How is this site ranked so high on Google?
-
How on earth does "southeastasiatravelblog.com" rank No 3 on Google for "Asian travel blog"? It's just a collection of basically PR type travel articles. I have profiled its backlinks using Open Site Explorer and 71% of them are dead. The rest seem to be mostly "run of site" links from his other websites, which aren't particularly travel or Asia related. The highest PA for a live backlink to this site is a link from within his own website (PA 27, DA 15). Most of his backlink anchors are URLs and look fairly EMD to me. The site has few shares (6 FB shares, 7 FB likes, 1 Twitter share).
So what makes it rank so highly for this phrase?
My site I'm comparing against is "travelnasia.com" which is a fairly new domain with a DA 23, PA 31 and about the same amount of shares but far fewer backlinks at this stage because I recently changed URLs to shake off what might have been an algorithm penalty from Google. I am now receiving a growing level of Google search traffic again, but it's a long climb back. I'm looking at strategies, which is why I was checking out the site above.
-
SEO tools are an indicator. Never rely on one exclusively. Also, Moz looks at white hat factors. Your competition may not be playing by the rules. If that's the case, just hope Google handles them and keep doing your thing the right way.
-
Thanks all. The fact that this is a smaller website and not particularly well connected is what's intriguing me. If this site can get ranked well on Google (and I haven't tested it across a range of key phrases yet), then I should be able to get mine to rank at least as well. Mine is much more up-to-date.
My site also has a responsive WP theme, long posts, keywords in URL and embedded maps. I need to work on the home page as it is currently just a list of recent posts, so it doesn't help me rank for my "brand" phrase.
In many ways southeastasiatravelblog.com is doing everything wrong from an SEO angle. His URL is too long. It's almost EMD in nature. He has way too many links on his home page. Moz On-Page Grader ranks it "F" for "Asian travel blog" - scores an absolute zero! By comparison, my home page rates an "A" from Moz for this key phrase. It makes me wonder if Moz page gradings have any real value at all.
-
Agreed with the other guys here - you often see Google place sites like this in the SERPs for queries of similar competitiveness to this. It's not the internet's most competitive keyword but is also one that carries with it a lot of interest and can be profitable if the travel blog is operating as an affiliate. This example seems very closely related to the query, and Google is known to also often place "smaller" websites like this in the mix to make a change from giants like MSN, newspapers, travel guides on big sites, etc.
-
Totally agree here.
Keep in mind, there is a lot of more to the ranking ability of a site for a specific keyword than just PA, DA, links, and social.
On-page, the context of the links, etc. There's a ton of things, and Simon nailed it: if you don't know why something ranks, study it, it's an extremely valuable piece of information. It's hard not to just hate on a site and think it "got lucky," but it's ranking for a reason.
-
It's on a responsive WordPress theme
-
long page length
-
high resource value
-
Keywords in URL
-
interesting choice of description and title content and format
-
Nice file structure, repeating "southeastasiatravelblog.com"
-
Embedded maps
Asking why it should be ranking as it is, should sometimes be reversed to ask, why shouldn't it rank well? What are your first thoughts? Sometimes sites with this kind of activity are one new crawl away from a ranking adjustment, but I also think they can offer clues as to how Google etc rank sites - anomalies are sometimes gems to be studied for your own success.
-
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
-
Puzzled by high ranking page (#2 in SERPs) with zero/low page or domain authority
So, I get the smoothie that is page authority and domain authority and the link metrics that Moz uses to predict how well a page will rank for a certain keyword. I can look at a specific search term where we are on say, page 2 or 3, with a page authority of 1 and domain authority of 26, I get why competitors rank above us. But then I look at a keyword that is much more competitive, where we rank #2, which is awesome, where the landing page is also showing a page authority of 1, and domain authority of 26. How can we rank higher than competitors with a page authority of 56 and domain authority of 65? Their onpage optimization for the keyword is no worse, and sometimes better that ours but we maintain this ranking. By the way the competition also have hundreds if not thousands more linking root domains than our page. Any ideas why one keyword is a rockstar and one is a dud, with the same poor PA and DA?
Link Building | | seo-lab1 -
Alt text from an external site
We have a relevant external website that is linking to our site through an image. What ideally should the alt text of this image be? Should it just be non-commercial as generally advised with the anchor text of an external link? Or should it include where suitable relevant keywords? Keen to know people's thoughts here! Thanks.
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Low Ranking Mystery
Hello fellow MOZzers..! I am fairly new to this community but have been working on my SEO skills for a while.. I have created over 20 websites for myself and various clients, and all of them are doing fairly well ranking n.1 for their targeted keywords... except 1 WEBSITE THAT IS BECOMING A ROYAL PAIN IN THE BUTT! The website is www.dancepartycentral.co.uk and this is why it's a mystery to me: The on-site SEO seems to be on point (getting an A on page-grader for desired keywords) "Dance Party" does not seem to be too much of a competitive keyword Many of the other competitors do not seem to have very professional websites (apart from 3 or 4) or that have as much targeted content for the relevant keywords I have over relevant 20 sites and industry directories for Entertainers that are linking to the site (even though not all of them are appearing on page crawls) Please keep in mind this site has been created using webs.com so I have little control over the coding I seem to only be getting a 6.5% TXT/HTML ratio even though the site is made up mostly of original content This business highly relies on organic SEO searches and as my site is not ranking in the top 50, it's become a bit of a head-scratcher for me.. if anyone is kind enough to help me shed some light on the problem and how I can resolve this, I would be eternally grateful! Many thanks Jessica
Link Building | | Social_Media_Mentors0 -
Linking back to a high authority site
I have an odd situation. One of our most powerful links comes from a not-for-profit whom we have an advertisement with. That ad gets us half of our business. Recently, they slipped for the term that got them the traffic that flowed to our site. I was thinking of linking back to that page to boost them up a bit. Their page is a deep page on a high authority domain with only a few links. I am an authority site for my niche. I'd like to boost them up without diminishing my rank for other related terms. I'm willing to consider linking to them from my homepage, blog or link page. To play it safe I could just link build to them from outside my domain. Can I just link to them and its not a big deal?
Link Building | | JDP0 -
Someone not removing a link to our site
Hi Mozzers, We recently worked with an SEO company that bought a few sitewide links without our permission which caused us to get a huge slap by the last panda/penguin update. We managed to remove most of the links except one site (The biggest one).
Link Building | | Ouzan
He simply doesn't reply to our emails etc... What should I do in such case? Thanks.0 -
Penguin,No warning message from Google
I'm losing traffic & I have been since April. I'm pretty sure it's Penguin but I have not received any messages from Google. Should I proceed with the disavowal tool to remove some of the spammy directory links? PS Submit Edge is owned by the Devil
Link Building | | KrisPhoto0 -
High Ranking, Low DA & PA
I have some low competition words that I am trying to rank for, I have a competitor that is using similar words but outranking people with more links DA, and PA. How is this possible? I do see alot of people in our niche buying domain names that match exact keyword searches, with little or know backlinks ranking top 5. Thank You
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Keywords Ranking Secret?
When I searched "long dresses" in Google.com, and found the following page is ranked on top 10 http://www.shopstyle.com/browse?fts=long+summer+dresses But there is no back link pointing to this page, so why does this company manage to rank high for such a competitive keyword without link building? Any opinions?
Link Building | | Milanoocom0