Can i get some insight as to why this is #1 on google?
-
So... our results keep slipping little by little. I am trying to understand the rhyme and reason to it all (aren't we all?)
Since Penguin, one website seems to have strongly benefited from the update. And I can't seem to understand why except maybe for the lack of seo efforts which resulted in no bad efforts.
Search for "chaussures grandes tailles" in google.FR, you will find what I am talking about.This is what I seemed to have gathered.
The #1 result has the KW in both their title and description is using blatant keyword stuffing (ie just astring of keyword with no phrase structure), has done little with links or optimization, does have 300 facebook fans (but they seem to have been bought according to the last 3 months activity). Text is very limited on their site. They have a lower authority than other websites.They are also a newcomer as far as the market goes.
It is important to note, that they also rank #1 on many of the related field keyword or top 3. So according to google this is a "winning" website as of now.and that is why it grabbed my attention.
The #2 results, is a big website, equivalent to zappos or the like, seems to have redone their optimization following penguin and to me seems to do a pretty good job at writing "natural" content for the user, not for google, as much as possible without killing their seo chances. Their authority should be good, and tons of people are linking to them. They also do use a lot of PR blog/article.(legit ones though I am not sure about before). They invest heavily in adwords and ads altogether (tv/radio/etc..). They are the big guy but are not specialized on this keyword.
The lower results, are not as representative, a mish mash of good and bad but all are specialized stores in this market including mine. They all get some ranking on some of the major keywords but not nearly as much as that #1 website which is killing it all (see semrush for more on it). So I thought I would focus on these 2 top (neither of which are mine) to start a conversation.Though feel free to comment if you have any hindsight on any of them.
Can anyone explain to me why the #1 can possibly be #1? I would love to hear everyone's opinion on the matter.
I fully understand that in the long run that #1 might not be #1 forever, but then again it has been several months now at least and the longer that last, the more likely they are to gain new (possibly repeat) customers... -
Thanks Donnie. Yes, I completely believe that the right attitude is what you are talking about above. I guess I am just trying to understand the rhyme and reason to it all because, while I believe in the long term it is not all about SEO, and it is more about the user and their experience (and conversion!), at the end of the day, they are not especially following that motto and yet something is working in a very strong way for them. So while I fully intend to apply the best to my own work, I do want to understand the reasoning in what I am doing or not doing, and the whys of the result I am and will be getting.
Basically figuring what the "good" is of what they are doing Somehow it is taking me a while LOL -
They are doing ok. But you can do better. I have always been up against some pretty challenging competitors. Don't only focus on what they are doing, spend more time focusing on what you can do to win. Take the good from what they are doing and do better. SEO is a challenge but as long as you dedicate time into being unique and valuable to the searchers the search engines will reward you:)
-
Thanks for taking the time to answer. So going back to the original #1, this is what I am getting
title: Grandes chaussures et chaussure grandes tailles pour grandes pointures - Pas de Géant (granted no s on this one, so only half plural)
Description: Pas de geant le site de vente en ligne de grandes chaussures grandes tailles pour femme a grandes pointures escarpins sandales bottes et autres chaussures grande taille femme42 43 44 45 pour trouver vos chaussures grandes pointureset grande taille femme
h1: pas de géant (actually sounds like they have quite a few different h1 on this page)
body: P_as de Géant_ vous propose une vaste gamme de chaussures tendance en grandes pointures pour femme! Des chaussures grandes tailles pour femme en pointure 42, 43, 44 et méme du 45. Les modèles de chaussures grandes pointures de Pas de Géant répondent à tous les styles, toutes les occasions et toutes les saisons : escarpins, sandales, bottes,…etc. Chausser de grandes chaussures que ce soit des escarpins, sandales et bottes glamour, casual, ou de détente en grandes pointures c’est aujourd’hui possible grâce à Pas de Géant !
I am sorry to be so insistent. But I really do want to understand how such a website can dominate a competitive market like this one. I really want to figure this out. Because while some it makes sense, the rest just seems to go completely against everything I am reading about Google new "be perfect" rules. And yes, they probably dont have bad marks against them like backlinks or else. but they sure dont seemt o fit under the perfect non optimized website that Google is now talking about. Extremely little copy, lots of KW use everywhere in not so natural ways, not good social activity.
What i do see is that they don't have internal linking in their items description but do use the targeted keyword in the url and item name and most of the time in their derscription. Recently some of their pages have been triple ranking in google (on certain terms, their category page, and 2 items pages take the #3,4 and 5 position). So something they are doing must be working. Something I have seldom seen in this market.and i am just not getting it. especially given the quality of the site.I guess I am still puzzled..
-
I disagree with no "SEO effort". I think "SEO effort" is the problem. People are still creating content for search engines, this is not how you earn rankings. The goal is to create content that is unique, educational, or entertaining. Set yourself apart from the competition. Earn your keep. Google wants to show the best possible results and they use users from which ever matrix they can gather to estimate who will rank.
My quote is "Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people"
No SEO effort is not good however SEO effort the way people think of it (Spamming, taking whatever link you can get, buying links, cheap tactics) is wrong.
Create valuable content, target the right people and market your business.
-
sure no prob... These update apply in the US not sure about France...
New Panda Update - Over optimizing / Overstuffing keywords
Over optimizing is when a page on a site is using an exact keyword without variations on a page. For Example:
Title: "Chaussures grandes tailles"
Description: "Chaussures grandes tailles" bla bla bla
H1: "Chaussures grandes tailles"
Body: "Chaussures grandes tailles" 10 times 1 in bold, 1 underlined, and 1 in italic.
Overstuffing keywordsis when a page has 100 exact phrases "Chaussures grandes tailles" on a page with 10,000 words on it. This keeps the ratio low when comparing keywords to content.
Penguin Update
This was placed to prevent unnatural link building/spam
(When a user likes your page they will link to it. Naturally the link is going to be your Company name or Brand name.)
When a company links to a page on their site 100x with an exact keyword "Chaussures grandes tailles" without variation and without a brand name it looks unnatural. This can trigger the penguin update.
A natural link building structure should be:
70% Branding
20% Diverse Anchoring (big shoe, cool big shoe, amazing big shoe, best big shoe, etc...)
10% Exact
-
Thanks Derek, keep us poste don what you find for sure!
-
Yep these are the ones.. as far as keyword stuffing I was talking about the description of the home page of #1. see the bold words in the attempted phrase below (for those who dont speak the language). This is far from natural looking to me.
Pas de geant le site de vente en ligne de grandes chaussures grandes tailles pour femme a grandes pointures escarpins sandales bottes et autres chaussures grande taille femme42 43 44 45 pour trouver vos chaussures grandes pointureset grande taille femme
About over optimization, that is definitely one I would want more feedback on.
Yes they dont do much , so over optimizing is far off, but every single product is named: ballerines grandes tailles XXX (or plus size shoe XXXX).. too me that is not very natural.?
I was advised against that in the past.Also woudn't their "qui sommes nous?" page count as far as keyword stuffing?
I wouldn't even dare to write like that. Am basically trying to define if I am misunderstanding over optimization. (there is also quite a few broken links on that page)
As far as natural looking anchor, do you mind giving me an example so I can understand better?
Are we saying that naming my product like that "plus size shoes claudia" , "plus size ballerinas erica" etc.. is the way to go then? That seems like over optimization to me.I also noticed they have no links in their item description (internal linking) is that something that helping them as well then?
As you see, a sea of questions on this one
-
What sites are ranking #1 and #2?
When I ran this search "chaussures grandes tailles" :
#1 www.pasdegeant.com/ **Not **over optimizing and majority of their keywords are anchored natural (looking).
majority of their keywords are branded (same as their URL)
#2 www.sarenza.com/chaussure-grande-taille
Are these the two sites you are seeing? If not you may have personalized settings on.
-
I have a competitor that also ranks well for competitive search terms with very few links and mediocre on-page optimization and social signals.
I asked the question on Q&A recently and was told that is it possible for them to have links that bots from site explorers can not see. Google bot is able to see them but the site explorer you use won't be able to show them.
I also learned that having done no SEO efforts can be better than having bad links pointing to your site.
I am still researching and learning how this is possible. I would like to see what more people in the industry have to say about this.
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 advice w/ keywords & content to get started with SEO on my own website
I am a real estate agent, marketing properties to Germans moving to / buying an overseas home in my country. I inquired with a few different SEO agencies and I cannot afford their services, $3000+ a month and my market is not huge as you will see in the search data below. So I will have to go ahead and do SEO on my own and will obviously need some help. The space is not competitive which is awesome. That's how the volume and competition look for the most popular (& broadest) search term is "immobilien countryname" (property countryname), according to Ubersuggest - attachment 1 (translation for reference): property countryname 1300 property in countryname 480 buy property countryname 260 property countryname seaview 170 buy property countryname 110 Here is an example of the top 10 searches for houses by volume. (Attachment 2 is a screenshot of the competition) 1. haus in countryname kaufen 720 $0.14
Keyword Research | | dnlpwrsellr
(house in countryname buy)
2. countryname haus kaufen 590 $0.36
(countryname house buy)
3. einfamilienhaus countryname haus kaufen 210 $0.45
(single family countryname house buy)
4. häuser in countryname kaufen 170 $0.29
(houses in countryname buy)
5. haus countryname kaufen 170 $0.46
(house countryname buy)
6. günstige häuser in countryname 110 $0.10
(cheap houses in countryname)
7. häuser kaufen in countryname location1 110 $0.22
(houses buy in countryname location1)
8. haus kaufen countryname meerblick 90 $0.20
(house buy countryname sea-view)
9. haus in countryname location2 kaufen 70 $0.03
(house in countryname location2 buy)
10. countryname haus am meer kaufen 70 $0.05
(countryname house near the sea buy) the first 5 results are taken by big portals, just the top one has done any optimization at all as you can see the competition is pretty lame, just some of them are doing any SEO, pretty badly (including spammy links), still rank. The way it seems, there are 4 main categories to optimize for: Properties Houses Apartments 'Move to countryname' information Should I optimize my homepage for a 'property' term, 3 other pages for 'house', 'apartment, and 'info' terms? How do I pick keywords to optimize for, esp. considering that they are basically the same e.g.: house in countryname buy countryname house buy house countryname buy or property countryname countryname property property in countryname ...and should I pick just one? What sort of content could I include in a "buy a house in countryname" type of page and how do I write around such keywords? I am having an issue finding examples to follow as there is no competition to emulate and the other markets/countries are dominated by large portals which also seemingly get ranked based on size / authority. Beyond that there is virtually no interest in the country = no traffic, besides general bs such as the language, the weather and such where there are a bunch of huge websites on the first page - so I am not sure what content could I use to drive traffic. I will come up with something, but there are no obvious ones.. My domain name is 1 year old, I have no links yet. Moz reports Page Authority 5, Domain Authority 2 for my domain. I reckon that's enough for starters... Any input and ideas are more than welcome! Thank you. Qy2gat6.png tG93AJt.png0 -
When I use the Google search console to discover keyword phrases being used to drive visitors to my site I see some keywords that have the city name repeated (ex: web design sarasota sarasota, fl). Why?
When I use the Google search console to discover keyword phrases being used to drive visitors to my site I see some keywords that have the city name repeated (ex: web design sarasota sarasota, fl). Why does this happen?
Keyword Research | | Noblemoz1 -
How does Google treat special characters in titles?
Seems like a stupid question, but one that I never really gave much thought about before. How exactly does Google treat special characters in titles? Do they all get seen as spaces? e.g. Does Awesome Product - OptionA/OptionB/OptionC available get seen the same way as **Awesome Product - OptionA, OptionB, **OptionC available ? Or even **Awesome Product - OptionA OptionB **OptionC available ? Or will Google see the first title as **OptionA/OptionB/OptionC **being a whole "keyword" due to there being no space between them? Like I've always just assumed that with apostrophised words will be seen as keyword s. And when using commas, there's always a space after the comma anyway. Are all "special characters" treated the same?
Keyword Research | | Ria_0 -
Google Keyword Planner - Just PPC?
Morning Mozzers, Please help a layman learn. This is probably a silly question but when I look at keyword search data in Google's Keyword Planner Tool and I see "COMPETITIVE" or "LOW" am I looking at all searches inclusive of organic and PPC? I have been a bit confused by logging in through an Adwords account? At the moment to get my keyword research I am using a combination of Moz, Webmaster Tools, Keyword Planner. I have had a look at the free version of SEMrush which looks really cool. Is my approach right using these tools? Am I covering all bases / missing key opportunities? Regards Ben
Keyword Research | | Bendall0 -
How do I use Google Keyword in onsite seo?
Hello to all, I wanted to ask if I am doing this correctly. So I own a Bernese mountain dog website I used the google keyword research tools to view keyword ideas. I listed my results below. So my questions are: 1 - Bernese Mountain Dog Puppies (the keyword) blow away the other keywords. So when you are looking at your sites most popular keywords, do you make the most popular keyword your homepage? Because it gets the most link juice? Like would you build the homepage around the best keyword instead of branding - like the company name etc? Or does it matter? Basically just as long as you use it for one page? 2 - When you have keywords that have parts of other keywords, is it safe to use the longer keyword because it has parts of the other phrases? Such as Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale is a part of Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado. So if you use bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado, it will also hit the bernese mountain dog puppies for sale? ( without the In Colorado) What type of strategy would you use for this type of situation? 3- Lastly, and thank you for your time - I watched a video from a grey hat seo guy. He said to take a keyword or phrase like say Colorado home builders, create a page like example.com/Colorado-home-builders/ Then make you h1 tag - The Best Colorado Home Builders Add The Best Colorado home builders to your meta description and one more time in your h2 tag Then create a Bold, and italic The Best Colorado Home Builders in your unique content paragraphs. So my question is - is this grey hat and bad? Or the standard? I do not want to get hit for over optimizing. So just wanted to ask you opinion first. In the end, I truly thank you for taking the time to read my questions. I appreciate everyone's help and greatly appreciate your knowledge. So my results look like this | bernese mountain dog puppies | 590 | Low | $0.45 | 1% | |
Keyword Research | | Berner
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale | 90 | High | $0.42 | 9% | |
| bernese mountain dogs | 90 | Low | $0.37 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in colorado | 30 | Medium | $0.76 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog breeders in colorado | 20 | Medium | $0.32 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dogs colorado | 40 | Low | $0.08 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppy breeders | 10 |0 -
SEOMoz report says: 1 Warning Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)
SEOMoz report says: 1 Warning Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) Found 36 minutes ago Number of characters 112 (over by 42)" but I go to my Magento and look in both titles, meta & main and there are indeed only 70 showing. The additional come because my domain name, ergoback.com is in the error.! How to fix this please?
Keyword Research | | ergoback0 -
Can I Trace The Keywords From a PPC & SEO Campaign That Brought The individual To My Site Without Using a Call Tracking Service?
Hi All I was wondering if it is possible to trace the individual keywords/key-phrases that someone has used to get them to my pages/site and if they came in from PPC or SEO, preferably without having to use a call tracking service, code under number, or multi-telephone line system? Regards Nic
Keyword Research | | KDWeb0 -
Google Webmaster Keyword Significance.
In my google webmaster tools the most significant keyword google attaches to my site is word 'VAT' as in, Value Added Tax. Followed by Basket. I can see why this is, as the word VAT and Basket is on every product page, but it really is not a keyword I want to target. Does this have any negative effect on other keywords I am targeting? What should I do about this? Here is the site: https://www.loveelectronics.co.uk
Keyword Research | | jcarter0