Site Ranking for keywords that they haven't targeted in content

[photoseo1]

There is a site that I am constantly battling for the #1 spot for a particular keyword and I can't see that they are doing any link building, they are not using any anchor text for the keyword "at all" just their company name (not exact match) and their content doesn't even contain the keyword. I used Open site explorer to analyze their activity, but they are doing something I can't figure out from that data. Any other tools to use?

I have higher quality links than them, post content nearly 5 times per week to my blog and their blog hasn't been updated in ages, I kill them in social media, there isn't one instance that they are better than my site and I only build quality driven links, no blog comment crap and get featured on lots of industry blogs for our work. I distribute my content very effectively, I just can't figure it out. They were no where about 5 months ago now they are tearing it up for lots of keywords in the industry top spots.

I can build a few links and surpass them, but I have to do it every week or so and I think they are doing something fishy. I just want to figure out what they are doing and bury them.

I don't want to post their url and mine here as I don't want them to see this post in search results.

[photoseo1]

Thanks for the extra ideas Chris. Good points, I will have to work on reworking some things.

[Chris.Menke]

Steven, I'll go out on a limb and guess that its the site listed in your profile that you're writing about.  If that's the case, I have a few suggestions for you.

It appears there may be some keyword cannibalization going on on the site as you have quite a  few pages that compete with your home page for what looks like your main keyword. The page content and the meta data for the homepage and the packages seem to compete with each other over the keyword they're optimized for and, since the rest of the pages and your blog all used the three-word domain name at the beginning of the title, they look like they are competing for that exact match keyword. Be sure that to choose a primary keyword focus for your homepage and keep the rest of the page titles and corresponding content focused on distinctly different terms. With all the strength and relevance of particular keywords focused on single pages, those pages will have an easier time maintaining their highest potential ranking positions in the search results.

Also (this isn't the cause of the site's current issue but could be the cause of a future one) there are those links that point to a small group of interlinked sites that might be considered an effort to manipulate rankings unless they were nofollowed.

[photoseo1]

Thanks for some ideas Jeff. Their domain is older than mine, but it was the fact that they came from no where about 5 months ago that really brought them to my attention.

Thanks for the link to Search Engine Journal. Pretty familiar with most of that stuff. I ran a structured data check and found nothing. It could be their age, but I don't buy it. They aren't doing anything that I am not doing 3x better and cleaner. Looking in open site explorer they are ranking for keywords that they have no anchor text, I am just at a loss.

Thanks for your response

[customerparadigm.com]

I don't want to steer you down the path to the Dark Side, but this article on Search Engine Journal, "Using Black Hat Tools for White Hat Purposes" might be a good place to take a look and see if the other guy is doing anything shady:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/using-black-hat-tools-white-hat-purposes/

Other things I might check:

• Domain name age of your site and the other site.  Perhaps this other site has such an old domain name, it's always been there...
• Is the other domain using structured data (i.e. RDF) on the site?