Non Moving #1 Website
-
Hi Guys,
Bit of an odd one we have recently undertaken our SEO in house (6-7 Months) and since doing this have had some great results, we have identified our competitors utilising Ahrefs, Moz and other tools that we have selected. However we have come up against something that we really cannot work out.
-
One of our competitors ranks for everything related to there term on their website and industry at position #1
-
They are not actively doing SEO, Poor backlink structure from the research that we have carried out
-
No fresh content being generate
I was wondering if someone would perhaps mind spending 5 mins having a quick look to see what you think as i can't think what we might have missed.
Tim.
-
-
Yeah, the likes of Wickes etc do have a high domain authority but they're not focusing on these specific search terms. They are appearing because they are closely related. If they did focus specifically on each search term I'm sure they would be number 1.
I'd suggest building up your long tail, maybe slightly varied to your competitor so that you do trump them at the top and just continue down the path of progression. They've probably been there a while and Google has no reason to shift them if people are clicking onto their site and finding what they want.
-
Hi Shaun,
Thanks for having a look it's very much appreciated, i'm currently aware of the server speed and it's something that i need to sort out sooner rather than later!
I do take you point about there domain authority however if you look at some of the other sites DIY.com, wickes.com, bathstore.com have a huge domain authority compared to the link of the site i sent you.
But they still persist to be there on page one for short tail and long tail, it's not so much me i'm worried about however we are slowing increasing our domain authority and moving up the ranks.
Do you think it's because it's a niche site?
Tim.
-
Two things I have noticed.
Your site speed is quite slow. I used tools.pingdom.com. Although your page size is quite small it takes 4.51seconds to load with time to first byte 2.73seconds. There is an blog post about that here. It could be server related.
Secondly, the other site has a lot more high quality links to it, giving it a higher domain authority which may also be interlinked with the social side that Gary mentioned.
Maybe these will help you in your search for #1
-
Send me the link I will take a quick look
-
yes, but we are talking very little amount i would have thought the sites are just not optimised either and another couple of sites that have been setup with site wide links to there main domain.
Main site has 500 back links 20000 crawled pages, however most of these are down to filters and parameters and 30 referring domains
3 other linked sites
- 1 providing 160 back links
- 2 providing 5 each
-
Do those domains interlink and provide juice to the main site?
-
Absolutely chuff all! They have recently have gained 1000 facebook likes but very very little social signals as far as sharing and RT's go nothing
They have a couple of other domains but again nothing special that but to do carry links through, I have checked there is no T1, T2 or Tier 3 Links.
There is nothing untoward about it, we just can't find out why google would rank it better.
Tim.
-
I am seeing this a lot recently.
Do they have any good social mentions/activity?
-
Tim - You can PM me the address if you like.
It is of usually no harm to post it here so others are also able to help.
-
Hi Shaun,
You happy for me to PM you the address?
Tim.
-
Hi Tim,
What are they site addresses?
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
-
GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2
Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | AKCAC1 -
Website indexing issues
My website is being indexed with both https - https with www. and no leader at all. example. https//www.example.com and https//example.com and example.com 3 different versions are being indexed. How would I begin resolving this? Hosting?
Technical SEO | | DigitalRipples0 -
General SSL Questions After Move
Hello, We have moved our site to https, Google Analytics seems to be tracking correctly. However, I have seen some conflicting information, should I create a new view in analytics? Additionally, should I also create a new https property in Google search console and set it as the preferred domain? If so, should I keep the old sitemap for my http property while updating the sitemap to https only for the https property? Thirdly, should I create a new property as well as new sitemaps in Bing webmaster? Finally, after doing a crawl on our http domain which has a 301 to https, the crawl stopped after the redirect, is this a result of using a free crawling tool or will bots not be able to crawl my site after this redirect? Thanks for all the help in advance, I know there are a lot of questions here.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Non Published Wordpress Pages
Hi, Is there any negative SEO consequences from having too many pages private or not published. Can it like slow the site down or does it not matter? Someone in my dept. has so many pages started/not complete and besides being messy, I wonder if it has any negative impact on the site. Thanks
Technical SEO | | aua1 -
Relaunching website seo audit
Hi People, We are going to Relaunch the website(https://www.y-axis.com). Url remains the same; the website has good SEO (Ranking, Leads, Traffic...). Website skin (layout, content) is going to change.Hence, would like to know the precautions to secure SEO. Please provide us necessary SEO Checklist for the above request.
Technical SEO | | Anshul.S1 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0 -
Google +1 Button on Flash sites
One of my customers is willing to add Google +1 button on their Flash websites. Is it possible? How can we add Google +1 button on a Flash site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | merkal20050 -
Removing pages from website
Hello all, I am fairly new to the SEOmoz community. But i am working for a company which organizes exhibitons, events and training in Holland. A lot of these events are only given ones ore twice and then we do not organise them any more because they are no longer relevant. Every event has its own few webpages which provide information about the event and are being indexed by Google. In the past we did not remove any of these events. I was looking in the CMS and saw a lot of events of 2008 and older which are being indexed. To clean the website and the CMS i am thinking of removing these pages of old events. The risk is that these pages have some links to them and are getting some traffic, so if i remove them there is a risk of losing traffic and rankings. What would be the wise thing to do? Make a folder with archive or something? Regards, Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0