Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is this guy at the top p1
-
Hi
I am baffled our competitor is position 1 on google and another spam site is position 2 for this position 4. Both site hit every no no for Google.
For example our site no duplicate content and no duplicate pages. However our competitor 21% of all content is duplicated and 51% of the title tags are duplicated.
I am seeing this more and more and I am wondering has google screwed up as it seems to be that if you bend the rules you get to the top of google.
-
Hi Cocoonfxmedia,
Thanks for sharing the websites.
Yes, it appears you're dealing with a website that's walking a very fine line (arcimedia.co.uk) at the moment. One look at its backlink profile and you can see how over optimized the website's anchor text truly is.
Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon, especially in the digital marketing/web design niche. This proves that Google's algorithm isn't perfect at identifying spammy backlink profiles. It may also be the case that their website has a few authoritative links point to it or another website that 301 redirects to it.
The only real solution is to continue to fight the good fight. I wouldn't be surprised to see this website pop out of the search results at some point in the future due to an algo update or manual penalty. It's a hard pill to swallow, but I would continue to focus on your local SEO efforts (building quality citations, local links, engaging local content, acquiring reviews, etc). It isn't worth jeopardizing the long-term potential of a website, in my opinion, to receive short term rankings.
Best of luck,
-
As Christy mentioned, it would be helpful if you could provide the keywords and URL.
Speaking in general terms, websites with spammy links can in many niche still outrank domains with natural backlink profiles. Anchor text and a website's authority are still extremely important, in my opinion.
-
Sure [web design lichfield]
lichfieldwebdesign.co.uk <== this one black list on Spamhaus and other spam lists.
However our company and another competitor who I know is active on SEO we're both page 2.
-
Hi there! This is a good question. However, to offer any insight into what may be going on in this particular situation, we need more information. Would you mind sharing the keyword you are targeting, as well as the domains of the top-ranking sites? Thanks!
Christy
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
-
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
How to fix site breadcrumbs on mobile google search
For past one month, I have been doing some research on how to fix this issue on my website but all my efforts didn't work out I really need help on this issue because I'm worried about this I was hoping that Google will cache or understand the structure of my site and correct the error the breadcrumb is working correctly on desktop but not shown on mobile. For Example take a look at : https://www.xclusivepop.com/omah-lay-bad-influence/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ericrodrigo0 -
What is the proper URL length? in seo
i learned that having 50 to 60 words in a url is ok and having less words is preferable by google. but i would like to know that as i am gonna include keywords in the urls and i am afraid it will increase the length. is it gonna slighlty gonna hurt me? my competitors have 8 characters domain url and keywords length of 13 and my site has 15 character domain url and keywords length of 13 which one will be prefered by google.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | calvinkj0 -
Malicious backlinks
Hello to everyone! We have identified some weird links that are pointing to our site and we are not sure if they are considered malicious backlinks and we should disavow them. Most of them are directories of websites, the most common one is called "Top million domains by alexa" (you can see an example here: www.besafe.in/domain-list-237). Have you ever seen these kind of links before? Are they causing harm to our site? Thank you so much!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xaviplabor0 -
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
HOW!??! Homepage Ranking Dropped Completely out of Top 100 on Google....
So I'm competing for a very competitive keyword, and I've been on the bottom of page 2 for a while now, ranking for my homepage, which is very content rich and has GREAT links pointing to it. Out of nowhere, last week I dropped completely out of the top 100 or so, yet one of my article posts now ranks on page 6 or so for the same keyword. I have great authoritative links, my on-page is spot on, all of my articles are super super high quality, I don't understand how my homepage, which has ranked for the main keyword for months on page 2, can just completely drop out of the top 100 or so.... Can anyone help provide some insight?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | juicyresults0 -
What is Semalt?
I have noticed Semalt appearing on my traffic stats for several clients. I have had a look online and there doesn't seem to be a great deal of information. Is this ssomethingto be worried about. Apart from anything else, it is affecting my data.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DimasoftTeam1 -
Sky Lancers: What is the deal?
For a few days now we are being stalked by a "referrer" site out of Bangladesh, called sky lancers dot net. Their home page is nothing but a login and password. All traffic comes from one invisible inner page. They don't seem to try to login, nor do they use PPC to get to the site. They send thousands of visitors a day. Anyone has any idea what this site is trying to achieve and what their goal may be? All they do is get the bounce rate to skyrocket, the time on the site to go down and the avg page views of course to go down as well, as they click out immediately after they hit the homepage. Any suggestions on what to do about this practice? And what are they trying to achieve? Thanks for your insights guys!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Discountvc0