Competitor Ranks Top Keywords Without Backlinks
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One of my competitors is ranking very well for many different competitive keywords (1k+ searches per month).
I'm trying to figure out how in the world he is ranking so well. I've signed up for MozPro and looked at his back-links. He has 1 branded site-wide back-link from a decent blog. He also has 1 contextual back-link from a decent blog. Other than these 2 back-links, the rest are garbage links unlikely to even count for anything (he has maybe 12 of these low quality back-links).
My website on the other hand has more than 15 back-links from different (high quality) websites and does not rank anywhere near this competitor. This leads me to believe that either MozPro back-link reporting is inadequate or there is foul-play on the part of my competitor.
As far as on-page SEO is considered, his website is far inferior. Therefore, I highly doubt this would play a role.
What are some reasonable approaches I can take to better understand the cause of this discrepancy. Clearly the back-link reporting has not revealed any answers.
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Hi There,
There are lots of different factors that come into play when it comes to page rankings! (Although you are certainly on the right track here with backlinks...these are very important to have).
I would suggest that you:
- Increase the amount of pages (unique URLs) that you have and make sure that the content on each of these pages is unique
- Use Google Webmaster Tools to find out if you have any duplicate meta descriptions or title tags. These should never be duplicated on your site. You will go to Google Webmaster Tools (also called Google Search Console), then click Search Appearance, then click HTML Improvements.
- Domain Authority comes into play as well so if your competitor's site is older than yours, this would attribute to his higher ranking.
If none of these basic steps are working to solve your issue then I strongly recommend you hire a professional Internet Marketing Company (such as ourselves!) to look more deeply into this ranking issue. Blue Corona offers extensive competitor analysis' and we are confident that our team of experts will be able to find out why your competitor is ranking so well and we will do everything in our power to get you on the same playing field as them
Hope this was helpful!
-Your friends at Blue Corona
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Difference between 12 and 15 backlinks is basically 0 when it comes to ranking. Not sure what you mean by inferior optimization, but there are hundreds of factors in play. Your competitor's domain can be older, can be the first to start targeting this keyword, can have better CTR and behavioral factors and so on, lot's of things that you can't check without accessing your competitor's GA account.
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