Hi. One of our competitors is ranking ahead of us on Google. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor. Would anyone have any explanations for this? Thanks
-
Hi Guys - I've noticed recently that one of our competitors is ranking extremely well on Google, while we seem to be fluctuating, along with other competitors, for our main keywords. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor and traffic is continuously increasing each month. Would anyone have any explanations as to why we may be seeing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
-
Hi Barry, further to your note about volume, whilst it is good to be adding new content, short or long is not necessarily best. I would rather focus on genuine quality and answering a users intent over adding lots of content that may not serve or fulfil a users needs. Have you performed an audit on your competitors site, are they answering topics or user queries better? And what content are you serving? Are you in a niche market?
-
Hi Brett,
Thanks for your response.
In terms of content, we're sticking to a schedule of three short blogs per week and one long blog monthly, targeting our various keywords - promoting this content across our social channels and with some PR monthly. This particular competitor doesn't appear to be producing content. We've also put a big focus on our on-site and technique SEO recently, and keep on top of all issues that arise, while also having a pretty strong internal link structure with figures for this show up pretty high in comparison to this certain competitor.
We can't understand this movement.
Thanks
-
Hi barryhq, Google has in the past called the top three components of their algorithm Content, Links, and RankBrain, without naming a particular order. It sounds like you've worked hard on links, so good job! Your problem is therefore potentially related to content (ignore RankBrain, you can't really optimize for it).
So let's talk about content. When you do your keyword research, try to focus in on the searcher's intent. What tasks are they possibly trying to solve that Google is surfacing that aren't addressed on your webpage? You can learn this by studying other top results, related searches, people also ask, etc. For example, if one of the keywords you have is "best running shoes" then you know people are doing comparison shopping and including content that compares the top running shoes on your page will help you rank for that. And it's entirely possible that you'll discover in this process that your website is not a suitable match for the keywords you've targeted. I've seen this happen with clients who pick a phrase without doing the research required to make an informed decision and end up targeting something they can never rank for.
It's also possible that you have technical SEO issues, like canonicalization or poor internal link structure or cannibalization that's making it harder to rank, but assuming that your technical SEO game is on point I would recommend focusing on content.
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
-
Block Links From Spam sites
can you block links from other websites?ie: links backlinking to your site, causing a high spam score.
Link Building | | Socialdom0 -
Paid link with high quality content
I know paid links is against google's policy. But what if I have a very quality content including my paid link on blogger's site referencing to my site.
Link Building | | zeitnot
Is it counted as an ad or spammy content which leads to penalization by search engines ?0 -
Site DA and rank is not increasing
Hy, My site https://cocpureapk.com/ DA is Still 1. I am Publishing the content regularly, Site age is 6 months But Still DA and PA are 1 and rank is still not increasing.. Why its not increasing. Is there any way to increase DA and rank Of my site?
Link Building | | ikzayahot0 -
Should I disavow spammy links that are showing in Open Site Explorer but not showing in Google Webmaster Tools?
Howdy Mozzers, After carrying out a backlink audit for a client, Open Site Explorer shows a range of outrageously spammy links for guys wanting a bit of assistance in the bedroom area, and so on. Hopping over to Google Webmaster Tools, there is no reported trace of said spammy links (for either of the www/non-www versions of the site). There are also no manual webspam actions found on the www/non-www Google Webmaster Tools accounts for this website. So my question is: do I carry out a pre-emptive strike and go down the disavow process of requesting removal from the spammy sites, and then submit a disavow request to Google after allowing a suitable period of time for the junky/compromised website to (not) respond? Or do I just leave it alone? Thanks in advance for your wise words of wisdom and pearls of clarity.
Link Building | | wh-seo0 -
Can a feeder site link directly to the main site?
I have a client that has several coupons sites. They have about 15 different URLS all of which are [city]deals.com all of the domains have coupons lists that are relevant to that area. Other than the coupons there is not any other content on the sites. There is a Main site however, that has coupons, content, store locations, blogs, news etc... The coupons on the feeder sites are displayed differently than what is displayed on the main site. They are also categorized differently. So the question is on the feeder sites can they have the coupon link directly to the store page on the main site?
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
What do you when the wrong site links to you?
In doing research of our backlink profile, I've found a couple dozen of links from off-topic websites linking to us. You see, our domain is Voices.com and tends to scoop up links from unrelated sites that are clearly trying to link to another site such as evp-voices.com or areavoices.com or dozens of others. What would you do? Ask the webmaster to remove them because they are completely unrelated? Or would you keep them if you believed they aren't causing any harm?
Link Building | | voicesdotcom0 -
OSE shows links on sites but can't find links
Hi mozzers, I'm cleaning up our backlink profile and looking up anchortexts in OSE. I downloaded and selected one anchortext. However when I go to the sites OSE found, I can't find the links. I look in the source code and onpage keywords. Is it because of my lack of skills that I can't find the links 🙂 or isn't OSE working properly.
Link Building | | StephWeigert0 -
Does Google see this as an inbound link?
Hi, I'm looking at adding my site to a directory. It's highly relevant to my industry and has relatively good PA/DA. The external links on the directory uses some PHP code like the following: http://www.ThisDirectory.com/visit.php?i=3141635&url=http://www.ExternalDomain.com Obviously the links works as a redirect but they do not show up in OSE. Would Google count this link as an inbound link? Thanks,
Link Building | | Confetti_Wedding0