Is my competitor up to no good? Strange site-explorer results.
-
I'm researching a competitor using site explorer and the seomoz toolbar and getting some strange results.
When you search by the domain name in site explorer you get no results, but the toolbar shows 170K incoming links.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com
I noticed the top referring page was a strange internal url so I ran that through site explorer and discovered 19 links.. When you put the strange link in a browser, it redirects to the home url;.. At this url the toolbar shows 220 links and semoz shows 19
http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/?xid_78e7f=0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c
What is up with that url? What are they doing? This is a site ranking #1 for my local search term even though he has about 50 pages of almost duplicate content. See link below. I'm really scratching my head here.
-
Derek,
PS you would get a much better rank and the site would look sharper if you swapped out YouTube for http://wistia.com/
videos they have S EO site map and you get 5 for free for life.
All the best,
Tom
-
hi Derek,
sorry about that I really didn't mean to be sarcastic I honestly read it in the top left corner and then him half asleep so I apologize. I realize now you categorized under white hat black hat not under your profile as I have seen in the past from people sorry again.
If you are no what your competitors are up to check out compete.com
I think Spider mate, rave tools, SEM rush along with spyfluw
will keep you up to date on their shenanigans.
Sorry about that man I didn't mean to be a jerk.
All the best,
Tom
-
Tom -
< sarcasm > I will be sure to pass on the tips to my competitor.. Gee Thanks
I think you read the post wrong.. I was wondering what my competition is up to.
Derrick
-
Tom -
< sarcasm > I will be sure to pass on the tips to my competitor.. Gee Thanks
I think you read the post wrong.. I was wondering what my competition is up to.
Derrick
-
Derek
I would do a http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit
Then get your site on a more SEO friendly framework like WordPress
I wanted to show you what just what SEMRush was showing me as far as back links and where you rank. For the keywords given.
Get rid of ?all=categories
I hate to ask but the white hat/black hat is that a joke or is that really how you practice it if so that is how the rank might look all over the USA
Alexa shows better keywords http://www.alexa.com/site/linksin/augustagreenlawns.com
Your site has not been hacked http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.augustagreenlawns.com/
please look at your links in the URL as you have no sitemap.xml
All the Best,
Tom
-
Here are the links in the site footer. Missed them: Site Map | All Cities
They've obviously optimized a page for each service in each town.
I am not seeing them show up #1 for various services within towns but I'm in Maine so not sure what affect that has on local search.
-
Looks like the "?all=categories" forces a different display in the content region of the page. The default homepage does not include this information as you noted.
"?all=categories" is basically a landing page that drives the google bot to town-specific pages dedicated to their services. If you note the copy they've customized each page to drive local SEO to the specific town.
Don't forget to log out of Google or use an alternative browser that you never log into to see anonymous results for your search. I sometimes have to remind myself of that.
There sitemap.php file is empty so not sure how that ?all=categories" link is getting indexed as I can't find it in the navigation either.
Competitor kind enough to share keywords he's trying to optimize for:
<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" content=" <a class="attribute-value">Snow Removal, Sanding Services, Roof Raking Services, Fall Cleanup, Lawn Mowing Service, Fertilization Services, Dethatching Services, Tree and Shrub Care Services,</a>" />
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
-
Free tool, and it ranks well for adult sites and checking if they are down, will that hurt us with ranking for normal sites with google?
Hi all, We rank for searches around "is youporn down" and similar because we provide a free tool to check if a website is up or down: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/youporn I am worried that ranking for these adult searches is hurting us with ranking for things like "is reddit down", thoughts? I'd appreciate some input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bwb0 -
How can I remove Japanese hacker in my site
Hello, How can I remove Japanese hacker in my site?? here i have attached screen shot for it , http://prntscr.com/cmxmmx My website is hacked From long, please help out to solve this Problem Thnx in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | poojaverify060 -
Multiple Versions of Mobile Site
Hey Guys, We have recently finished the latest version of our mobile site which means currently we have 2 mobile sites. Depending on what device and Os will depend on which site you will be presented with.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seekjobs
e.g.
iPhone 3 or 4 users on iOS4 will get version 1 of our mobile site
iPhone 5 users on iOS5 will get the new version (version 2) of our mobile site. Our old mobile site is currently indexed in Google and performing pretty well.
Since the launch of the second mobile site we have not see any major changes to our visibility in Google and so was curious My main concern here is duplicate content so I am curious can Google detect that we have 2 mobile site that we serve depending on device? And if Google can detect this, why has our sites not been penalized! Thanks, LW I know the first thing that comes to your mind is Duplicate content0 -
How to stop links from sites that have plagurized my blogs
I have been hit hard by Penguin 2.0. My webmaster explains that I have many links to my articles (a medical website with quality content) from "bad sites." These sites publish my articles with my name and link to my site and it appears I have posted my articles on their site although I have not posted them-theses sites have copied and pasted my articles. Is there a way to prevent sites from posting my content on their site with links to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wianno1681 -
Is this a clear sign that one of our competitors is doing some serious black-hat SEO?
One of our competitors just recently increased their total external followed looks pretty drastically. Is it safe to say they are doing some pretty black-hat stuff? What actions exactly could this be attributed to? They've been online and in business for 10+ years and I've seen some pretty nasty drops in traffic on compete.com for them over the years. If this is black-hat work in action, would these two things be most likely related? Wh10b97
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kibin0 -
Best way to handle SEO error, linking from one site to another same IP
We committed an SEO sin and created a site with links back to our primary website. Although it does not matter, the site was not created for that purpose, it is actually "directory" with categorized links to thousands of culinary sites, and ours are some of the links. This occurred back in May 2010. Starting April 2011 we started seeing a large drop in page views. It dropped again in October 2011. At this point our traffic is down over 40% Although we don't know for sure if this has anything to do with it, we know it is best to remove the links. The question is, given its a bad practice what is the best fix? Should we redirect the 2nd domain to the main or just take it down? The 2nd domain does not have much page rank and I really don't think many if any back-links to it. Will it hurt us more to lose the 1600 or so back links? I would think keeping the links is a bad idea. Thanks for your advice!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foodsleuth0 -
Indexing search results
One of our competitors indexes all searches performed by users on their site. They automatically create new pages/ new urls based on those search terms. Is it black hat technique? Do search engines specifically forbid this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AEM131