How Are Competitor's With Zero Links (According to SEOmoz) Ranking Highly?
-
Hey everyone! This is my first post in the community after just signing up for SEOmoz. I've already got a ton of value from this community so I'm looking for to giving back as much as possible.
The keyword gets 8000+ monthly searches on Google. Not so many, but the keyword indicates high buying intention.
The funny thing is that the top ranking page has 0 backlinks (according to OSE). It seems as though there are some black hat tactics being used, as I doubt that they are ranking solely with on-page optimization.
Any idea what's going on? Have you guys/gals seen this before?
-
Thanks for the replies! It was simply the www subdomain throwing things off.
Now, I've got a clear picture of the link profile for these competitors. Thanks again for helping out!
-
Likely, you looked for backlinks to www.ambienmed.com. Try checking OSE for ambienmed.com (without the www):
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=ambienmed.com
Boom! 898 Links!
They may get busted eventually for anchor text optimization, with 114 links for "buy ambien". However, they've got 184 links with the url as the anchor so that seems to be helping them avoid Penguin for now.
-
Hi Edward, Welcome to SEOMoz!
There may be many reasons why the website in question is ranking higher than yours.
You'll need to factor in a couple of factors, regarding both your site and the competitiors.
How old is your domain? Theirs is almost 12 months old, which if I believe correctly, is long enough to avoid any 'youth website' penalisation. If yours is new then Google may not have crawled it properly yet.
Aside from this, OSE and Google do not share databases, therefore some pages that Google is aware of, OSE may not be aware of. Mozbot would need to follow links to the competitiors site for it to be added to the index (what I believe).
As a result of this, you will see 0 on the mozbar when infact there are some links pointing to it. In fact there are some (rather dodgy) links pointing to ambienmed:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Aambienmed.com&sugexp=chrome,mod=2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
On page content can also play a part in ranking factors. Ambienmed has a wealth of content on the home page which is very keyword heavy.
Also, as mentioned previously, your competitiors are fortunate enough to have an exact match domain name.
I hope some/all of this helps!
-
OSE is not working for me but I suggest searching using ambienmed.com (without the www.) as on Google they rank with ambienmed.com
This is a different subdomain and would be the reason there are no links to www.ambienmed.com
As well as that they are also in a fortunate position of having the keyword ambien in their domain name.
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
-
Hi. One of our competitors is ranking ahead of us on Google. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor. Would anyone have any explanations for this? Thanks
Hi Guys - I've noticed recently that one of our competitors is ranking extremely well on Google, while we seem to be fluctuating, along with other competitors, for our main keywords. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor and traffic is continuously increasing each month. Would anyone have any explanations as to why we may be seeing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Link Building | | barryhq0 -
Back links do I need my keyword in them to rank? If so creative way to accomplish this?
The first question is pretty self explanatory. If I do need my keyword I'm trying to rank for in my link example: Looking for a cool skateboard (cool skateboard) is my keyword. Can anyone on here help me come up with some creative ways for me to get folks to post backlinks to my site with that key word in it? Unfortunately my sites url does not have the keyword in my domain.
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
Should I built a microsite for client's new service or add a new section to an existing new website?
We built a new website for one of our clients. Covering services A B C mostly commercial and industrial B2B construction service. We bought him a brand new domain called serviceAcompanyname.com The website uses a brand new domain and as no DA and PA yet. The client wants a new section added to the Website concerning a new service ( we are going to call it service D) which is still a local service but offered to Home owners. Should we buy a new domain called serviceD-region-companyname.com and make a microsite covering the topic and work on backlinks and links in parallel for both sites, or would we be better off just adding a new section to the existing website and work on the main DA. Will it be easier in the future to enhance 2 different domains or a single one even though all services are not targeting the same audience.
Link Building | | escteam0 -
Disavow Links - how do you know if it's worked?
I asked another SEO company to analysis my link structure (as I was too busy!) As I was flat lining on some work I was doing. They said I potentially had an algo penalty and that i need to do a disavow , even though I had no messages from Google saying I had unnatural links. stupidly I agreed to the disavow. Looking at Webmasters tools it seems they've submitted a bunch of links. Since they've done this traffic dropped by 60%, ranking dropped massively. In google Webmasters all the links which are meant to be removed are still showing. How do I know if the actual disavow has been done? And should I do a reconsideration request? Even though Google hadn't flagged an issue ??
Link Building | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
I'm hiring a link building company - need help choosing
I asked this question before and got mixed feedback. Companies vs. Freelancers. Well I have a couple questions here. At a certain point it is definitely worth going in house, but what about the knowledge that we could gain from working with a big agency? Does that really add any value? Can I hire a freelancer and trust him as much as a big agency? or vice versa? Can I hire an agency and trust them as much as a freelancer? I have also been advised to make sure they offer competitive / site analysis as a first step, AND inform you of exactly how many links they plan to build per month, how much time they will dedicate to you and your account, expect turn around times, and light strategy details that they would likely use. Thanks for any help! TA
Link Building | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Competitors with thousands of links
Looking at my competitors link results on OSE some of them have 30,000 links to their websites. They are top rank on google whereas I am page 2. I know its quality over quantity but am I ever going to compete with that number of links? Is it worth getting some low value links just to bump up numbers while continuing getting good links? thanks for any advice!
Link Building | | bridaldesigns0 -
Finding competitor's 301's
Is there a way to find out what domains a competitor has 301'd to their main site? I am wondering if a competitor has hidden back links using a 301'd site.
Link Building | | EugeneF0 -
Do links within imbeddable widgets carry link juice?
I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic? I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?
Link Building | | JesseCWalker1