Whats the best way to see why your competitor is out ranking you?
-
I am trying to rank in the number on position for Part Time CFO. Currently we are in 2nd and 3rd. We have way more quality inbound links then the site in first position, more content etc. How would you go about investigating why they are ahead of us?
-
We have way more quality inbound links then the site in first position, more content etc. How would you go about investigating why they are ahead of us?
It sounds like you have already done the most basic research. If you want to go deeper you can also use the SEOMoz tools such as OpenSiteExplorer to get more data.
Whatever analysis that you use keep in mind that search engines don't reveal everything that they use to determine rankings and the answer "I got my asskicked" has to be accepted in many cases. And, anybody that thinks they can answer the question in every situation is simply fooling themself.
Getting practical. What difference does it make why they are above you? You know what it takes to improve your site and improve its status with the search engines so working on that will be a more productive use of your time.
Once you have clear goals set on what you can do to improve your site, in my opinion, you can then spend zero time trying to figure out why sites rank above you and all of your time working to beat them.
-
Have you been comparing with Open Site Explorer? http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
I have experienced this myself when a competitor is ranking top with no explaination. It can be very frustrating but there is always something behind a No 1 ranked site.
If you want to send me the url's i will take a look.
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
-
My competitor's sneaky link building technique
Hi, I can't figure out how my competitor seems to fit four invisible nav menus into her home page. If you view her page source and type "/about" for example, it shows five examples of the text linking to her "about" page. But four of them can't be located on the web page (they are hidden). How does she do this? She basically has four duplicate links that are counted for SEO but can't be seen on the webpage. address: http:// camilla peffer.com. au/ Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | SleekCopy0 -
Why is our website ranked lower but beats most competitors in full SERP report?
We are analysing why our website ranks so low (currently position 8 in serp). We beat our competitors in most areas. Also we produce by far the most useful content. Do not buy links or do any other malpractice. We have been for a long time ranked in top 3 (well mostly 1-2) positions. In the last year we have seen a decline to position 8-10 and we are not sure why this is the case. Can anyone suggest what we should be focusing on? We are clueless. All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete. m8qIeyC,Kf1LLei#0
Competitive Research | | urkeman0 -
Traffic Data for Competitor Subdomain
Does anyone know of a way to get monthly visitor data for a subdomain that I do not manage? I would normally use SEMRush or Compete, but they only provide domain level data.
Competitive Research | | dsinger0 -
How better can we compare with a competitor ?
We were ranking 1st to 5th spot for the keyword, "PSD to Joomla Template" for this page, http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ for last 2 years! But since last 6 months, we are getting like 0 traffic to this page and absolutely no leads. We just tried to compare with a ranking competitor who has been on top for last 7-8 months already, www.joomla6teen.com/Convert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html I just compared it with my page, http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.joomla6teen.com%2FConvert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html&comparisons[0]=http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ I see our page wins in PAGE METRICS , but falls in SUB DOMAIN AND ROOT DOMAIN Metrics . Whats that ? How do we know, what all things we need to improve at ?
Competitive Research | | monali1230 -
My (properly optimised) webpage outscores page#1 ranked competitors on page/domain authority ... but I'm only on page#2\. Huh?
I'm puzzled. I've optimised a particular page for a particular search term, and the SEOMoz tool gives me an A for on-page optimisation. So no problem there. I can understand why my webpage/site is being outranked by pages from (for example) the Guardian and Oxford University, but there are several sites that Google is ranking on page #1 though their page and domain scores are well below ours. Specifically: my page/domain authority scores are 46/52, compared with 22/46 for the competitor that Google is ranking #5 - yet we only rank a lowly #12. And it's not as though the particular page in question isn't an obvious and appropriate part of our site. We work with new writers and the page in question offers a selection of creative writing courses. It's not like we're a writing-related site that suddenly has a page advertising fake rolexes. It's not a timing issue either, as most of our links have been in place for a couple of years at least. So I'm puzzled. And concerned. This page of ours was a reliable revenue generator for us and it's dying out there on the page#2 wilderness. If anyone can help, I'd be massively grateful. I don't know if this is helpful, but the page in question is http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Creative-Writing-Courses.html and the search term is ... well, heck, you take a wild guess. We're a British firm, so the only search engine that really matters to us is google.co.uk
Competitive Research | | harrybingham0 -
Why is this site ranking so well
I just took over an SEO campaign for a company we recently did a website for. The old company created individual landing pages for each city they service, but they didn't have any original content except replacing the city name. We are in the process of creating completely unique content per page. My main issue is that there is a company with no link profile, duplicate content on every page, no social media presence, etc - but consistently ranks for city + fence company The company we are starting to work with is: http://betterdecksandfences.com/ The company that is ranking for everything is: http://www.alcovyfence.com Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | BeardoCo0 -
How to check Google Keyword rankings?
Hey, So I recently watched the DuckDuckGo commercial about Google's results bubble. My question is how can you get the actual keyword rankings of relevant key phrases without Google taking your locations and search history into account? Would it just be a case of clearing your cache & history from the beginning of time or is there an accurate tool (other than SEOmoz ofc that I can use? Best regards, Dan
Competitive Research | | Sparkstone0