Puzzled by recent SERP results - what ranking factors cause this?

[websearchseo]

Hi mozzers,

I have been using moz tools for a long while now for assessing SEO metrics with great success, but since recent Google algorithm updates I am seeing more and more SERPS that just simply don't make sense to me what so ever.

The most startling recently was an assessment of one of the keywords my own site competes for "Link Building Services"

The current No 1 position in Google.co.uk is held by http://www.napalit.org/

I invite all you seo experts out there to take a look at this site, look at it metrics in OSE compared with the "lower" competition and explain to me why it is No1.

I would really like to know what ranking factors this site has that makes it "higher quality" and offer "better value" than the competition.

I thought I understood what Google was trying to do with recent updates - get rid of non-value adding spammers and improve the quality of the search results.

But now I am becoming more sceptical. Are they just making it impossible for us to make a difference by following good SEO practices so we all resort to paying for Adwords?

I hope you guys out there can help me with this one and restore my faith.

Thanks

[DanDeceuster]

My best guess has to do with link velocity and age. Imagine you are a well established site, been around 10 years. You have 10,000 links. That link velocity would average 1,000 links per year.

Imagine you have a site that is 10 days old. It has 1,000 links. That average is 100 links per day. That probably sets off a trigger like trending topics in Twitter. You get enough juice fast enough and suddenly Google thinks you are a big deal. That's the only explanation i can come up with as to how something new can pass up something established. With a brief history it can easily be influenced by mass link buying. Just my guess though.

[websearchseo]

Thanks Daniel,

That certainly helps to make me feel better, but still doesn't fully answer my question. Even if they have achieved their links via spamming, the niche is still way stronger than what they have achieved in terms of Domain and Page Authority, trust, on-page SEO etc.... etc.... I would understand them getting to page 2 for a couple of months then disappearing, but not position 1? Seems too easy!

Any further comment would be greatly appreciated.

M

[DanDeceuster]

Freshness bonus is all. Looks like it was indexed in December. I've seen this A LOT since Penguin first came around. Google takes about 60 days to respond to new spam. The funny thing is in my industry I have seen this a lot and the spam just goes away on its own. Doesn't happen with an algo update or anything. It's as if Google just ranks any new site that gets an influx of links and then after two months figures out if it is spam or not.

You can literally rank anything new domain for any keyword you want to. Just buy as many links as you possibly can to your new domain and you will shoot up. But beware, your glory will be short lived. Google will remove you before too long. But if you follow that same pattern again and again (which I personally witness people doing) you can keep popping up in the top ten regularly.

Someone did this in my niche recently by copying everyone. Huge blog with tons of pages, each page a ripoff from a site in our niche. My home page was even ripped off. Filed a spam report when I found them. Little less than two months later they were gone, nowhere to be found. Registered in China, bunch of links all at once, you know, the hallmark of spam. Not sure why Google takes so long to respond, but they always do. Give this one some time. Just a new site with lots of links. Google will take care of them sometime in February would be my guess.