Why are they ranking?

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I've been looking at domains which rank well for a particular search term - plastic storage boxes to try and see why they rank.

http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage ranks particularly well.

From what I can see, they have about 6 backlinks, 28 DA, and 11 PA - which isn't that high compared to others ranking on the first page.

I can't work out why they rank so highly, they also rank for over 100 other storage terms for this page.

Am I looking in the wrong place?

[BeckyKey]

Great thank you, I usually find I get more detailed info from Majestic, but I'll look over Moz first

[BeckyKey]

Hi

The one thing I guess I need to do, is prioritise by ranking factors, as there are over 200 - what is going to have the biggest impact. As I am the only SEO I need to make sure I am putting my efforts in the bes place possible.  I am seeing authoritative links to the root domain and content as being the biggest factors - as well as UX

Thank you!

[BeckyKey]

HI Thomas,

This great thank you, I am trying to add more content and include user guides onto the site so we can increase the on page. I just want to ensure this content is useful for the customer as well as google.

Thank you for the links, I'll check them out!

[MickEdwards]

You also need to look at the perceived quality of the links to the 2 pages.  Tesco has more but not as valuable as Poundstretcher.

[SEMbyotic]

You can use Moz Open Site Explorer (https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/) but Majestic and aHrefs have similar functionality too. In Moz, play with the filters. For Target you can choose "this root domain". For link type, you can filter by "only follow". This should give you a more well-rounded picture of the entire domain, not just a given page.

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

I haven't actually so I will take a look, thank you

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback, can I ask what tool you use for this? Is it within Moz or Majestic for the backlinks?

[MattRoney]

Hi Becky,

Out of curiosity, have you run a Full SERP Report on them in the Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool? It can give you a sense of what factors are contributing to ranking.

You can learn about the tool here, and there's a great video on applying it for this kind of research here.

[SEMbyotic]

Are you only looking at the data for just this particular page? I took a look at the entire root domain and it looks like they've got some pretty high-value followed backlinks. For example, here's a followed backlink from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-34157367.

The subpage is probably seeing a combination benefit of high Domain Authority paired with strong on-page keyword relevance (and over 200 other things). Domains that already do well in search tend to get their new pages to rank even more quickly, and in some cases that can be true even before those pages have many backlinks.

[BeckyKey]

Thanks for the reply, I'll take a look.

I couldn't see any social signals.

Thank you for the article, I'll give it a read

[ThomasHarvey]

Poundstretcher has category content on the page that you linked, which in comparison to the tesco site there  is a lot more on page content, hence the probable increase in rankings. See this image for the content: https://gyazo.com/df52dd151308160aef2296f0a0c58d07

I have done a test personally on 7 categories in the past couple of months on a site I am working on and have seen some massive ranking jumps just from me adding this content.

Here is an interesting conversation on the topic: http://forums.seochat.com/search-engine-optimization-28/e-commerce-categories-descriptions-anno-2015-a-482420.html

[BeckyKey]

Hi Rob,

They all have a big range, this one http://www.tesco.com/direct/home/crates-boxes/cat3375608.cat

Has a DA of 80 and PA of 32, nothing stood out to me from the example above so I was curious

[Mobilio]

There are over 200 ranking factors (other sources says even more) so it's extremely difficult to says why this page is ranking. Probably their on-page optimization is good and outperform competitors? Or they have more social signals? Or they have better UI/UX that users like? Or they CTR is better?

So if site X have Y backlinks and their DA is Z there isn't guaranteed that they will position better than site A with B backlinks and DA = C (where Y >> B and Z >> C).

You should also see Rand Fishkin presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/onsite-seo-in-2015-an-elegant-weapon-for-a-more-civilized-marketer
and grab some fresh ideas about better optimization. Also see with attention their tests and results.

[ThomasHarvey]

Links aren't the only factor to ranking a site, by the look of it they've got a quality site with a reasonable range of plastic storage boxes, which makes this page very relevant to the search term.

Am I right in saying that the other brands who have a higher DA/PA have less of a range?