Competitor's new site ranking with out much keywords - How?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

One of our competitors have recently redesigned their website with new content. Now I can see much less keywords in the content. And page title also changed away from keywords. Still this is ranking at good position. How? Previously they used to have much landing pages with related keywords which some of them are missing now. Still I wonder why this website is ranking high?

Thanks

[Katarina-Borovska]

Hi there,

Keywords are just one of the factors - probably the most obvious one.

However, without you noticing, they might have rebuilt the website's foundations which means the website is improved technically - stronger and faster. Obviously, we would need to analyse before & after, but it can be anything from responsive design, accelerated mobile pages, internal links and overall site structure (even thought it might seem the same).

It can also be any of the following: gained a number of good backlinks (e.g. launched an intensive backlink strategy), increased their traffic, reduced their bounce rate, improved the quality of their reduced content, focused on meta descriptions, increased their social following/engagement/shares etc. Perhaps you have noticed they changed their URL structure? This could deliver good results too.

So without any further info, it is very difficult to tell as it can be a few of the factors I mentioned above.

Thanks.

Kat

[BartonInteractive]

It may also be worth mentioning also that there are many other important factors beyond keywords. You find the following article very helpful:

Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List by Brian Dean for Backlinko
http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

Best,
Zack

[Kelly_Edwards]

If they've improved the customer experience on their site and the keywords they're ranking for are still relevant (with link building to support those keywords) then it would make sense that they are still ranking.

It sounds as if they might have made a commercial decision to reduce the number of pages and not to be spammy with keywords in order to increase engagement - does that sound right?

May be worth checking their meta titles and internal links to see if they are still the same.