Are SEO fundamentals accurate or real?
-
Hi
I've been studying about seo for quite a good time. I have learned about linking building, on page optimization, and so on but I in the real word all these fundamentals seems not be followed but google's algorithm and here is an example.
On google.com.br (brazilian google) I'm trying to rank for the main keyword "airsoft" and its variation for the website www.qgairsoft.com.br. But the the top 1 os SERP is:
http://lojaairsoft.com.br/index.php
But this website doesn't follow almost any seo advice:
1. It has almost no backlinks at all
2. It has no good content (both on pages and doesn't have a blog)
3. url's are not user friendly
4. It doesn't have a mobile website
5. It has almost no presence on social media, with almost no interaction
6. It doesn't have H1
7. I doesnt have any "canonical" set
8. It has a lower DA
9. It has a lower PA
10. Moz metrics are lower
11. It is not as old as my target website...
12. .. I think you got the point.
And dispite all that the website do better than my website and also better then other websites with theoretically better 'seo'.
What is wrong? What I am missing? Does all these principals really matter for ranking?
-
I agree. And that is the reason why it is better to spend your time improving your website than worrying about a site above you that is impossible to understand. It's possible that they earned those rankings. It's possible that Google has incorrectly ranked them (which most often happens in low competition SERPs such as the ones here).
-
I think nobody can really tells me what's wrong and why a page that has several non optimzed seo issues rank better than a page with better seo optimization (onpage and backlink).
-
It is no good to know the tools are often wrong. I've been using about 5 tools to compare the results and they moslty shows the same.
But if we can't rely on the seo tools as well as on the seo fundamentals (as I showed comparing the 2 websites, better seo does not reflect on ranking) we are left with an trial and error situation...
tks for the advices.
-
The tools are often wrong, and should only be used as indicators. I try and do as many as three tests for the same problem. After time, you gain more confidence is some tools than others. Interesting your comments of page speed, as you should be able to check the history on those services and see if you can identify an issue.
On user experience though there is some argument not from me though - Google has been constantly improving their algorithms to improve searcher experience, and a factor is clicks. Actually it is not the click that is important though google see all, it is what happens with the user after they click through. If the customer sticks around and completes some on page tasks, google considers this a positive on rankings. After all, if there are large numbers of people clicking on your links, and completing transactions on page then you must be providing searchers with relevant information or services.
So if you are confident with everything else then go back to user experience. Do not do it yourself - get a person you do not know to compare the two sites. Then listen to there feedback.. (don't be defensive as I often am) the customers is always right...
-
First thank you all for your comments.
Regarding page speed, how did you get that? I mean. I run a speed test at least once a day an at least for me the results showed are not like that. On pingdom tools I get 85/100.. On webpageteat I get A rating for all and on gtmetrix I'm getting 82% score. Usually load time is around 1,5s... My results are better than the competitor I have pointed using webpage test, page speed insight, gtmetrix and pingdom ...
so I'm confused about this 30 s ...
Anyway im not trying to get any short cut... and it is a not a 5 min setup...
I'll check usability as you pointed as well but putting website 1x1 my website do better on: backlinks, page authority, h1, alt image (90% of images do have them), url structure is user friendly, content, meta/title tags, mobile friendly, speed and on any seo tool available, including moz, semrush, cognitiveseo, seoquake... Are all these tools wrong ?
-
There are two fundamentals that need to be addressed:-
Page speed - I just ran a test on webpagetest and your loading time was 33 seconds. Your repeat view was 30 seconds. That is actually the slowest I have ever seen. I would imagine 70% of your problem is there.
Secondly CTR is not a factor however what customers do after they click through is a factor. I imagine the other site has a better/easier user experience. It looked slightly better from a quick look.
It appears you are are looking for short cuts and doing things quickly. Stop!! slowdown and tackle each element properly and meticulously. Richard has made some excellent points and if true that is not great. So I urge you to slow down - go through a proper audit of your site and actually check each element and then tackle it properly. Go back to the fundamentals, just because you spent 5 minutes on it does not mean you have done it properly.
Apologies if a bit blunt but the page speed result was a shocker - I believe that is an indicia for a patches rather than solutions.
-
It makes sense and we can't inspect that to compare. But are this so much a ranking factor more than backlinks, content, friendly url, mobile friendly, social media presence, h1, canonical, DA, PA, website age....
Regarding speed:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.qgairsoft.com.br/S1VhjII1 x https://gtmetrix.com/reports/lojaairsoft.com.br/JeiT3Q8j
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150726_XM_RB4/ x http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150726_0C_RE1/
-
I agree and I'm working on that.
The problem is that it is even with all these issues my target website is still better than the other website on all those aspects I have pointed. At least all seo tool that I run to compare both websites, my target one do better, regarding alt image, links, titles, and so on. E.g., on a semrush audit scoring 70 x 46 ... for sorting issue we are using rel=canonical... for layered navigation results we are using NOINDEX, FOLLOW to avoid duplicate content.
There is also the backlink issue. This is said to be a major ranking factor but the competitor has no backlinks... See my point?
-
You site doesn't really follow on-site best practices. For instance, you have a large amount of links on each page, few images are using alt text, the titles look keyword stuffed and most are far longer than they should be (some are 6x longer than they should be,) your sorting system is causing duplicate content issues which looks like the solution for was to noindex and canonical the pages, which should never both be done. I'm also not seeing any real product descriptions other than what are likely manufacturer specs.
I would stop worrying so much about your competitor and get your own site in order.
-
Hi Paolo,
It is very likely(or actually proven), that Google considers GA data as well. So it could be, that engagement and CvR is relatively high. That many people are visting your competitors site without bouncing. It is not unlikely that Google interprets this in the way, that searchers are happy with what they find on position 1.
Another aspect might be the site speed. As you will know, it has an major impact on site performance and user satisfaction as well. Probably the navigation and internal links are set in a way, the crawler and the visitor expects them to see.
So to sum up: I truly believe, that your bullet points do have a positive impact on rankings and are accurate. Though as many other aspect are influencing rankings too, they are not a guarantee like. (Make sure to get all this points right and you will go to number 1).
-
I'm not sure this is the case. These keywords have a lot of competion. On the adword it will show a low competition as these keywords are not allowed to be adwords promoted so there is no one making adds.
We have several seo principles that are supposed to work, like onpage and backlinks, but this competitor website doesnt follow any of this and rank better in a large range of keywords.
So that leads us to ask: Are backlinks that important? What about on page optimization?
I have listed several topics that are supposed to make you rank higher that are simply not reflection in the results on real life.....
tks, btw.
-
One reason for relatively unoptimized pages to rank high is, that the keyword you're looking at has low or no competition. I checked adword keyword planner really quick and it seems to be the case for your term. If you've optimized your page and your content better matches the searchers intent (CTR and Engagement on your site will proof) than it is very likely that you will go up. Give it some time though.
Cheers
M
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
-
Do many nofollow links from one website will hurt my website SEO?
Do many nofollow links from one website will hurt my website SEO? Please let me know. I am getting about 20 thousand UGC links from a news website after I posted one comment on an article. Please suggest asap.
Link Building | | mikeeb_50150 -
Recommendations on SEO Tools, Strategies and References
Hello all, I have been doing SEO/SEM work on some sites I own for a few years but now I am in a position where I need to handle these tasks for a significant numbers of clients on a freelance basis. Obviously, this requires much more work and organization as well as some additional tools to help. I was wondering if the experts on here could help me with the following: Does anyone know of any online step-by-step guides or checklists that highlight a comprehensive SEO and digital marketing strategy? This could be helpful while trying to juggle multiple projects at once and provide a blueprint that I can follow and alter as I go. What free project management tools do you recommend? I was thinking of using Wunderlist, Trello or Evernote to keep track of projects, but there may be other suggestions I am not aware of. I have it in my budget to spend about $200/month worth of paid tools. Which tools are best for keyword research, backlink analysis, search rankings etc.? I am currently testing out Moz and SEM Rush, but would like a wide variety of information that helps me efficiently execute a plan but without too much white noise. What are the best paid (or free) tools to accomplish this? What are the best references for Q&As and reference materials on strategies, etc. for when I need to deep dive and do some learning on the fly? Besides this website of course. Thanks for any help!!
Link Building | | ccdispoto2 -
SEO SEA strategy
Hi, At this time i encounter the next problem as SEO at a retailer. They increased there SEA budget on branded and non branded keywords the generate more traffic on the Adwords campaign. But Now the SEO traffic is decreasing and the SEA traffic is getting bigger and bigger. Especialy on mobile devices where you only see the adwords link and no organic link without scrolling. It's also good for the conversion rate, so we have to do this. But i am curious how other SEO's deal with this thing. What will you do to find new sources of organic traffic? Are you using more longtail keywords or low volume or other things. Like to hear from you. Grtz, Leonie
Link Building | | Leonie-Kramer0 -
Victim of negative SEO, but will this be believed if the client has not always been whiter than white?
A new client has come to me because they have found themselves in hot water with Google having received a manual spam action for unnatural inbound links. The sad case in this story is that I completely believe that the client has been a victim of an attack by a competitor. They finally made it onto page 1 in their competitive niche, and within a few days random links started appearing on spammy sites (often foreign language sites.) By the time the message came from Google about 2 weeks later several thousand of these links had been built. The first stage was to get the client to be very honest with me about anything he personally had done that might be considered manipulative. Unfortunately following some bad advice several months ago the client purchased one site-wide link (already in the process of removing it.) The same company that gave him this advice also built just under 100 links to his website (over the course of a couple of days) in early December. So - we know the client hasn't been whiter than white, and we are going to undo anything that he had responsibility for asap. We are also working to ensure that he is earning really high quality links in the right way (already have some great press coverage in the pipeline and are working on unique content.) My question is - given some past mistakes made by the client - is there any way that we credibly get across the fact that this recent huge volume of spam is absolutely nothing to do with him in a reconsideration request? Of course we can start work on removing these links and can disavow anything we can't remove - but my expectation is that should this be successful the same competitor is going to continue throwing spam links at my client. I appreciate that previous actions by the client would in themselves have been worthy of a manual spam action - but it seems far too much of a coincidence given the timing if this penalty was unrelated to the recent attack. I'd really appreciate any insights from the Moz community and will look forward to sharing our eventual success story as a YouMoz post! Tom
Link Building | | TomVolpe0 -
★Does syndication of a news features from high Profile site like TechCrunch have a negative SEO impact?
As a co-founder of a startup that is weekly featured on high page rank news sites such as TechCrunch, The Next Web, TreeHugger , Yahoo News etc. These types of write ups are "SEO Gold" as they are high page rank sites with high relevancy to our sector and with unique good quality anchor text and copy. However... Within hours of each post going live the content and links are syndicated either via RSS or scraped and appear as duplicate content on in some cases 100's of very low quality and low relevancy content aggregation sites. To give you an example here are just two of the sites that are now appearing as linking domains due to this syndicated content and the links included in the article. Examples : Eco Market, The “Etsy For Eco,” Rebrands, Revamps, Raises & Prepares A U.S. Launch Sarah Perez | Technology | Page 4 The above are just a couple of examples amongst 100's that result from each feature. I would like to hear you opinion on if these links would be considered natural and you feel I should not take action or if you think these need removing by contacting the webmasters or disavowing the links? I am sure I cant be alone in having this problem and look forward to hearing you advice and tips
Link Building | | LiamPatterson0 -
Seo industry for seasonal items
Just wondering what type of link building people do for seasonal sites take http://www.sukkahworld.com or http://www.wreathsgalore.com as an example Out of season nobody wants to talk about a Christmas wreath. Do you just a get links off topic or focus on on site content and then get all your links during your season?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
SEO Over-optimization
How do you know when your doing too much SEO? Started back on a couple of sites in which I had done very little to no Seo. Dont want to get an over-optimization penalty.
Link Building | | veed230 -
Wired image releases via Creative Commons for SEO
Wired Magazine has started to publish images under CC licence as reported here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/wired-releases-images-via-creative-commons-but-reopens-a-debate-on-what-noncommercial-means/ The images are found here http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2011/11/creative-commons/ They allow noncommercial use (though this is not clearly defined) and request to attribute to the original source and "ask for a link back to the original story where the photo first appeared". The latter does not seem to be compulsory, but of course is a great SEO tactic to generate deep links. What's your take on this? Does anyone have experience with providing image material with the request to attribute you as the original source?
Link Building | | zeepartner0