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?
-
Thanks Marek for the usefull words. Yes I still use meta-keywords as there is also Bing and Yahoo. But of course you are right about differing the description tags. I will change them asap.
Actually all this is about the Dutch version where I have "only" +4.000.000 competition for the keyword Lighting in Dutch. I don't even want to try to compete in English with that word. But then I compete with the Brand names and get my English speaking customers anyway.
Thanks again !
-
Sometimes it is been hard to understand but never give up
you still using meta-keywords ... they can only help the competition not google position.
meta - description tags are all the same for different pages.
If yes it can be a main reason. You have to diversify descriptions and they have to be consistent with title and page content.
e.g. for <title></span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span><span> </span>Buy LED lighting at the best price.</span></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span></title>
in description use: name="Description" content="LED lighting is the latest craze. ..... an so on about LED up to 140 characters">
Marek
-
H-tags, titles,speed, and much more, I am very aware of the importance and using. What worries me more than being dropped on #3 is that a site, appearing from nowhere, in 6 months can get to the top. This site is in all ways inferior to mine, I mean inferior in terms of what google thinks is important. Their content is fresher of course and they have less nearly dupicate content. But it seems to me that history has no weight anymore. It seems that once you are ther for three years, you are damn dificult to be caught. Seems I am wrong.
For my understanding, analysing the results for years, sooner or later the mechanism, the algorithm behind (from Google) must become clear. Thousands of people are on top and after making an inventory of everything possible that can be important, I don't discover new things anymore. It seems that they have some secret arguments left as, as you told yourself, in many cases the logic based on what is known is far far away.
And no, their domain is as bad as mine I started my site without knowing that a keyword in a domain name is important.
What I see is that in the top 10 there are 9 .be domains and only mine is a .com. Maybe Googles starts to give importance at local domains.
And no again, I don't have many G+1, but they don't neither. I have many pages on Facebook, a page on LinkedIn, a blog with my Google identity, an author link on my site pointing to this identity .... I'm getting out of arguments !
-
Maybe, I never got attention for PA and DA. Only after starting to use SEOmoz that I became aware. But my links are good, are many, my content and keywords optimal, my code good, my speed fast. I have some nearly duplicate content as I have 27000 products on my site and the difference between product A and B can be very small giving nearly identical product pages. But this was as such since the beginning. Maybe Google has more attention for this now than some years ago.
-
Thanks for your answer. No, I am quiet sure that my platform is the best what I can get in my country. I was aware that a platform can be important for ranking as speed is important for google.
-
I have many examples of such a situation. In my work I won with Nikon Academy (akademianikona.pl) - site supported by Nikon with huge number of links and better statistics.
Refresh you content.
I agree with EGOL and Gordon. What I want to add ... think that internal consistency of the site is very important. Good content structure (H -tags, content with keywords) - title - description - url should be the first elements of the subjects of your mind.
Also very important is competitors tracking. What do they have that you do not have? Maybe they follow some (local ... global) trends? Social impact is another area to check - do you have many G+1, FB shares, votes etc...
Check technical issues like page load speed and other
And last but not least - what is their domain name - is it better that yours?
some other ideas to improvement (simple report) link
Good luck Rik
-
Just a hypothesis here, it could be based on the platform you are using. Some ecommerce platforms rank better in google, an example of this is that the ecommerce platform "magento" is seo friendlier than other ecommerce platforms. That could be a reason that it is ranking better with "worse" statistics.
Another hypothesis is that their onsite is better with less errors and less duplicate content and therefore being penalized less.
Hope that Helps
-
I can only echo EGOL.
Keep working at quality content, relevant links etc. if your efforts continue, there is every chance you will be back on top.
-
Can somebody explain why a younger site with worse figures gets a better position in Google ranking?
Maybe because the figures that you are looking at are different from what google is using to rank the pages. I think that the figures that you are looking at are good for tracking your progress over time but they obviously are not what google is using.
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
-
2 Urls rank on page one, what should I do?
Hey Mozzers, I would like some input from you guys please. For keywords "car service dc" "dc car service" "car service washington dc" my site ranks in positions 7, 8 . My home page www.dcacar.com and also a landing page for washington dc: https://www.dcacar.com/washington-dc-car-service.html Is there something I can do to rank higher? Should I 301 redirect the landing page to the home page? If you have any suggestions and have experience in such cases your input will be greatly appreciated. Our home page also ranks for almost 20 other very important keywords that drive a lot of business to us. So I am a bit scared to touch the title tag on the home page. 2nd question. It's been almost 2 weeks that the local pack is showing 2 results for the same keywords. We are #3 lost our space from the result. Are you noticing any changes to your local packs? Why are there 2 results and not 3? When I search for similar keywords but in other cities I usually get 3packs even now. Any suggestions on making into the top two? We have 3 times more reviews than the other 2 companies the only thing I see that makes them rank above us is their company names are almost exact match with the keyword. Thanks in advance for your time and help.
Competitive Research | | Davit19850 -
Webby Rank Tracker That Works
So now that the Moz's rank tracker is down for maintenance, I'm seeking a new Webby rank tacker that WORKS! I need a platform that: is Online. Updates you daily on your client's ranking progress. Notifies you on critical ranking drops. Please don't offer LA's Rank Tracker as in my opinion it's the worst one.
Competitive Research | | Yoav_Vilner0 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
Better tactics for keyword research
I am paying for monthly Adwords Google. I am planning to build out and optimize my website content with the findings from the Adwords campaign. What is frustrating me is the Google list of keywords recommended. Is there a better tool for determining excellent, "long-tail" keywords specific to my industry, products and services? -Feeling Left Out
Competitive Research | | natearistotle0 -
Why do you think this site can't reach a better ranking?
Hello, My name is Pablo Lagos. We have a hosting company in Chile since 2006. All the time we have been ranked in the first page for the keyword "hosting" in google.cl. Some years ago, we used to be on the first 3 results. Since the last year our site went down to 7 and higher places no matter we do. When I run the link analysis, we have the highest punctuation in all items. I would really appreciate your comments. The site is in spanish: www.ilihost.cl Thanks.
Competitive Research | | pabloandres0 -
Sites With Duplicate Content Ranking Way Higher
The site I am writing about is easendtorontohomes.com I don't get it. I see that some of my competitors have more inbound links and have been around longer. Their SEOmoz trust etc is also higher. But I don't get how many could possibly be ranking higher since they're sites are all template based site via Web Tech Design and the content is duplicated from one to the other. The other weird thing is that they do everything wrong - they stuff their keywords tag, some of them use the same keywords/meta data on every single page, some of them don't even have meta tags, some of them don't even have a blog with ANY original content. Apart from listings EastEndTorontoHomes.com has TONS of original, well-researched, and keyword rich content. I just don't get it. Is it possible that google has some sort of relationship with that company? Or am I totally missing something? Some of these sites include: tinasmith.ca, mikeclarke.com, teamkassen.com
Competitive Research | | annasus0 -
How can my site not ranked on easy keyword while it currently ranked 1 on difficult keyword??
The site in question is http://ikt.co.id The site is perfectly optimized (or even over optimized) for keyword "Bikin Website Murah" (in Indonesia it means "develop an affordable website") currently if you search on both google.co.id AND google.com, it ranked on #10 (on google.co.id) and it ranked on #7 (on google.com), and both term only return 1.3 million results I have A LOT OF pages that started with 'bikin website' , or 'website murah' ... there are a lot of them, and i have had a lot of backlinks on those pages too (have been manually building a lot of links, starting from creating a tutorial article and blog submission and many other way) .. the site has been perfectly optimized for that keyword For example we have http://ikt.co.id/blog-category/bikin-website-murah-promo-terbaru.html (for newest promotion) http://ikt.co.id/blog/bikin-website-seo-murah-discount-40-sampai-31-juli-2011.html (for discount 40% promo that lasted untill 31 juli 2011) AND YET, if you search on google.co.id for keyword "2000 likes facebook" , our lone page that i created when our facebook likes reached that amount, RANKED #1!! , and please let me tell you this term return 400 million results++ (on google.com this keyword ranked #19, on 500 million results++). And let me tell you it take that SINGLE page (which has absolutely 0 backlinks) 2 days to ranked #1 .... and her brother if you searched "1000 likes facebook" also show similar result (though not better then the sister) How ?!? and Why ?!? , i dont understand this at all.... my domain does not contain any keyword, they uses the same engine and yet that lone pages which have absolutely no backlink ranked so well on a very competitive keyword, while my Target Keyword ranked poorly.... And what is even more bizzare? "Bikin website murah" might not rank good, but "bikin website" ranked better x_x ... arghh i dont get it... why my site ranked poorly on easy keywords and ranked high on difficult keywords :(( .... Why I am not smiling because those easy keyword is actually my primary keywords 😞
Competitive Research | | IKT0 -
Why does website rank? PA-39 DA-24
This website is pretty nice, well done. The few links they do have are nice and clean, from his brothers website, very much white hat. However, it appears that they aren't doing much of anything from an SEO standpoint. This site, is PA31 DA21 is also doing unusually well. In both cases, these guy are outranking the best know, most famous, and most trusted company in the industry who is PA84 DA81. This is a HUGE company that wins the most awards and gets tons of media coverage both in print and on televisiton shows. I'm also noticing that the websites that are ranking well in my niche (every keyword) all have the name of their company at the beginning of the title tag, those with the name of the company at the end of the title tag are consistantly a few ranks lower. This seems to be consistant across all search terms. My niche is highly competitive for a very low amount of traffic. Adwords is crazy expensive for some of these keywords! That said, one valid sale generates a significant amount of money. Would love to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking the first company is being treated so well becase G considers them to be virgins, the purist of white?
Competitive Research | | dmac0