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 -
Keywords in URL
I have an ecommerce store and i am using moz to get it into the best seo situation... my question is this..... I want to know how important it is to have the targeted keyword actually in the product page url.... I working on meta title and description which is good, but if i start changing all my product urls, it has major impact on the work i have to do since i would have to redo all my product links in ads, and all my product urls in emails, etc. So how much of a part do the urls play in seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bkhoward20010 -
Advice for structuring hotel website
Hey guys, I am currently setting up a hotel booking website and I'm not so sure how to structure it. I have landing pages for: 1. Cities
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | baresound
2. Sights
3. States The main keywords are mainly "Hotels in Cityname" or "Hotels near Sightname". What would be the best SEO friendly way of structuring the url? https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cities/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sights/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/states/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-statename Or are there better ways of structuring it or am I just overthinking it? I would greatly appreciate any advice and suggestions 🙂 Best, Max0 -
URL structure change and xml sitemap
At the end of April we changed the url structure of most of our pages and 301 redirected the old pages to the new ones. The xml sitemaps were also updated at that point to reflect the new url structure. Since then Google has not indexed the new urls from our xml sitemaps and I am unsure of why. We are at 4 weeks since the change, so I would have thought they would have indexed the pages by now. Any ideas on what I should check to make sure pages are indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ang0 -
Duplicate content on URL trailing slash
Hello, Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links). Links that used to send to
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
example.com/webpage.html Were now linking to
example.com/webpage.html/ Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash). We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash. However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?1 -
Page URL keywords
Hello everybody, I've read that it's important to put your keywords at the front of your page title, meta tag etc, but my question is about the page url. Say my target keywords are exotic, soap, natural, and organic. Will placing the keywords further behind the URL address affect the SEO ranking? If that's the case what's the first n number of words Google considers? For example, www.splendidshop.com/gift-set-organic-soap vs www.splendidshop.com/organic-soap-gift-set Will the first be any less effective than the second one simply because the keywords are placed behind?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReferralCandy0 -
Best way to migrate to a new URL structure
Hello everyone, We’re changing our URL structure from something like this: example.com/index.php?language=English To something like this: example.com**/english/**index.php The change is implemented with mod_rewrite so all the old URLs can still work We have hundreds of thousands of pages that are currently indexed with the old URL structure What’s the best way to get Google to rapidly update its index and to maintain as much ranking as possible? 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new equivalent format? If we detect that the URL is in an old format, render the page with a canonical tag pointing to the new equivalent format as well as adding a noindex, nofollow tag? Something else? Thanks for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
Page URL Issue
Hey Friend, I am having sort of a problem. I currently have a subpage with the url of: /musclecars/ I also have a subpage at /muscle-cars/muscle-car-restoration.html Obviously my main url is not listed here. My problem is I am trying to rank for the term Muscle Cars but the first URL does not have the keywords seperated so I rank no where. If I type MuscleCars into google I rank though (but nobody types the keyword in like that). So my question is can I create muscle-cars.mydomainname.com and rank well with that? Or is it better to just use mydomainname.com/muscle-cars/ even though that second term I am ranking for already has that in its url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shandaman0