Competitor Ranks Top Keywords Without Backlinks
-
One of my competitors is ranking very well for many different competitive keywords (1k+ searches per month).
I'm trying to figure out how in the world he is ranking so well. I've signed up for MozPro and looked at his back-links. He has 1 branded site-wide back-link from a decent blog. He also has 1 contextual back-link from a decent blog. Other than these 2 back-links, the rest are garbage links unlikely to even count for anything (he has maybe 12 of these low quality back-links).
My website on the other hand has more than 15 back-links from different (high quality) websites and does not rank anywhere near this competitor. This leads me to believe that either MozPro back-link reporting is inadequate or there is foul-play on the part of my competitor.
As far as on-page SEO is considered, his website is far inferior. Therefore, I highly doubt this would play a role.
What are some reasonable approaches I can take to better understand the cause of this discrepancy. Clearly the back-link reporting has not revealed any answers.
-
Hi There,
There are lots of different factors that come into play when it comes to page rankings! (Although you are certainly on the right track here with backlinks...these are very important to have).
I would suggest that you:
- Increase the amount of pages (unique URLs) that you have and make sure that the content on each of these pages is unique
- Use Google Webmaster Tools to find out if you have any duplicate meta descriptions or title tags. These should never be duplicated on your site. You will go to Google Webmaster Tools (also called Google Search Console), then click Search Appearance, then click HTML Improvements.
- Domain Authority comes into play as well so if your competitor's site is older than yours, this would attribute to his higher ranking.
If none of these basic steps are working to solve your issue then I strongly recommend you hire a professional Internet Marketing Company (such as ourselves!) to look more deeply into this ranking issue. Blue Corona offers extensive competitor analysis' and we are confident that our team of experts will be able to find out why your competitor is ranking so well and we will do everything in our power to get you on the same playing field as them
Hope this was helpful!
-Your friends at Blue Corona
-
Difference between 12 and 15 backlinks is basically 0 when it comes to ranking. Not sure what you mean by inferior optimization, but there are hundreds of factors in play. Your competitor's domain can be older, can be the first to start targeting this keyword, can have better CTR and behavioral factors and so on, lot's of things that you can't check without accessing your competitor's GA account.
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
-
Why does this site atlantapestcontrol.com rank so high?
I have been doing competitive research on the keyword phrase "atlanta pest control" this website atlantapestcontrol.com is #1. Why? The number 2 website makes some sense for its rank, but this one does not.
Competitive Research | | SammyL300660 -
How can this website be ranking so well?!
This website: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.webuycarsyourway.com.au is ranking on page one for about 75% of a list of 300 car related keywords. They don't appear to have done any link building, no social media, appeared out of nowhere in April 2012 and SEMRush reports between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors per month. The only thing I can see is they have a landing page for every keyword with the keyword in the URL. But surely that can't be the only reason they're ranking well ? ?
Competitive Research | | eatyourveggies0 -
Effort for "moderate competition" keywords
I'm rather new to this, and while I'm getting some sense of everything I'm trying to figure out what kind of scope of work lays ahead of me. The keywords I'm looking to rank for are "moderate difficulty" -- somewhere between the 45%-55% "difficulty scale" on seomoz's keyword difficulty report. Assuming I have a number of "A-grade" (according to SEOmoz's reports) optimized pages for these keywords, how many links of a given quality level should I be looking at building up? I mean, of course, the more the better, but if I'm gunning for high DA/PA pages, am I looking at dozens here or hundreds of such links? I can imagine that any answer isn't going to come with much specificity, but if there was just an "idea" of the scale of backlinking involved here, that'd be great!
Competitive Research | | yoni450 -
Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
Hi, I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days? According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL. You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain. So what are we supposed to do here? Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...) Do what they do? Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
Competitive Research | | Gamer070 -
SEOMoz bar shows competitors ranking higher in SERPS with less Moztrust and Mozrank?
We are targeting the term "wholesale fireworks" we are currently on page two and just completed some on page optimization. I noticed using the Mozbar that the SERP results on the first page show a site with near zero page rank, Moztrust, domain trust, etc.. It is steadily number two in SERPS. Our site is just as strong or stronger on these ratings as anyone on the first page. How is it possible that we are still hanging out on page 2?
Competitive Research | | devonkrusich0 -
Keyword based link problem on site
So I think I might have identified an issue with a site that I'm trying to get ranked for a specific keyword but, wanted to get some opinions before I started making some big changes on the site. On my homepage I have the keyword that I would like to be ranked for in the title lets say "Blue Widgets - Company Name', also on the home page I have some descriptions of our services including the keywords. I also have a couple of the keyword based links within in the content, navigation and footer. But these keyword based links all point to another page on the site: blue-widgets.htm. If I really want my home page to rank for the keyword "Blue Widgets' should all of these links point to the home page instead of the sub page? I know there are a great number of other factors that contribute to rankings but looking at my competition, this is something that they seem to be doing. The keyword based links within the content, navigation or footer all point to the homepage. I also have a higher Domain Authority than some of the sites that rank higher than me so I'm not sure if building more links is the answer. Of course I always want to build natural links but these sites don't seem to be doing that either. Any comments, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
Keywords in URL structure for Large Site
We are creating a national real estate website which will contain 2mil+ listings. Our aim is to compete with the National leaders in the field. We are trying to lock down a url structure and it basically comes down to if we should put a major keyword in the url structure or not. The structure would have regional keywords naturally. Its the addition of a more descriptive key word which is in question. Our domain name has no keywords in it. For the sake of this example, we would be targeting "city real estate"... oursite.com/real-estate/state/city/ or oursite.com/state/city/ Here is what the big sites use as an example: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/New-York-NY/ http://www.trulia.com/NY/New_York/ http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/New_York-New_York/ http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-York Id love to not have to throw keywords in there and be as clean as possible but i also dont want to shoot myself in the foot. The big boys do add additional keywords in the url, does that mean we should? Id much rather be a leader than a follower but again, I dont want to mess this up from the start and these guys have probably tested this (or have they?). Input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | cobbsfriedman0 -
Competitor Ranking High has 2 Domains, But Duplicate Website ?
I was using OSE and noticed all the backlinks to one of our competitors is there other domain name, which is the EXACT SAME website. You can enter both url's and they display the same content. They are not useing any canonical tags either. Why are they not penalized for duplicate content? And for using there own website for backlinks ? We try to do everything right, but still cannot beat them. Any thoughts on this?
Competitive Research | | hfranz0