Ranking Oddities
-
In my local marketplace, I have competitors who have the following:
- unoptimized title tags and description tags (really long using keyword stuffing),
- stuffing keywords into the Meta keywords tag,
- lacking keywords in the body copy,
- using spammy footers or sections of text with a lot of local cities listed where no physical business is located,
- unattractive design (in my humble opinion),
- lower page authority,
- lower domain authority,
- lower number of back links
and are organically outranking my site that I have tried to optimize using the MOZ tools, Market Samurai, other tools, and other great advice provided by people much more knowledgeable than myself about SEO.
I don't understand how these sites that lack SEO continue to rank in the #1 or #2 spots in Google for my main keyword phrase + location, while my site is either not in the top 50 or in the top 40s range.
How is it that sites with little to no optimization, no blogs, and very few backlinks, continue to rank quite well?
These are not all new sites. Domain ages range from 1 to 10 years. What I am seeing appears to go against the grain of SEO recommendations.
Any general thoughts?
-
AJ,
I took a look at your backlink profile and it's pretty clear what the problem is. You basically have nothing but spam backlinks (I will PM you examples). It looks like there was a big influx of links around September 2013. Did you pay someone to do SEO about 6 months ago?
Your site doesn't look bad, but it's got some instances of over-optimization (again, I'll PM you examples).
You should definitely verify Google Webmaster Tools, if you haven't already, and check to see if you have a manual action against you from Google. After looking at your backlink profile, I would be surprised if you don't have one. However, if you don't, it may be coming soon. If you don't know how to do the backlink cleanup and reconsideration request yourself, it would be a good idea to hire someone with experience.
-
I sent you a PM with the URLs for the sites.
-
These sites are in a boring industry; divorce lawyers.
None of these sites are "popular," nor do they have any user interface experiences that are cutting edge or fund or exciting. Each site provides information about the law firm, the lawyer(s), and the services offered. None of the sites utilize much media, such as video or audio.
I can provide the URLs for the sites, but I don't know if that is acceptable to do in this thread. If not, I would be happy to send them via private message.
None of the sites are providing anything truly unique, however my blog does provide information for people that goes beyond the stereotypical divorce information blog. The information is related and relevant, and I would like to think it is somewhat unique.
-
Do they offer information of value to the people who visit the site? Are there some user-facing reasons why the sites are popular?
-
What's your backlink profile look like? There's literally a million questions that I could ask you but without being able to see the query, the websites, or the backlink profiles, it is really REALLY tough to pinpoint the issue.
-
How old is your domain? Is your site speed good?
-
As far as I can tell, these other websites are not updated frequently. There are no active blogs on any of these sites. Google+ accounts are non-existent or not active. Facebook business accounts are non-existent or not active.
-
curious if these site that are ranking higher than you update their content more regularly than you? and how active are their social media communities (especially their Google+ account)?
Chris
-
I literally was just about to type this same question. I'm baffled too. The only conclusion I arrive at is perhaps the other sites receive more traffic. Hopefully a zen master chimes in on this one.
chris
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
-
What tools or tactics do you use to identify which ranking factors Google is weighting for your industry or keyword?
Google ranking factors are increasingly more complex and less universal. Google is emphasizing different ranking factors for different scenarios. What tools are available that can help identify which ranking factors Google may be weighting for a given query or industry? For example, are there any tools that provide correlative analysis of Google's rankings for a given keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Does redoing a homepage impact search rankings?
Hello, all! Does anyone know if redesigning a website's homepage affects search rankings? I'm considering redoing my website's homepage - including rewriting the copy, and perhaps in Leadpages - but I don't want to compromise search. I gather that SEO is a bit of a black box, but am curious to hear others' perspectives before moving ahead. Thanks in advance for sharing your time and thoughts!
On-Page Optimization | | lightsfilmschool0 -
Ranking drop from 6 op 23 in one day - freaking out
Dear, Moz We have been hard at work going some off site and on site SEO. However yesterday we got around 1600 404 errors from google, and ranking dropped from 7 in front page to 25. What we did: I found an error in Htacces, where my partner had this (rewritebase with double // and rule with // - I quess this started creating urls for google, because twww.website.com//category-category-cateory OK. But google says that they will not effect your rankings because 404s? Second think i found was that we had some urls, which had canonical tag to a page called search. Now that search (duplicate of homepage) we 301 to our main homepage. Can that effect ranking? You have 404s that have canonical to a page that itselft redirects (301) to homepage. We also removed the / splash. Nothing more.. Below is the htaccess, that had the double // error. Please comment. Options +FollowSymLinks
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase //
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://website.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond $1 ^(index.php)?$ [OR]
RewriteCond $1 .(gif|jpg|css|js|png|ico)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.)$ - [S=1]
RewriteRule .//index.php [L]
DirectoryIndex index.php0 -
Best way to give away rank?
We have a set of branded and unbranded keywords that we want our product site to rank very high for. Right now, our support site owns the first page of rankings for most of the keywords we care about. What is the most efficient way to give the rank currently enjoyed by our support site to our product site? Both have very high domain authority and tons of backlinks. Here are some factors that might apply: Support site has lots of copy including these keywords, while product site doesn't (yet) Support site doesn't currently include a lot of links to the product site (and vice versa) They're on the same domain -- support is at support.domain.com, product is on www.domain.com Support site has many more pages and their URLs are more semantically related to keywords I know there are lots of structural improvements implied by the above -- on the product site, increase the amount of copy (and landing pages) focused on keywords and significantly improve internal links, etc. But I'm wondering if the fact we control both sites gives us any options we wouldn't have in a competitive situation?
On-Page Optimization | | hoosteeno0 -
Why my keyword rank fell down while I didn't do anything wrong?
Hi! I just got ranking results for the past week, and I am a little bit confused about what I saw. Two weeks ago, I optimized one of my website's page for the keyword "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" (was #43 before), and one week later I found it on the second page of Google (ranked #21). I continued working on other pages thinking that all I need to do for "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" to get it ranked even higher is to gain high quality inbound links. But for some reason updated ranking results I got today show this keyword fell down and now ranked #51. Could you please tell me why that might happened? What affected this keyword performance while I didn't do anything with it in between that much?
On-Page Optimization | | kirupa0 -
How to rank Product pages over its Resource counterpart?
So, I have a resource page coming up in the SERPs above the product page, obviously both pages are targeting a lot of the same terms... it's like one is how to use the product and the other IS the product. What's your take on getting the money page to rank instead of the resource page? The only things I can think of include making sure that (internal) anchor text hyperlinks are all powering up the product page, and possibly adding more content to the product page and it's sub-pages. Possibly even including the how to use the product info on the product page itself. Any other ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | wiredseo0 -
Why Is this Website Not Ranking?
HI There - I have been working on this site: http://limohireauckland.co.nz - primarily for our keyword phrase 'limo hire Auckland' - I am running a campaign for this site from the Pro tools and using the pon-page report card this url achieves an A grade for that particular phrase. The client is working on links in the local community etc but we are not appearing in the SERPS at all for most of the phrases we are optimising for. There has recently been a huge redesign on the site (approx 6 weeks ago) and the old content was not great. Am I missing something really glaringly obvious? Or am I being too impatient?
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Proper way to change keywords without losing ranking
Hello Everyone, The website I am working with offers service in two locations, lets say Service in City A and Service in City B. Those two cities, which are close by, are the main source of clients, so the owner asked me to concentrate on these terms. I did a decent job for a newbie and now we are on the first page of google closer to the top for these 2 terms. The problem that I am facing right now is that a) it hard to get that extra bit from onsite optimization when you optimizing for 2 different cities b) Customers may get confused which cities we focus on A or B? We have locations in both. c) Owner wants to expand services to additional cities. So I looked at how our competitor handling these time of problem and most of them have a page with titles like "Cities we serve" with links to the individual locations that are optimized for the specific city. That page usually includes paragraph or two about local history and then re-span description of their services. Is it a good practice to structure one's website like that if you are trying to target multiple locations? Should I re-target my home page to something less geographically specific and create separate pages for Cities A , B and the new locations? Would I lose ranking for terms service in city A & service in city B because of that Or should I leave my home page optimized for Cities A & B and just add new locations as separate pages? Thanks in advance for you insights.
On-Page Optimization | | SirMax0