How Are Competitor's With Zero Links (According to SEOmoz) Ranking Highly?
-
Hey everyone! This is my first post in the community after just signing up for SEOmoz. I've already got a ton of value from this community so I'm looking for to giving back as much as possible.
The keyword gets 8000+ monthly searches on Google. Not so many, but the keyword indicates high buying intention.
The funny thing is that the top ranking page has 0 backlinks (according to OSE). It seems as though there are some black hat tactics being used, as I doubt that they are ranking solely with on-page optimization.
Any idea what's going on? Have you guys/gals seen this before?
-
Thanks for the replies! It was simply the www subdomain throwing things off.
Now, I've got a clear picture of the link profile for these competitors. Thanks again for helping out!
-
Likely, you looked for backlinks to www.ambienmed.com. Try checking OSE for ambienmed.com (without the www):
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=ambienmed.com
Boom! 898 Links!
They may get busted eventually for anchor text optimization, with 114 links for "buy ambien". However, they've got 184 links with the url as the anchor so that seems to be helping them avoid Penguin for now.
-
Hi Edward, Welcome to SEOMoz!
There may be many reasons why the website in question is ranking higher than yours.
You'll need to factor in a couple of factors, regarding both your site and the competitiors.
How old is your domain? Theirs is almost 12 months old, which if I believe correctly, is long enough to avoid any 'youth website' penalisation. If yours is new then Google may not have crawled it properly yet.
Aside from this, OSE and Google do not share databases, therefore some pages that Google is aware of, OSE may not be aware of. Mozbot would need to follow links to the competitiors site for it to be added to the index (what I believe).
As a result of this, you will see 0 on the mozbar when infact there are some links pointing to it. In fact there are some (rather dodgy) links pointing to ambienmed:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Aambienmed.com&sugexp=chrome,mod=2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
On page content can also play a part in ranking factors. Ambienmed has a wealth of content on the home page which is very keyword heavy.
Also, as mentioned previously, your competitiors are fortunate enough to have an exact match domain name.
I hope some/all of this helps!
-
OSE is not working for me but I suggest searching using ambienmed.com (without the www.) as on Google they rank with ambienmed.com
This is a different subdomain and would be the reason there are no links to www.ambienmed.com
As well as that they are also in a fortunate position of having the keyword ambien in their domain name.
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
I earned some high-quality backlinks, but the target page's ranking is not improving. Why?
Within the last three months, I acquired five .EDU backlinks and two editorial links to a page ranking for a competitive keyword. After the first few links came through, the page jumped from #15 to #7. It stayed there with minor fluctuations for a couple weeks. I earned a couple more good links, and the page fell as far as #44. It has recovered a bit then, but has not returned to the first page. It is worth noting that the .EDU links were achieved by sponsoring university programs. Could Google possibly be recognizing this as a link scheme? Are the links being earned too quickly? I don't believe it could be either, as the links reside on high quality, trustworthy sites and there wasn't a sudden major influx of them. Thank you for your insight! Also, I think my username tricked Moz into thinking I'm a staffer. Not the case!
Link Building | | StevenLevine0 -
Self linking - loss of link juice?
There are 10 links on page that point to this page where they exist (link to the page itself). Does it influence on ranking? And what's happening to link juice? How does it spread? Is there any loss of it?
Link Building | | templatemonster0 -
Multiple Links from High Ranking Site Vs. Links from Multiple Domains - What's More Important?
I understand it is important to get links from many quality domains. Currently, I do have links from top domains (PR, Trust) and it I can get more from (high rank) pages on these same domains. Would it be better to focus on expanding my reach (find additional domains to link from) or to continue to build links from the current domains I have a connection with? What is weighted more? I realize doing both is important, but trying to figure out how to best use my time. Thanks! David
Link Building | | DWill0 -
What linkbuilding techniques are working right now after google's recent update?
I'm facing some issues after the google's recent update, been using blog networks, blog comments, web 2.0 submissions, directory submissions etc What techniques works now? i don't see any improve from web 2.0 these days may be we need to get enhance ? may be curated content? to what extent i understand this, i think they all are low quality backlinks which all the other blackhat markets use previous, and it even gets worst if we keep on doing this --- for the last 1-2 weeks i've stoped linkbuilding just searching for something concrete with this regard, because backlinks that are DoFollow is necessary to have! any thoughts on working techniques that won't harm my rankings?
Link Building | | caspiauk1 -
Linking Root Domains V.s Total Links
When analysing a company's inbound links, what is more important to note: The number of linking root domains, or the total number of links? And why?
Link Building | | SEOrookie170 -
Many competitor's backlinks are in content anchor links. Ho do I get these same links?
Hi I managed to open up OSE. I'm finding that much of the competition's backlinks are in content anchor text links. Am I supposed to get backlinks from these same pages using the same anchor text but linking back to my page or is that allowed? If so, how do I get these in content blog post links? Thanks. Sunil.
Link Building | | sunilmuse0 -
Link Churn - where have all my links gone?
I am sure most of you have asked yourself the question I'm asking right now.. Where have all my links gone? I am starting to get twitchy now. I would estimate we have lost around 60% of our links in the past 3 weeks. Does anyone have any comeback stories? Feel like I am back to the start again. I have made a number of changes on the site not least removing a reciprical link page.. that had over 200 links on it but from reading one of Rand's tweets is it true that linking out could be good again?
Link Building | | robertrRSwalters0