Ranking Oddities
-
In my local marketplace, I have competitors who have the following:
- unoptimized title tags and description tags (really long using keyword stuffing),
- stuffing keywords into the Meta keywords tag,
- lacking keywords in the body copy,
- using spammy footers or sections of text with a lot of local cities listed where no physical business is located,
- unattractive design (in my humble opinion),
- lower page authority,
- lower domain authority,
- lower number of back links
and are organically outranking my site that I have tried to optimize using the MOZ tools, Market Samurai, other tools, and other great advice provided by people much more knowledgeable than myself about SEO.
I don't understand how these sites that lack SEO continue to rank in the #1 or #2 spots in Google for my main keyword phrase + location, while my site is either not in the top 50 or in the top 40s range.
How is it that sites with little to no optimization, no blogs, and very few backlinks, continue to rank quite well?
These are not all new sites. Domain ages range from 1 to 10 years. What I am seeing appears to go against the grain of SEO recommendations.
Any general thoughts?
-
AJ,
I took a look at your backlink profile and it's pretty clear what the problem is. You basically have nothing but spam backlinks (I will PM you examples). It looks like there was a big influx of links around September 2013. Did you pay someone to do SEO about 6 months ago?
Your site doesn't look bad, but it's got some instances of over-optimization (again, I'll PM you examples).
You should definitely verify Google Webmaster Tools, if you haven't already, and check to see if you have a manual action against you from Google. After looking at your backlink profile, I would be surprised if you don't have one. However, if you don't, it may be coming soon. If you don't know how to do the backlink cleanup and reconsideration request yourself, it would be a good idea to hire someone with experience.
-
I sent you a PM with the URLs for the sites.
-
These sites are in a boring industry; divorce lawyers.
None of these sites are "popular," nor do they have any user interface experiences that are cutting edge or fund or exciting. Each site provides information about the law firm, the lawyer(s), and the services offered. None of the sites utilize much media, such as video or audio.
I can provide the URLs for the sites, but I don't know if that is acceptable to do in this thread. If not, I would be happy to send them via private message.
None of the sites are providing anything truly unique, however my blog does provide information for people that goes beyond the stereotypical divorce information blog. The information is related and relevant, and I would like to think it is somewhat unique.
-
Do they offer information of value to the people who visit the site? Are there some user-facing reasons why the sites are popular?
-
What's your backlink profile look like? There's literally a million questions that I could ask you but without being able to see the query, the websites, or the backlink profiles, it is really REALLY tough to pinpoint the issue.
-
How old is your domain? Is your site speed good?
-
As far as I can tell, these other websites are not updated frequently. There are no active blogs on any of these sites. Google+ accounts are non-existent or not active. Facebook business accounts are non-existent or not active.
-
curious if these site that are ranking higher than you update their content more regularly than you? and how active are their social media communities (especially their Google+ account)?
Chris
-
I literally was just about to type this same question. I'm baffled too. The only conclusion I arrive at is perhaps the other sites receive more traffic. Hopefully a zen master chimes in on this one.
chris
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
-
Need help on declining page rank
Hi Guys,
On-Page Optimization | | Slideuplift123
We had a consistent page ranking for a specific keyword between 5 and 8 positions on google. This week all of a sudden the page which was ranking for that keyword no longer ranks for it and another page has started ranking for that keyword that too at 20th position. I am so confused why has this happened? I didn't do any changes to that page or to the now ranking page. Can anyone help why could this be happening?0 -
Wrong pages ranking for specific keywords
Hi moz community We're currently experiencing a lot of our pages ranking for the wrong keyword in the SERPS. Take "womens ski wear" for example, the page rainking via Google links to https://www.dare2b.com/womens/jackets-coats/ When we have an optimized page here https://www.dare2b.com/womens/shop-by/activity/ski/ that imo is more suitable and has the correct H1, meta tile etc. So I'm at a loss to see why google see the jackets page more relevant? Any help on this much appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | KMCBRIDE0 -
Ranking drop from 6 op 23 in one day - freaking out
Dear, Moz We have been hard at work going some off site and on site SEO. However yesterday we got around 1600 404 errors from google, and ranking dropped from 7 in front page to 25. What we did: I found an error in Htacces, where my partner had this (rewritebase with double // and rule with // - I quess this started creating urls for google, because twww.website.com//category-category-cateory OK. But google says that they will not effect your rankings because 404s? Second think i found was that we had some urls, which had canonical tag to a page called search. Now that search (duplicate of homepage) we 301 to our main homepage. Can that effect ranking? You have 404s that have canonical to a page that itselft redirects (301) to homepage. We also removed the / splash. Nothing more.. Below is the htaccess, that had the double // error. Please comment. Options +FollowSymLinks
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase //
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://website.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond $1 ^(index.php)?$ [OR]
RewriteCond $1 .(gif|jpg|css|js|png|ico)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.)$ - [S=1]
RewriteRule .//index.php [L]
DirectoryIndex index.php0 -
One Main Brand Domain - One EMD which Ranks Better
Hello SEO MOZers! We have one one main ecommerce site and I have just discovered we have an EMD sitting on a .co.uk, for one of our premium product ranges, and it actually outranks our main website. It appears on page one. My question is how do I handle the EMD? I don't want to start building authority to this site, as we are currently developing the main brand site, however I can't ignore that it is ranking. There is relatively little content. There are links on the page (it's only one page) that go through to the product section on the main site. But should I 301 redirect it? What would be your advise? I want to capitalise on any traffic we could benefit from, and ultimately I want the main site to rank better for this product's keywords. Any help would much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | CarlaAction1 -
Keywords ranking on Homepage but are not mentioned.
I was wondering why some of my keywords are ranking in my homepage but are not mentioned even once. Is it maybe because they are semantically related with the keywords targeted on the homepage? What are the reason(s) for this? Thanks for enlightening me with this one.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSOM0 -
Keyword in URL: Ranking Factor?
I've got a site about a specific topic, which we'll call "themes" for the sake of this discussion. I personally like to keep the url structure short and clean (for usability purposes, but mainly because I'm a perfectionist and a minimalist). I feel that adding "themes" to the url structure is a bit redundant. However, nearly every keyword phrase that my site should rank for includes the word "themes." So I'm wondering how much I'm handicapping myself by not including the keyword "themes" in the url? The domain name itself sort of includes the keyword . . . although it's in Italian (I chose the domain for it's brand-ability, not for the keyword). A quick example: My Url Structure: www.themo.com/topic/abc My Competitor's Url Structure: www.sitesample.com/themes/topic/abc For many of the keywords, the competitors with the keyword in the url rank highest. But, I'm not sure how much emphasis to place on this, because from my understanding Google doesn't pay as much attention to url keywords anymore . . . and those sites might just be ranking high because they've been around for so long (which also happens to be the reason why they coincidentally also include the keyword in the url, because they started the site when that was a high ranking factor). Thoughts? Should I just trash my perfectionism and add the keyword to the url structure? (By the way, the site is only a couple months old and doesn't have any significant backlinks to inner pages yet, so changing the url structure wouldn't be a big deal if I decided to do that).
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Do pages with fewer headings rank higher?
I've found several good quality, high ranking pages with excellent content, 500 to 1000 words. These pages are made by people who obviously know what they're doing. These pages only have one headline the h1 at the top of the page. Some of the sites use CSS div boxes and other things to make text look like a heading but do not have h2 or h3 tags or bigger font size. Could it be that a single headline tells Google that this page is about a single topic and that several sub headings muddy the water and so reduce page rank. Do multiple headings or subheadings affect page rank or is it just a personal style choice?
On-Page Optimization | | PhilipGledhill0 -
Rankings lower than expected
It's an age old question, "why is my site lower in the ranking than theirs" But in this case, I'm really not sure!... and we perform the SEO on both sites in question. The problem site is www.esp-machinery.co.uk We are looking for ranking for phrases such as Used Machine Tools, Grinding Machines, Drilling Machines, Used Lathes etc. We aren't getting it as high as we have already with another customer of ours: www.bwmachinetools.co.uk We perform the SEO on both these sites, yet we've put far more work into the ESP one, and still not getting very far. There are more linking domains to ESP than BW, in truth the BW site has a higher mozrank, but by only a single point. We did not build the ESP site, whereas we built the BW one. There have been some URL problems with the ESP site, but we have hopefully improved things enough working with their original developer to be on the right track now. Any advice most welcome.
On-Page Optimization | | rowleysit-2598920