Competitor has 50 linking root domains, 2500 facebook likes

[BobGW]

Hello,

A competitor of ours is ranking way higher than you would expect. They have very few links, half the DA and homepage PA of us, yet they rank several slots higher.

On analysis, the only difference seems to be that they have 2500 facebook likes.

Did they buy likes? Have you seen anything odd like this before?

Thanks.

[BobGW]

What would be a 100% white hat way to get the same results?

[Haeck-Design]

Sounds pretty gray-hat. I don't believe it violates any of Facebook's rules though.  A company I used to work with did those promotional "like-us" campaigns... never a big fan personally but they did get numbers.

[BobGW]

A little digging uncovered what they did.

1. They held a $200 sweepstakes that you had to like their page to join and they published press releases.

2. They offer a $3 coupon if you like them on facebook.

Brilliant, but is it white hat?

[customerparadigm.com]

Have you checked the age of your domain name, compared to the age (both forward and backward) of their domain name?  That could factor into the ranking analysis.

It's possible they bought likes, but it's likely that the people running the other organization are spending a lot of money sponsoring Facebook posts that get people to like their site.

This might be the case where the social component of the ranking outweighs a site that has other high metrics from Moz (Google doesn't use PA and DA; Moz ranks based on these estimates).

It could be that their site content is more recent and topical, so the site is ranking for fresh, new content, instead of a page that has withstood the test of time.

I'm happy to take a look at both your site and the competitor's site to see additional differences, and look at search results, if you want to post them here...

Thanks,

-- Jeff