.  I have many pages on Facebook, a page on LinkedIn, a blog with my Google identity, an author link on my site pointing to this identity .... I'm getting out of arguments !

[noordhout]

Maybe, I never got attention for PA and DA.  Only after starting to use SEOmoz that I became aware.  But my links are good, are many, my content and keywords optimal, my code good, my speed fast.  I have some nearly duplicate content as I have 27000 products on my site and the difference between product A and B can be very small giving nearly identical product pages.  But this was as such since the beginning.  Maybe Google has more attention for this now than some years ago.

[noordhout]

Thanks for your answer.  No, I am quiet sure that my platform is the best what I can get in my country.  I was aware that a platform can be important for ranking as speed is important for google.

[mad2k]

I have many examples of such a situation. In my work I won with Nikon Academy (akademianikona.pl) - site supported by Nikon with huge number of links and better statistics.

Refresh you content.

I agree with EGOL and Gordon. What I want to add ... think that internal consistency of the site is very important. Good content structure (H -tags, content with keywords) - title - description - url should be the first elements of the subjects of your mind.

Also very important is competitors tracking. What do they have that you do not have? Maybe they follow  some (local ... global) trends? Social impact is another area to check - do you have many G+1, FB shares, votes etc...

Check technical issues like page load speed and other

And last but not least - what is their domain name - is it better that yours?

some other ideas to improvement (simple report) link

Good luck Rik

[Asher]

Just a hypothesis here, it could be based on the platform you are using.  Some ecommerce platforms rank better in google, an example of this is that the ecommerce platform "magento" is seo friendlier than other ecommerce platforms.  That could be a reason that it is ranking better with "worse" statistics.

Another hypothesis is that their onsite is better with less errors and less duplicate content and therefore being penalized less.

Hope that Helps

[Gordon_Hall]

I can only echo EGOL.

Keep working at quality content, relevant links etc. if your efforts continue, there is every chance you will be back on top.

[EGOL]

Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?

Maybe because the figures that you are looking at are different from what google is using to rank the pages.   I think that the figures that you are looking at are good for tracking your progress over time but they obviously are not what google is using.