Why is this site ranking so good?
-
Site in question: http://bit.ly/aBvVbm
Our main competitor in the UK seems to be ranking extremely good for the keyword "jigsaw puzzles" even though their linking profile doesn't seem all that great?
They mainly have site-wide links on 2 of their other ecommerce sites which seem to be given them their ranking power as this equals to 100's of links.
Does sitewide links on 2 sites really give this much ranking power or am I missing something?
-
So you're saying, the 4 things you mentioned are the major factors for the site ranking?
-
My response is....
I give ZERO weight to the domain being 12 years old. NONE. Whether a domain is 12 weeks old or 12 years old has absolutely no direct consideration in rankings.
Indirectly, the longer a domain has existed the more time it has had to earn links and that is an advantage, but the domain age in and of itself is not a factor. If you bought a domain 12 years ago and let is sit parked all that time and began to use it now, you would not have any advantage over a new domain in SERPs.
I appreciate your perspective Rhys but I disagree with it. For me, the rankings make perfect sense, and apparently they do for Google as well. In my experience you are overlooking the major factors which are readily apparent while looking for explanations in less obvious and less important factors. You are welcome to disagree in which case I am not able to help. Perhaps someone else will share some the feedback you prefer.
-
I know that there are over 200 rankings and that the weight of each is unknown BUT on a logical level, the things you stated wouldn't give that much of a ranking power.
Lets be honest, the things you stated are some of the easiest things to manipulate and change for a website to benefit so it's very unlikely they would have much power.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying what your stating is wrong or that it's bad advice (because it IS good advice). Just saying that because I don't want it too look like I'm getting mad at you haha.
I do agree the domain is extremely helpful and like someone else mentioned having a store up and running for 12 years, is very trustworthy.
Therefore, it's main power ATM seems to come from it's links... which comes back to my original question.. is it those 2 sitewide links giving it the most juice?
-
There are over 200 ranking factors and not all of them are known. Even for the ones which are known, the specific weighting is not known. I can easily name off dozens of other ranking factors which I did not check, but then again I did not need feel the need to based on seeing the above major factors which are so clear and obvious.
-
While those are rankings factors, surely they aren't responsible for such good rankings?
-
Add to that the fact that the domain has some good age. It was registered on 27-Sep-2000, so it is a 12 year old domain to be precise.
-
Our main competitor in the UK seems to be ranking extremely good for the keyword "jigsaw puzzles" even though their linking profile doesn't seem all that great?
Before even thinking about a linking profile, take a look at the site and onpage factors.
1. The domain name is jigsawpuzzlesdirect.co.uk, a partial match domain name with the first two terms in the domain name.
2. Their page title is "Jigsaw Puzzles Direct - A huge range of jigsaws, jigsaw puzzles, mind puzzles and accessories for all ages that you can buy online." It's not a great title, but it begins with a match to the phrase and contains another match to the phrase.
3. The H1 tag on the page is Jigsaw Puzzles
4. The very first words of content match the search term: "Jigsaw Puzzles Direct have made buying a jigsaw puzzle online easier than doing one! "
There are certainly opportunities for them to improve SEO but the above factors are very strong. How does your site compare on these factors? I would not even think about links until you addressed the main factors above.
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
-
Page ranked then disappeared
Recently there have been a a couple of pages form my website that ranked well, in top 5 for a couple of days then they disappear suddenly, they are not at all seen in google search results no matter how narrow I search for them. I checked my search console, there seems to be no issues with the page, but when I check google analytics, I do not get any data from that page since the day it disappeared, and it does not even show up on the 'active pages' section no matter I keep the url open in multiple computers.
Technical SEO | | JoelssonMedia
Has anyone else faced this issue? is there a solution to it?0 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Poor Site Performance
Hello, A couple of months ago, this site was dropped from google due to a noindex, nofollow tag thewealthymind(dot)com It's back up, but performing poorly. Take for example the term "The 4 step belief change" in the home page title tag. This site is the #1 authority on that and yet it ranks 3rd below weaker pages. There's 180 404 errors in GWT, many from past versions of pages of the site but also including thewealthymind(dot)com/index.html and thewealthymind(dot)com/index.htm even though there is a rel=cononical tag on the home page. What's the process of getting this site back to health?
Technical SEO | | BobGW0 -
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 -
When to 301 a No1 ranking site to the new domain?
I have a site [company.com] that ranks number one for the products of my brand but I'm moving all the efforts to a dedicated brand domain. The old site covered a number of small brands and we had no dedicated brand sites, but we now focus on just this one brand and it doesn't belong on the old company domain name. BRAND belongs on the new brand.com Because of the age of the old company site and because it had the first copy about the brand, it's still ranking well for the brand product names, and the new site has some duplicate content issues that I'm in the throws of resolving. RANKS Company.com : number one for all product names Brand.com : nowhere for product brand names but top for the brand name (as I say, the product pages on this site have duplicate content issues which is likely keeping them ranked low - Hades low. I would rather not maintain two websites and I want to give brand.com every bit of available oomph , so should I at some point 301 the old company site to the new one? If so, is now the time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Brocberry0 -
See your sites Architecture
Does anybody know a problem where you can see how your internal linkings look to the search engines?
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Young site trying hard, but banging head against the wall -- Site Review
Hi All New to PRO but we're seriously committed to getting this working. And firstly thank you to anyone who offers any useful thoughts and insights. We've launched a new site, unfortunately late to the market for the season and are really struggling to get search engine recognition. Site: http://www.ignitehats.co.uk/ We're continuously adding new content, slowly gathering more links and working hard to promote socially. But even on our clearest search terms like "Ignite hats" we're down on page 4. Both GWT and the Seomoz tools highlight no big problems (a few titles that are too long) but otherwise nothing. Maybe wrongly we requested that the Google spam team review our site incase it was being penalised, but got a template response saying the site was not in their spam system (phew, there wasn't a reason it should be we believe). We're wondering if this is just that our site is just too young? It's been live for 6 weeks. But worry maybe this is not the case. We've had success with another site we run much sooner than this. Any help or pointers would be really appreciated. Similar stories and what others have done, at least to give us some confidence to carry on would be great. Thanks for reading.
Technical SEO | | JHill0 -
Moving Duplicate Sites
Apologies in advance for the complexity. My client, company A, has purchased company B in the same industry, with A and B having separate domains. Current hosting arrangement combines registrar and hosting functions in 1 account so as to allow both domains to point to a common folder, with the result that identical content is displayed for both A & B. The current site is kind of an amalgam of A and B. Company A has decided to rebrand and completely absorb company B. The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A. The current (only) hosting package is Windows, and I am creating a new site and moving them to Linux with another hosting company. I can use 301's for A , but not for B as it is a separate domain and currently shares a hosting package with A. How can I best preserve the link juice that domain B has? The only conclusion I can come up with is to set up separate Linux hosting for B which will allow for the use of 301's. Does anyone have a better idea?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0