Ranking Oddities
-
In my local marketplace, I have competitors who have the following:
- unoptimized title tags and description tags (really long using keyword stuffing),
- stuffing keywords into the Meta keywords tag,
- lacking keywords in the body copy,
- using spammy footers or sections of text with a lot of local cities listed where no physical business is located,
- unattractive design (in my humble opinion),
- lower page authority,
- lower domain authority,
- lower number of back links
and are organically outranking my site that I have tried to optimize using the MOZ tools, Market Samurai, other tools, and other great advice provided by people much more knowledgeable than myself about SEO.
I don't understand how these sites that lack SEO continue to rank in the #1 or #2 spots in Google for my main keyword phrase + location, while my site is either not in the top 50 or in the top 40s range.
How is it that sites with little to no optimization, no blogs, and very few backlinks, continue to rank quite well?
These are not all new sites. Domain ages range from 1 to 10 years. What I am seeing appears to go against the grain of SEO recommendations.
Any general thoughts?
-
AJ,
I took a look at your backlink profile and it's pretty clear what the problem is. You basically have nothing but spam backlinks (I will PM you examples). It looks like there was a big influx of links around September 2013. Did you pay someone to do SEO about 6 months ago?
Your site doesn't look bad, but it's got some instances of over-optimization (again, I'll PM you examples).
You should definitely verify Google Webmaster Tools, if you haven't already, and check to see if you have a manual action against you from Google. After looking at your backlink profile, I would be surprised if you don't have one. However, if you don't, it may be coming soon. If you don't know how to do the backlink cleanup and reconsideration request yourself, it would be a good idea to hire someone with experience.
-
I sent you a PM with the URLs for the sites.
-
These sites are in a boring industry; divorce lawyers.
None of these sites are "popular," nor do they have any user interface experiences that are cutting edge or fund or exciting. Each site provides information about the law firm, the lawyer(s), and the services offered. None of the sites utilize much media, such as video or audio.
I can provide the URLs for the sites, but I don't know if that is acceptable to do in this thread. If not, I would be happy to send them via private message.
None of the sites are providing anything truly unique, however my blog does provide information for people that goes beyond the stereotypical divorce information blog. The information is related and relevant, and I would like to think it is somewhat unique.
-
Do they offer information of value to the people who visit the site? Are there some user-facing reasons why the sites are popular?
-
What's your backlink profile look like? There's literally a million questions that I could ask you but without being able to see the query, the websites, or the backlink profiles, it is really REALLY tough to pinpoint the issue.
-
How old is your domain? Is your site speed good?
-
As far as I can tell, these other websites are not updated frequently. There are no active blogs on any of these sites. Google+ accounts are non-existent or not active. Facebook business accounts are non-existent or not active.
-
curious if these site that are ranking higher than you update their content more regularly than you? and how active are their social media communities (especially their Google+ account)?
Chris
-
I literally was just about to type this same question. I'm baffled too. The only conclusion I arrive at is perhaps the other sites receive more traffic. Hopefully a zen master chimes in on this one.
chris
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
-
Ranking more than one page.
Our travel website has a number of different places listed. The layout of each place is the same as the next. On place ranks on page 1 for its keywords where as others do not. Is there a tool of some description that may identify why this is.
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
What to do if ranking the wrong KW?
I wrote a blog article targeting a long-tail KW - "[primary KW] pricing revealed". the article is performing so well that is actually ranking 2nd nationally for my primary KW. I would rather have my conversion page rank for my primary KW obviously. I'm considering cutting and pasting the content from my blog page onto my conversion page with a 301 redirect from the blog to the conversion page. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks, Ryan
On-Page Optimization | | RyanMeighan0 -
What is the best way to deal with creating a separate brand with it's own website when the main site already ranks well for the target keywords?
A client currently has a site that ranks well for a number of queries. They recently created a new site for a spin-off brand/company that they now want to focus on ranking for some of the keywords their original site already ranked for. What would be the best way to go about this without throwing away the existing authority and traffic the original site has for those queries?
On-Page Optimization | | P1WS_Sully0 -
Why ranks my site so bad?
hello together, i think, that you read questions like this very often, but i hope someone has some good ideas for me. https://goo.gl/3iOmcqy with the keyword "sophos sg 210" we rank very bad. But i don't know why 😞 We have trust elements, a very good "avergage time on page" unique content... But i don't know, what can we make better 😞 Thx you so much
On-Page Optimization | | enbitcon0 -
My Site's Name Not Ranking in Google
Hey all, I've seen a few posts like this. But I wanted to start a new thread in hopes I may find the underlying issue. I've had my site: http://www.ctrl-alt-success.com for about 2 years. Recently I've started really adding a lot of content to it. (about 2-3 posts a week). I get zero organic views which is fine as I know it's still in the beginning. But here's my main question. If I type "ctrl-alt-success" into google. I get some site that shows up. "ctrlaltsuccess.com" I've been looking at this issue forever. That site has been "coming soon" for nearly 2 years. lol My site doesn't even show up on the first 10 pages of google. However in Bing and Yahoo it ranks on the first page. What could my site be doing wrong that it's not even ranking for the exact domain name? Keep in mind, if I google "ctrl-alt-success.com" my site comes up fine. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Ctrl-Alt-Success0 -
Which page to rank for a Keyword? Home Page or Deep Page?
So, we have a situation where there is one particular keyword we want to rank for. We have been up and down over the years, at our best probably position 4-5, and now at 20ish. Thats for our home page of course, which the majority of our linking is probably pointing at. We also have a sub page which is optimised for that particular service. The term is "web design brisbane".
On-Page Optimization | | MauriceKintek
So as you can imagine, Web Design is in itself a service and we offer others. Should we optimise our home page for it and remove the sub page?
Keep the sub page because its one our services and optimise both?
Do some kind of canonical thing?
Change our interlinking? All our competitors home pages seem to be the ones that rank, and it feels and looks better in results if its the home page, but if switching up to our sub page is better im all ears. Also if our sub page is somehow hurting or leaking SEO from the home page, id like to know as well. Would prefer to not have to provide a link, due to competition but if someone wants to know we can always PM.0 -
Changing the page a term ranks for
Hi all, I hope you can help advise me of the best way to change the page that is ranking for a particular keyword/term. Is it just a case of on-page optimizing the term/keyword on the new-page and getting good links/traffic to that page and leaving the old one as it is, or is some sort of "de-optimization" of the old page a something that could help? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | bunac10 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website. Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu). So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders? And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0