Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
-
A competitor is consistently beating my website on non-competitive, long tail keywords. His DA is 32 compared to my 46. His average PA is 23 to my 28. His average On Page Optimization Grade is a C compared to my A. His page speed score using YSlow is a 71 compared to my 78.
The only thing I can think of at this point is that he has a better URL structure. We both have the keyword in the URL, but his structure goes like this (keyword: apw wyott parts):
www.competitor.com/apw-wyott/parts
While mine goes like this (I had nothing to do with this site's architecture; this is what I'm stuck with for the time being):
http://www.etundra.com/APW_Wyott_Parts-C347.html
It should be noted that the last word in these keywords is always the same - "parts." These keywords are for parts by different manufacturers so they follow a consistent pattern: [manufacturer-name] followed by "parts."
Also, the "C347" on the end of my URL is the category number given to this particular category of products in our database.
Are his URLs beating me or should I continue to look for other factors? If so, what other factors should I consider?
-
Yeah I've used the LDA tool in the past and found it helpful as a guide. If I had to guess I would say LDA is giving their page a higher ranking because they have the line "Mfr. APW WYOTT" in every part listing on this page.
Meanwhile we have broken our parts up into subcategories to make it easier for actual users to find what they're looking for, and we therefore lose all of the relevant product content to the subcategories.
I think what I'll do is add content below the subcategories on these pages that is both useful to the visitor and keyword rich for the search engines.
-
I am sure they have the ability to tell the difference. I can't say for sure Google's feelings on this particular use. If Matt Cutts was to make a video about this method my guess of his response would be something along the lines of "I don't like it, it's not user oriented, but I can't say it's black hat".
This reasoning is why I referred to the tactic as questionable. I would love to hear discussion about this topic from other SEOs.
-
All content on the page is considered but the primary issue is the pop-up paragraph.
Step back and read that paragraph then look at your page. As a user which would you prefer to read, that paragraph or the paragraph on your page?
You can also use that LDA tool. The tool can be used as a guide, and not by any means an ultimate way to choose which is the better page. When I compared both pages, I felt your competitors page offered the better content from a pure keyword phrase ranking perspective, and the LDA tool agrees with that assessment. I used "apw wyott parts" as the phrase, which appears to be the phrase you are both targeting.
-
Thanks Ryan. The first four are known issues. I just can't believe it's content that's beating me. Is it that link with the pop-up paragraph or is there other content you're referring to?
-
Right, from a usability standpoint it's no good, but from a search engine standpoint, can Google tell the difference?
-
Yes, the keyword in the domain makes a noticeable difference. Some other issues with your site:
-
#1 take care of any outages so your site is 99.999% stable
-
you show 3 meta description tags. Delete the last two
-
you show 3 meta keyword tags. I would recommend deleting all of them
-
your copyright date is 2009. It's not a SEO issue per se but it should be udpated.
-
your competitor is clearly beating you on content. Try using the SEOmoz LDA tool and comparing your sites.
-
-
It is a lot of content buried at the bottom of the page which is most likely not seen by viewers. If you were to install tracking analytics to the page, what percentage of readers do you think would actually click on it?
I am guessing the way it is presented it would be in the very low single digits. That is a lot of content to display in that manner.
-
Why is the link to more content questionable?
-
Hi Ryan,
Even though "parts" in their root domain is only a partial match for these keywords that is making the difference??? Wow. OK. That explains why they often beat the manufacturer's website as well.
Try looking at the site again. We experience regular outages like the one you just saw. I'm sure that's not helping matters either. It's a constant battle with IT to get that resolved.
-
Greg,
While your competitor appears to have cleaner URLs, the difference is relatively minor. While URLs make a difference, they are just one of the many factors involved with your site's SEO performance. I would recommend looking at other factors.
A large factor involved is your competitors domain name. After checking Google it seems you are being outranked by partstown.com. The domain portion of the URL is given a significant amount of weight and will help your competitor on any "parts" related searches.
A tactic your competitor is using is questionable. Look at the the bottom of http://www.partstown.com/apw-wyott/parts. Notice there is a "Read more about APW Wyott" link. When you press that link a new window appears with a large paragraph of content which can substantially help their page ranking.
I tried to look at your site but received a timeout error twice. I tried from another pc and browser and received a "could not find etundra.com" message.
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
-
Why am i ranking better in canada?
hi, some of my keywords with high volume are ranking on first page in canada, but in the states i am on 3rd pages first result. what factors are contributing this disparity. what can be done here in this case. is it because of my links and tld distribution or some server location thing. what should i do to rank better in the US? i have shared hosting server in singapore.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Full title in url
Hi to all, what is the best url structure, to have all words in the url or to tweak url like Yoast suggest? If we remove some words from url , not focus keyword but stop words and other keywords to have shorter url will that impact search rankings? example.com/one-because-two-for-three-on-four - long url, moz crawl error, yoast red light example.com/one-two-three-four - moz ok, yoast ok Where one is a focus keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WalterHalicki0 -
What's the best URL structure?
I'm setting up pages for my client's website and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. Which of the following would be best (let's say the keywords being used are "sell xgadget" "sell xgadget v1" "sell xgadget v2" "sell xgadget v3" etc.). Domain name: sellgadget.com Potential URL structures: 1. sellxgadget.com/v1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zing-Marketing
2. sellxgadget.com/xgadget-v1
3. sellxgadget.com/sell-xgadget-v1 Which would be the best URL structure? Which has the least risk of being too keyword spammy for an EMD? Any references for this?0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Short Url vs Medium Urls ?
Hello Moooooooooooz ! I got a SEO fight today and though the best would be to involve more people into the fight ! 😛 Do you think it's better to get A- company.com/services/service1.html or B- company/service1.html I was for A as services is also googled to find the service1. I also think that it's better to help google to understand where the service is on the website My friend was for B as URL has to stay as short as possible What do you think ? ps: I can create the URL I want using Joomla and Sh404. The websites has 4 different categoies: /about, /services/ products, /projects Tks ! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AymanH0 -
Should we use URL parameters or plain URL's=
Hi, Me and the development team are having a heated discussion about one of the more important thing in life, i.e. URL structures on our site. Let's say we are creating a AirBNB clone, and we want to be found when people search for apartments new york. As we have both have houses and apartments in all cities in the U.S it would make sense for our url to at least include these, so clone.com/Appartments/New-York but the user are also able to filter on price and size. This isn't really relevant for google, and we all agree on clone.com/Apartments/New-York should be canonical for all apartment/New York searches. But how should the url look like for people having a price for max 300$ and 100 sqft? clone.com/Apartments/New-York?price=30&size=100 or (We are using Node.js so no problem) clone.com/Apartments/New-York/Price/30/Size/100 The developers hate url parameters with a vengeance, and think the last version is the preferable one and most user readable, and says that as long we use canonical on everything to clone.com/Apartments/New-York it won't matter for god old google. I think the url parameters are the way to go for two reasons. One is that google might by themselves figure out that the price parameter doesn't matter (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en) and also it is possible in webmaster tools to actually tell google that you shouldn't worry about a parameter. We have agreed to disagree on this point, and let the wisdom of Moz decide what we ought to do. What do you all think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peekabo0 -
Numbers (2432423) in URL
Hello All Mozers, Quick question on URL. I know URL is important and should include keywords and all that but my question is does including numbers (not date or page numbers but numbers for internal use) in the URL affect SEO? For example, www.domain.com/screw-driver,12,1,23345.htm Is that any better or worse than www.domain.com/screw-driver.htm? I understand that this is not user friendly but in SEO stand point does it hurt ranking? What's your opinion on this? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TommyTan0 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0