Why is this site ranking #1?
-
I've done extensive research into http://www.maggiesottero.com/ and cannot come up to any definitive conclusions as to why this site is ranking #1 for the term "wedding dresses." The page is not optimized for the keyword.
**Any thoughts? **
-
Sorry, everyone that responded so far. Should have been more clear here. We are well aware of all the factors mentioned above, however if you conduct some competitive analysis relative to all other sites in top 10, they are clearly getting beat out in all categories mentioned below by more than 1 site. More links from a higher PR and Domain and Page Authority, more exact match and phrase match anchor text, more linking root domains, more linking C block IP's, more external links, better internal links to the homepage with exact match anchor text, more highly optimized on-page elements, better social engagement, etc.
We are well aware of the general info mentioned above, but that is why it is so puzzling. If they are so clearly getting beat on many of these metrics, why in the world are they ranking at #1 vs. companies that are beating them on the metrics that matter?
-
Plus it has a solid domain age: Creation Date: 2001-07-16
-
Look at the strength of their link profile:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.maggiesottero.com
Their home page has a page authority of 74 which is fairly strong. Look at the anchor text section, they have many links with "wedding dress" and other variations of this term in the link text. They also seem to have a strong social presence on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
With shorter term phrases the link profile is a massive factor.
-
Well the title tag has "wedding gowns" in it, and if you look at the backlink profile in open site explorer you'll see an awful lot of relevant anchor text around wedding dresses/gowns from other sites in the wedding niche and from high profile/high authority sites... I don't see why this is a mystery! (2,058 linking root domains).
Ranking isn't just about the on-page optimisation.
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
-
Lost Search Ranking - how to fix spammy backlinks
I have a health niche website ( grocare.com ) Recently I subscribed to ahrefs and moz and found out so many spammy backlinks to my site (which i didn't create). Someone told me this is a common competitor tactic. To create bad links for your website to drank it. My question is - in ahrefs now, there are a LOT of spammy anchors and it seems more backlinks are being created by spammy websites automatically. I have lost many rankings because of this. I tried diluting by creating more normal anchors but it doesnt seem to be working. How do I fix this ? Any help is apprecciated xVrvj1q
Competitive Research | | grocare2 -
Competitor ranks high, but how?
On our campaign, I have three local competitors which I like to keep an eye on. Two have been around for years but the other is pretty new. According to Moz, he has a Domain Authority of 1, has no backlinks and ranks lower on every keyword I keep track of. How then is he getting ahead of us for certain search terms? Can Moz not give any more information?
Competitive Research | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Site Ranking for keywords that they haven't targeted in content
There is a site that I am constantly battling for the #1 spot for a particular keyword and I can't see that they are doing any link building, they are not using any anchor text for the keyword "at all" just their company name (not exact match) and their content doesn't even contain the keyword. I used Open site explorer to analyze their activity, but they are doing something I can't figure out from that data. Any other tools to use? I have higher quality links than them, post content nearly 5 times per week to my blog and their blog hasn't been updated in ages, I kill them in social media, there isn't one instance that they are better than my site and I only build quality driven links, no blog comment crap and get featured on lots of industry blogs for our work. I distribute my content very effectively, I just can't figure it out. They were no where about 5 months ago now they are tearing it up for lots of keywords in the industry top spots. I can build a few links and surpass them, but I have to do it every week or so and I think they are doing something fishy. I just want to figure out what they are doing and bury them. I don't want to post their url and mine here as I don't want them to see this post in search results.
Competitive Research | | photoseo10 -
Finding new links to site
Is there a way to find sites that linked to my site during a certain time period? Say in the past 2 weeks or from March 1-March 15th ?
Competitive Research | | priceseo0 -
Ranking better with worse figures
Six months ago a competitor e-commerce site appeared in the top 10. Now six months later he is at #2. (for the main keyword in my sector in Dutch language, competition +4 million) My site is 4 years old and since three years ranks at #1 or 2. I'm now at #3, behind the competitors site. My competitor has a HomePage PA of 36 with 2295 links from 26 domains, root domain DA 23 with 175000 links from 30 domains. My site has a HomePage PA of 49 with 6975 links froms 238 domains, root domain DA 40 with 310023 links from 269 domains. I have more specific landing pages, better and more content, code W3C checked .... Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?
Competitive Research | | noordhout0 -
What's causing this site to rank better than another?
As I work on getting a grasp for what causes sites to rank better than others, I'm a bit stumped with two of our competitors. When you search Google for "essay editing" you get these results: 1. Ivyeyesediting.com 2. papercheck.com 3. gradesaver.com 4. scribendi.com 5. essayedge.com When you put these in OSE, it seems crazy that Ivyeyes is anywhere near the top. For example, essayedge creams these guys on EVERY single category. As a new SEO here, what am I missing. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Not only that, it's pretty discouraging seeing essayedge so far down the SERPS with what appears to be some really great numbers. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Competitive Research | | Kibin0 -
How can I boost page rank rather quickly
I have had a site for 10+ years and recently decided to really put a lot of effort into boosting its page rank. In the last 2 months, I have 1. participated in forums 2. gotten a number of reasonably high ranking websites in my industry to link to my page i.e. creating 100's of external, do-follow back-links 3. created some external websites which are subject matter specific to my industry that are pointing back to my website. At this point, these sites do not have much in the way of page authority So far, my sites Alexa ranking has increased considerably from a rank of ~20M to ~1.7M worldwide. How do I go about increasing my page rank / mozRank equally as quickly? Having done a campaign of the competition, I noticed that most of their links are internal i.e. 750k+ which is nothing more than noise because they are not offering anymore information/products that we're offering. Moreover, we have duplicated all of their external links and then some. Finally, they have created a number of 'feeder' sites that all point back to them each with a page rank of 4. This is were they are obtaining the bulk of their 20k+ external links. What do you suggest that I do that I have not done already?
Competitive Research | | thelearningman0 -
What is the best way to know your accurate ranking on google? what analytics are most trustworthy?
with seomoz, i rank on google in one spot. With market samurai, I rank in another spot, With KPMRS (or whatever) i rank another place. But then when i just type my keywords into google, it puts me in a whole different world... am confused... and the client i am trying to help rank higher is confused. Thanks for any help you can offer be blessed bd
Competitive Research | | creativeguy0