Whats the best way to see why your competitor is out ranking you?
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I am trying to rank in the number on position for Part Time CFO. Currently we are in 2nd and 3rd. We have way more quality inbound links then the site in first position, more content etc. How would you go about investigating why they are ahead of us?
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We have way more quality inbound links then the site in first position, more content etc. How would you go about investigating why they are ahead of us?
It sounds like you have already done the most basic research. If you want to go deeper you can also use the SEOMoz tools such as OpenSiteExplorer to get more data.
Whatever analysis that you use keep in mind that search engines don't reveal everything that they use to determine rankings and the answer "I got my asskicked" has to be accepted in many cases. And, anybody that thinks they can answer the question in every situation is simply fooling themself.
Getting practical. What difference does it make why they are above you? You know what it takes to improve your site and improve its status with the search engines so working on that will be a more productive use of your time.
Once you have clear goals set on what you can do to improve your site, in my opinion, you can then spend zero time trying to figure out why sites rank above you and all of your time working to beat them.
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Have you been comparing with Open Site Explorer? http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
I have experienced this myself when a competitor is ranking top with no explaination. It can be very frustrating but there is always something behind a No 1 ranked site.
If you want to send me the url's i will take a look.
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