Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?
-
I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site;
My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's)
Has 1 backlink.
Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP.
It's a 1 page site made with Flash.
They do not have FB or Twitter accounts.
So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company.
And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more.
Any ideas?
-
Hey Matt,
Thanks a lot for your quick response. You're right, I was just considering those 4-5 factors. I really liked your theories and I appreciate the "How Garbage Ranks" link.
Cheers!
-
I'm waiting for my YouMoz post to go live so I can just start linking that to these discussions but in the meantime, I'll try to answer it.
You're looking at just maybe 4 or 5 factors out of maybe 200 that Google may use to rank sites. We could speculate on what this particular competitor is doing but nobody will be able to tell you for sure.
-
They could be using a 301 redirect from a site with a lot of juice - or perhaps multiple sites they owned in the past that they have now redirected.
-
Google likes some variety in SERPs: check the keyword viagra. You'll see a few DA0, links 0, PA0 sites. That's one of the more competitive keywords online. My article will deal with credit cards - the same thing happens in that space all the time. They do rank because of the title, URL, and basic on page stuff.
You can see more reasons on my answer here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/competitor-out-ranks-my-site
One other answer: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-garbage-ranks-in-the-serps-a-case-study
Hope those help!
-
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
-
How to set up a competitor URL with a language slug for a campaign
Hello, I am trying to set up a competitor with language slug for my (subfolder) website with a language slug. Let's say my website is something like: websiteholding.com/de/website
Competitive Research | | Siir
My competitor is: competitor.com/de When I go to Campaign Settings > Comptetitor Sites > type in competitor.com/de > Hit Save Competitor > Then it shows the saved competitor without the language slug as competitor.com I am not sure if this is a correct method of tracking since for my DE website I would like to track the DE page of the competitor, not their global page. Please correct me if I am wrong and help me out on possible solutions? I am quite new to SEO & Moz , so any help on the topic would be appreciated.0 -
What factors are effecting our rank?
Can anyone shed some light on why this might be? Our website has a higher DA and PA yet the competition rank higher for some keywords. Even though our on page grader is higher or marginally different. **Our Website ** DA - 13 PA - 20 Keywords - 390 Linking Domains - 24 Total Inbound - 37 Follow - 14 Competitor DA - 8 PA - 15 Keywords - 640 Linking Domains - 12 Total Inbound - 79 Follow - 65
Competitive Research | | Jesssherl1 -
My (properly optimised) webpage outscores page#1 ranked competitors on page/domain authority ... but I'm only on page#2\. Huh?
I'm puzzled. I've optimised a particular page for a particular search term, and the SEOMoz tool gives me an A for on-page optimisation. So no problem there. I can understand why my webpage/site is being outranked by pages from (for example) the Guardian and Oxford University, but there are several sites that Google is ranking on page #1 though their page and domain scores are well below ours. Specifically: my page/domain authority scores are 46/52, compared with 22/46 for the competitor that Google is ranking #5 - yet we only rank a lowly #12. And it's not as though the particular page in question isn't an obvious and appropriate part of our site. We work with new writers and the page in question offers a selection of creative writing courses. It's not like we're a writing-related site that suddenly has a page advertising fake rolexes. It's not a timing issue either, as most of our links have been in place for a couple of years at least. So I'm puzzled. And concerned. This page of ours was a reliable revenue generator for us and it's dying out there on the page#2 wilderness. If anyone can help, I'd be massively grateful. I don't know if this is helpful, but the page in question is http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Creative-Writing-Courses.html and the search term is ... well, heck, you take a wild guess. We're a British firm, so the only search engine that really matters to us is google.co.uk
Competitive Research | | harrybingham0 -
Currently Number 2 - Worth Shooting for 1?
Hello SEO Community, So I was able to rise to #2 in a highly competitive search term after a guest blog post that I wrote really took off (wish I could recreate that for my other terms, haha) Anyway, I steadily rose from 30ish to number 2 and have obviously seen more traffic, which is awesome and I'm happy. But still, in terms of the amount of traffic that google estimates the keyword gets, and the amount I'm getting at #2, it seems like #1 is getting the VAST majority (I know this is how most markets work). Judging from my link profile compared to #1, it would be extremely difficult to dethrone them. So what do y'all think? Is it worth spending time and resources shooting for the glory and traffic of #1 and potentially never getting there - or focusing my efforts on my middling keywords and getting those on the first page as well?
Competitive Research | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
How does this site get a youtube backlink?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzMdpgJ-7Is is a video with a clickable external link to their website. How do they do this??
Competitive Research | | brianw100 -
Can anyone suggest a AHREF's alternative?
Hello Everyone,
Competitive Research | | Juratovic
Now that AHref's has killed their keyword analysis I am on the search for a substitute.I just can't see paying $80 per month for their link analysis only even-though I do find their link index to be much much much more updated then any other company even SeoMoz (sorry Rand and company). Does anyone have any suggestions? SemRush is the only one I have seen to come close. Thank you! Pete0 -
Tracking competitors in search engines
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Advanced Web Rankings (AWR) to track my site and a number of competitors in Google - seeing how rankings and brand visibility change from week to week. I didn't set this up from scratch and I'm worrying with all of the recent algorithm changes that I might well be tracking the wrong competitors. Is there a tool or methodology I can use to find the biggest players in the market? I'm in the travel market so there's lots of choice and I track the large sites but want to be sure I'm aware of smaller/mid-sized sites gaining visibility without me tracking them via a platform like AWR. Many thanks!
Competitive Research | | panini0 -
Questiton about new ranking factors
Hi, I am new to seomoz and i was very much impressed with the stuff here in seomoz. The tools here in seomoz are very helpful to me . And i was doing good with the help of seomoz. But due to recent google's algo panda 2.0 update. I was bit confused about new ranking factors that google has released. I can see here in seomoz also that page level link metrics has good importance than backlinks now. Earlier google algo gives main importance to backlinks now i can see in the list it went to bottom. Can you help in explaining these things, on which things i need to concentrate on and does backlinks really count now?? Many people stopped concentrating on backlinks now and are going for facebook likes and tweets. Here is the good example that i can see: www.hotfilesearch.com which is a flle search engine. He was one of the competitor for me . He ranked very good in a short span of time, all he did was he bought some really good paid links and within 6 moths he was on top. Now i can see he was dropping out every link he has. But though he was ranking pretty good on the web. I really in need of your suggestions to optimize my site. Awaiitng for your reply.. Regards Dheeraj
Competitive Research | | achillies0000