How can such a small company out-rank the big players?
-
I'm really puzzled how for many keywords the company www.leathersofaworld.com, a retailer of sofas is able to out rank very large companies such as DFS.co.uk and IKEA. They rank 1st for the phrase 'black leather sofas' and have done for a long time. They currently rank 4th for 'leather sofas' and don't seem to move.
Having looked at their back links, I can't see anything special and their domain authority is only 25 compared to DFS which is 45.
Can anyone help me with this?
-
Can any one else give an answer as to how a small company can outrank large companies?
This is still unsolved. Thanks.
-
I can see the search results for "black leather sofa" and Leathersofaworld.com is the only one with black-leather-sofa in the product URL. So for relevancy search, I suppose Google gives them the gold for this term.
For popularity, I'm not sure. If you do a search for "red leather sofas", they are #3 behind two of the companies you mentioned. For "brown leather sofas" they are #4. I see this site is consistently ranked highly for this group of keywords, so the query isn't a fluke. I'd venture a guess that popularity helps the other sites rank better for the other keywords here, but for some reason all the factors just make it work for "black leather sofas."
I'm not pretending to know exactly how Google's algorithm works, but looking at this in terms of a relevance/popularity split does help explain some of what's going on.
-
Thanks for the replies.
I can see that IKEA doesn't have such a pretty looking URL but other big companies do. Looking at what other companies show up for the phrase 'black leather sofas' there is SCS and Harveys which are very large companies here in the UK and leaders in their field. Using the Open Site Explorer the large compaines out do this cmpany easily with considerably more links. Surely its can't just be down to their pretty looking URL can it?
-
Did you need specific help to out rank www.leathersofaworld.com or do you just want to understand how they perform better than Ikea and DFS?
One question I have is where you are located. Google will likely show results based on location. Leather Sofa World has "leather sofa" in their domain name and in their product URL, plus they have structured data and Google authorship set up. Ikea's URLs are not as human friendly.
Compare: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/00214416/ and http://www.leathersofaworld.com/sofas/brown-leather-sofas/latina-3-1-1-seater-espresso-brown-leather-sofas
Just seems that Leather Sofa World is more relevant than Ikea for terms like "leather sofa."
Now I will say that Leather Sofa World could greatly improve their Magento e-commerce site, but it's generally a nice site.
-
From Moz's Knowledge Base we know this:
"Page Authority is Moz's calculated metric for how well a given webpage is likely to rank in Google.com's search results."
There are two pages:
1. http://www.leathersofaworld.com/ (PA 36)
2. http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/categories/departments/living_room/10662/ (PA 46)So there is no such big difference in Page Authority, but there is a really big difference in external links. I'm still sure that it is about external links, but let's see what other SEOs are going to say. Also don't forget that links are influencing on PA...
-
Thank you for the quick reply Nedimtalovic,
Surely IKEA and DFS would be able to outrank this company easily by being so large and having many links to their root domain? IKEA and DFS are much more well known and have a much higher authority. I can see that Leather Sofa World so have some good external links but this only looks to be a few in comparison.
I would assume these really large sofa companies would have teams of people working on their SEO but this small company do not seem to lose rank at all.
-
Hi GoMetrics,
please check out this: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.leathersofaworld.com%2F&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0
It shows only external links (filtered). IKEA doesn't have any external links, and if you see Leather Sofa World has many links with anchor "Leather Sofa World". For me, links are still the most important factor in SEO.
Please, don't forget that long tail keywords are about 70% of search traffic. So, I think for new websites is better to focus on long tail keywords instead keywords like "sofas", "beds"...
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
-
No Google Ranking..yet
I have een working on my site for soem time. Trying to take the right steps to achieve good ranking in the long run and present the information we need to showcase to prospective clients. After several months I still see no ranking at all and I'm wondering if its becasue the front page is using a design similar to a one page website design? If anyone can provide some insight I would appreciate it. Even the smallest nudge i nthe right direction. We are also developing some new content for a blog and expanded written content for our services page. http://thatworksdesign.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bvrettski0 -
My website has dropped in the rankings drastically. How can I get it back up the SERPs?
I manage a website that I took over 6 months ago - the site was sitting happily on page one of google so I haven't had to do much to keep it there - other than a few onsite improvements. However, last week the site dropped off the SERPs. The site is http://www.pro-techairconditioning.co.uk/content/home.html Could someone please suggest reasons for this and ways to solve the problem? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
Checking keyword rankings
I have 2 questions: 1. To check keyword rankings with firefox, i am choosing: Tools>Options>Privacy>"clear all current history" Timerange to clear: Everything Check Boxes: Browsing and download history, form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins Is there anything else I need to be doing? 2. Search results in my Niche are heavily localized. Is there any way to check rankings in another area? Ex: By default, our rankings are for Northeast NJ. Is there any way to check Baltimore, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Why am I not ranking in Google, but I am in Yahoo and Bing?
The website in question is: www.stbarthexclusives.com Our keywords are currently ranking for both Bing and Yahoo, but we're not appearing anywhere on Google. The website is being crawled successfully, but we still don't have any results. I hoping somebody can point me in the general right direction to fix/correct this problem. Additionally, there's a decent amount of "rel=canonical tags" on the website. If that helps your evaluation. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Endora0 -
Link with keyword or name of the company
hi sorry I am getting links from a prominent site. I would love to know what are your though. use the name of the company as the anchor text or the Keword? does the new world of SEO like keyword anchor or not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Rankings Dropped
Hello, I wonder if anyone can point us in the right direction. Our main domain name has got a good SEO profile the domain is 12 years old and we have some good reputable links. On the 7th of Jan our website dropped in the rankings from 3rd to 10th for one of our main keywords and from then onwards some of our other keywords have dropped. We have a lot of landing pages that target specific keywords which look like a template page but just with the content changed. Can anyone pin point what could of caused this problem or has anyone experienced this before and knows how to fix it. I personally think we have been hit by the panda. Thanks, Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Can I add NOFOLLOW or NOINDEX attribute for better organic ranking?
I am working on online retail store which is highly dedicated to Patio Umbrellas. My website is on 2nd page of Google web search for Patio Umbrellas keyword. I have one another internal page with Patio Umbrellas text link. http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/21/patio-umbrellas.html I assume that, Google have confusion to give rank for my keyword during Patio Umbrellas keyword. I want to set NOFOLLOW attribute or NOINDEX FOLLOW meta for this page. Will it help me to rank high for Patio Umbrellas keyword. My ultimate goal is to reduce confusion for Patio Umbrellas keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Hiring an SEO company
I usually do SEO myself but now its time to move on to getting on with running the business. I have found a fantastic PPC company who ONLY focus on PPC and am looking for same but for SEO. Must be based in UK and have a great portfolio of mid/large tier companies with some real life stats to back them up. Pricing must be clear and transaparent. Results must be measurable. How would you find such a company? Ironically searching on Google doesn't seem to produce the right results 😞 Alastair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alastairc0