Why is this site ranking higher?
-
We've put a fair bit of effort into delivering value here:
https://lewescountycars.co.uk/
But a search for "Lewes taxis" or "taxis Lewes" puts this site above us:
https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk/
As you can you see, this is a tiny site that we outperform in most ways.... what can we do to rank above it that we haven't already done?
Thanks in advance - Gerard.
-
Many thanks to both of you for your very helpful responses. I'll get to work on improving things as suggested.
-
Hi Gerard,
Google sometimes does weird things that is very difficult to understand. I've seen and compared both sites and yours at Seo Onpage is much better, because the other one is very poor at content and number of pages.
The only 2 things that can make sense are the domain name (your competitor's domain name includes "taxis") and the backlink profile, so like you cant do nothing about the first thing, I recommend you to replicate the links they created that you don't have:
https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk&target=domain
Maybe that helps.
Good luck!
-
Hi Gerard
Oops - yes I was looking at the top one - but it is valid that the top one has so many backlinks and I think that this is what you should be aiming for so if you looked at a citation burst first you could easily add 30+ good backlinks which will help you. I have updated my first answer.
I would consider putting your phone number in the SEO Meta title for the home page.
Google measures Click Through Rate (CTR) and I can imagine that their click-through is higher than yours because someone sees the result and calls them. You could easily leapfrog them I think.
1. Add phone number
2. Get lots of good backlinks
3. Try not to keyword stuff the page - you have 232 mentions of the word Lewes in the html which is a lot! they have 98 which is still a lot but fewer than you - keyword stuffing can harm a page.Good luck with everything and apologies for the mix-up - it was actually good though as you can see the value of a lot of backlinks!
Regards Nigel
-
Hi Nigel
Many thanks for your response.
I think you have the sites mixed up - I was referring to https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk not lewestaxis.co.uk, as the site that is somehow ranking above https://lewescountycars.co.uk
-
Hi Gerard
I have looked at the URL and backlink profile for starters. So these are my observations:
1. https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk/ was registered in 2012 yours in 2008 - Looking at Moz their Domain Authority is 10 and yours is 14 so little difference
2. You both have very few backlinks 7 vs 8
3. Lewstowntaxis is quite skinny and your is better defined. Plus you rank for around 4x the number of keywords they do.
4. You've got better GMB reviews than them too!
If it was me I would.
Work on your local backlinks from Yelp, Yell and Thompson to local news sites - get those links! - this is not difficult. You can use Moz local or Bright Local is good - you can do a 35 site citation burst for $100 https://www.brightlocal.com/take-contol-of-your-citations/
Get more reviews on GMB - talk about yourself and add photos, links & posts
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038063?hl=en-GB
Set up Google maps and embed one in your site - 'How to Find Us'
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6139433?hl=enThat really is just for starters and the best things you can do to bump your site upwards.
I hope that helps,
Regards Nigel
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
-
Mobile site backlinks?
Hello, Our mobile site redirects to desktop in a desktop browser and vice versa; however, they are different sites. This said, shouldn't the backlinks for our mobile site be the same as for our desktop site since one redirects to the other. We show no backlinks in my analysis? Any help or insight would be extremely appreciated! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
If you are organizing the site structure for an ecommerce site, how would you do it?
Should you use not use slashes and use all dashes or use just a few slashes and the rest with dashes? For example, domain.com/category/brand/product-color-etc OR domain.com/anythinghere-color-dimensions-etc Which structure would you rather go for and why?
Technical SEO | | Zookeeper0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Page rank and ranking down
Hi I blog at Technostarry. Some 3 months back during page rank update, my page rank went down from 3 to 2. I don't know the reason behind this. And now, my traffic and ranking is also down. I am not involved in any bad SEO practices, I don't copy paste and I write original content. I am too confused as why and what has happened with my site. If someone could analyze my blog and look at my weak points then that would be great. I would like to get any suggestions to get back my ranking and also page rank back. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | technotech0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0 -
Good organic rankings but no shopping rankings
My site www.hair1direct.co.uk comes up well in the organic rankings but when I select shopping in Google it does appear. Why would this be? Thanks James
Technical SEO | | avecsys0 -
Why Does this Site Rank for so Many Keywords?
I was doing some research today and kept coming across this site sylvane.com I checked OSE and found that it only has a DA of 37 PA of 35, and only 79 linking domains (966 links total). I got to looking and there are a few links like this http://lulala.us/twxoops/html/userinfo.php?uid=303 Anyway, accroding to SEMRush, this site ranks for over 6,000 keywords. I ran content on a couple of their high ranking pages and the content is not unique, at least not very unique on the pages I checked. What is so special about that site that google is giving it so much love? I am not trying to call them out, I just want to know what this site is doing to garner the favor of google when I have a site in the same niche with a higher DA, PA, linking domains, and social signals.
Technical SEO | | CharlesMontgomery0