Competitor has 50 linking root domains, 2500 facebook likes
-
Hello,
A competitor of ours is ranking way higher than you would expect. They have very few links, half the DA and homepage PA of us, yet they rank several slots higher.
On analysis, the only difference seems to be that they have 2500 facebook likes.
Did they buy likes? Have you seen anything odd like this before?
Thanks.
-
What would be a 100% white hat way to get the same results?
-
Sounds pretty gray-hat. I don't believe it violates any of Facebook's rules though. A company I used to work with did those promotional "like-us" campaigns... never a big fan personally but they did get numbers.
-
A little digging uncovered what they did.
1. They held a $200 sweepstakes that you had to like their page to join and they published press releases.
2. They offer a $3 coupon if you like them on facebook.
Brilliant, but is it white hat?
-
Have you checked the age of your domain name, compared to the age (both forward and backward) of their domain name? That could factor into the ranking analysis.
It's possible they bought likes, but it's likely that the people running the other organization are spending a lot of money sponsoring Facebook posts that get people to like their site.
This might be the case where the social component of the ranking outweighs a site that has other high metrics from Moz (Google doesn't use PA and DA; Moz ranks based on these estimates).
It could be that their site content is more recent and topical, so the site is ranking for fresh, new content, instead of a page that has withstood the test of time.
I'm happy to take a look at both your site and the competitor's site to see additional differences, and look at search results, if you want to post them here...
Thanks,
-- Jeff
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
-
Google SERP shows wrong (and inappropriate) thumbnail for Facebook videos?
Hello I'm running into a strange issue with at least one of my client's video. The video is posted on Facebook. When searching for the video on Google, the SERP shows a completely wrong, and inappropriate, thumbnail image. (And in one case the preview video starts playing within Google SERP.) It also seems that Google is indexing various countries' facebook page for the same video separately (it-it.facebook.com, fr-fr.facebook.com, etc). Note that only the thumbnail and preview video within Google are wrong; if you click on the link, you see the correct video and page. I hesitate to divulge the actual client video, but there are some reports on Google's search community about the same behavior: Here's one that stargs back in March: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/33760205?hl=en and a more recent one: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/71452151?hl=en It looks increasingly like a bug in some google algorithm, but nobody at google seems to acknowledge that. I've unpublished the original video from FB and submitted an 'outdated content' removal to Google, which is pending. In the meantime, my questions for our group of experts here: Has anyone else experienced this and any other suggestionso n how to fix? If we assume that this is not a google bug: how could a malicious actor or black-hat SEO influence Google's algorithms to cause this? Thanks, mickey
Social Media | | infamia0 -
Does posting links in comments on Linkedin count as blackhat?
Hello, I noticed a competitor site has started writing a post on linkedin and then adding the link to the article they are referencing in the comments section. I started to dig into this and came up with this useful post https://growthrocks.com/blog/linkedin-abtest-link-in-comment/ to me that all screams black hat, spamming and scamming... What does the Moz Community think? Sincere thanks for feedback and I hope you're safe - wherever you are... Rhiannon
Social Media | | rhiannondavies1 -
Ranking without links but through Social Media popularity
Does anyone have an example of a web page that is ranking soley through social media popularity and does not have any inbound (website to website) links? I am creating a presentation on SEO and Social Media and it would be great to have an example. Thanks Carla
Social Media | | Carla_Dawson1 -
Facebook sharing and referral links. Is there a happy medium?
We have a website with a large member base where users share content a lot. But the SEO problem I have, is that every share needs to reflect a "referral link" so that if a new user signs up, the original sharer receives "referral" credit for that sign up. I really want to be able to take advantage of our huge member base and their sharing, but I'm finding it difficult to do so because each user shares a link that has their referral in it. Can anyone think of an SEO friendly method of sharing that both gives our site SEO benefits, as well as providing the referral credit back to the user?
Social Media | | JDatSB0 -
Best Practices for apps.facebook.com pages
A client of ours has experienced a large drop in traffic (per GA) from apps.facebook.com referral source in the last 30 days. After a lot of searching, its apparent that there is not a lot of chatter on this topic. So this is a twofold topic..... 1. has anyone observed a drop in apps.facebook.com referrals lately as well? 2. does anyone have any best practices learning on optimizing these pages? Facebook guidance and content in general on the topic is virtually not existent. Google is still clearly indexing the url structure so its visible in search at least. https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22apps.facebook.com
Social Media | | SWKurt0 -
Best option for Facebook Page/Usernames?
Hey guys My first post here! currently trialling seomoz and impressed so far 🙂 My question relates to a choice of Facebook page/username for a client whose preference is to refer to their online business name by the domain name, where this business name includes his two most important keywords. So as an example: firstsecondthird.co.uk Now in terms of seo that's fine as search engines factor in keywords in the domain name, and even referring to domain name in website copy does not seem to pose too many issues. However on Facebook I've noticed that if we go with page name of: FirstSecondThird (obsiously we can't add .co.uk - I've used camel case for readability) then when using the facebook search the page does NOT get listed for any of the keywords as it appears it only matches on whole strings. So I'm going to recommend that he changes Faceook page name to First Second Third (with spaces) even though client does not really like this option. Do you guys think that makes sense? Also if I do make that change should I also go with fixed Username of First-Second-Third i.e. with hyphens or stick with one long string i.e. FirstSecondThird, which matches the domain name? Any advice appreciated. PS hope this is under right topic- several others seemed applicable Thanks
Social Media | | redactuk0 -
How to get Facebook likes?
Hello, Complete newbie here so please be kind, We are a brand new business based in the UK selling natural/organic hair and skin care products, we have been going about 5 weeks, we are really struggling to get people to like our facebook page! we simply dont know where or how to get people to like it! I mean the right kind of people, i am sure we could buy likes or send people to it that are not really into natural beauty products! so the question is, how do we get our likes up for relevant traffic? Thanks Daniel 🙂
Social Media | | LushDuck0 -
What's up with the #! in twitter & Facebook URL's?
I was just wondering why Facebook and now Twitter have added "#!" into the url structure? Does this mean we should link to a twitter profile like this - twitter.com/profile - anymore? Should we now be linking like this: twitter.com/#!/kevinbarnes Kevin
Social Media | | KevinBarnes0