How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?
-
Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left:
-
That's interesting, and thanks for the insight on that ratio. I had a feeling the quality of the links might be playing a factor. I have one sight sending me literally thousands of links, and even though the site is very high authority, and I'm paying them top dollar, I'm beginning to suspect the link juice coming from that site is not good.
-
Hmm, are both domains roughly the same age and authority? Also, there might be a collection of additional page or domain factors that your competitor is excelling at but don't appear on most SEO analysis tools. To try to identify some potential ways the competitor site might be gaining an advantage, try checking this infographic for some less often looked at ranking factors.
Regards,
Chris Wilson
-
That makes sense. They're definitely beating me on domain authority. So I guess I just need to get more quality links to more pages on my website.
-
Thanks Chris. Strange thing is: I received a B for the keyword I'm being out-ranked on, and my competitor received an F.
-
Scott,
I'm not sure if its the right answer but here is what we found.
Our compitation out ranks us at times as well, so we did some research into the ratio MozT/MozR in your case 5.42/4.38=1.23744 your compeditors MozT/MozR is 5.37/4.23=1.2695
So their ratio is much higher than yours which we presume means that somone may have more links but their just junk links as shown by the ratio. You can see this ratio come into play at MOZ Tools rank checker.
We will kill John Deere in everything but still rank lower because of their MozT/MozR ratio.
-
Hi Scott,
Though a good guide for how well your page is building rank, the open site explorer is not going to tell you how well you are optimizing on-page for your desired keywords. It is possible that your competitor is out-optimizing you in terms of on-page efforts. Check the On Page Keyword Grader to make sure you are doing everything you can on the page to help you rank for your desired keywords.
Hope this helps,
Chris Wilson
-
What are the domain authorities of the two sites? If that page is on a domain with higher authority, though it has fewer external and internal links, the internal links the page does have may be passing higher amounts of authority.
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
-
Seeing very few pages analysed re: Mobile usability, in Google Seach Console - why?
Hi Mozzers, Under Mobile Usability, in Google Search Console, I am seeing very few website pages getting analysed - 10 out of 40 static pages, on the website in question. Is this to be expected or does this indicated an indexing problem on mobile?
Reporting & Analytics | | McTaggart0 -
Site Hacked: Is it Faster and Better to 301 or 404 Irrelevant URLs?
Hey Everyone, So our site was hacked which created a large amount of irrelevant URLs on our domain; resulting in thousands of 404 errors and pages coming up for searches unrelated to our brand. The question is now that the issues have been resolved (and site re-submitted) would it be quicker (and more ideal) to redirect important 404 errors that see traffic, have links…etc. although not relevant or just let everything 404 out? We’re not as concerned with offering a relevant user experience because these are not in our demographic but want to avoid these pages convoluting our analytics as well as issues that might arise from Google thinking these topics do apply. Any help or insight would be very appreciated. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or we could provide further details that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thanks in advance. Best,
Reporting & Analytics | | Ben-R0 -
Launching a new site
What is the best method for Google Analytics implementation? Should I use the same UA id for the new site, or create an new one for the new site?
Reporting & Analytics | | brianvest0 -
Google Analytics Page Metrics and Redirects
Hi All- Context: A site has been redesigned. Pages were renamed in the process. Problem: It's very hard to compare before and after metrics because the page URLs are not the same. Question: Anyone know how to do this in Google Analytics? I'm hoping there's some simple trick I just don't know about. D
Reporting & Analytics | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Unique Users higher than Session on Google Analytics
How could us have a situation in Google Analytics where the unique users for given page is higher than the number of sessions?
Reporting & Analytics | | cbarron0 -
SEO Working GREAT! Although Keyword Rankings Only Directing to Home Page.
Since I've become a fellow MOZer I've seen an increase on my sites and proud to say that ALL of my clients have now accomplished 1st page rankings on at least 2 of their top 3 keywords. Yes, I am as stoked as them. Although I am a bit worried because as I rank keywords and test them on Google and engines alike all of our rankings direct to the homepage. I am essentially new to SEO. So as happy as I am to be doing something right I'm worried I'm losing the end user. By having them need to Search our site/menus/blog for the keywords/phrase that got them to us will turn most searchers away. They want the content now. What am I doing wrong? My pages are pretty specific so I never cared to use rel-canonical's...I dont have duplicate content, other than your typical footer/side bar consistent info. So I'm curious where I've gone wrong. Little history on my sites: I Use Joomla 2.5 & 3.x. I manage seo details through sh404seo. I've cleaned all duplicates I can up other than what these dynamic cms generate by just using one. I've done fairly well and all my pages rank A for moz's onpage grader for the keyword optimized around. Any help is appreciate, THANK YOU!
Reporting & Analytics | | Funk-Creative-Media0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Why is Google Analytics reporting 20% fewer goals than Unique pageviews of same thank you page?
This is really puzzling me and my research has not thrown out the answer. I have always understood URL goals to be unique pageviews of the thank you page you are tracking. UPVs and goals should both only be counted once per session... Has anyone else seen this issue? Goals were not set up historically so I wanted to use unique pageviews of the thank you page for year on year comparisons, but 20% is a big difference! Background There are multiple pages to track so goal is set up using Regex There is no mistake in the goal set up (honest!) The goal URLs all match the unique pageview URLs, there are no rogue URLs There has been no change to the site or the tracking set up Data is not being sampled It's a lead gen site in an area where multiple enquiries within one visit would be very unusual Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | McCannSEO0