Can Someone explain why this site ranks #1 and #2? I am confused.
-
Hi everyone,
Here is my problem. This site: https://247ride.com/town-cars/ ranks for bunch of really good keywords. Such as lax car service, car service to lax etc. The keyword does not appear in Title tag, and only partially on meta description. The site's DA is 23 and PA is 22. Less than 29 links overall, and linking domains 8. Why in your opinion Google is ranking this page #1 and #2 for many competitive keywords. I know it's a hard question to ask but any input would be greatly appreciated. I am working really hard to rank for same keywords and so far i am at #11 position.
Thanks in advance,
Davit
-
Hi Davit,
Thanks for the links! I agree with you that it seems a bit weird seeing this business, with no GMB listing, doing so well organically. I looked at a few things I normally look at, and couldn't see a "easy" explanation.
So, I asked one of our organic SEO experts, Britney Muller, if she could take a glance at this, and she suggested a couple of things:
-
Your competitor has been around since 2006, so pretty established
-
Your competitor has invested in links, which appear to be paying off
-
"LAX car service" is one of the phrases they are doing best on, though they are not doing so well on other terms
-
They are investing heavily in PPC, which could be producing what she described as some sort of "halo" effect
Taking all of that into consideration, I do consider this competitor of yours as having earned rankings for this term that don't make immediate sense. Give this, I believe if you could hire a good company to do a full competitive audit for you, you should be able to map out a strategy to surpass them, but it may take some doing.
Hope you'll receive other feedback.
-
-
Hi Miriam,
Thank you for you answer.
One more thing I am not looking at the 3pack, only the organic results that appear below.
The page that I am trying to rank with is: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html. Our company is based in Washington DC but we launched in several cities about a year ago. LA is one of the cities that we would really like to rank in as there is a lot of business In Denver and Cleveland we have had good results but LA seems a bit harder. We have a GMB listing in LA linked to the above landing page. Now we are working on a complete site re-design to make it more user friendly and appealing to clients. When I mentioned their #1 or #2 position I was using Moz's Serp Analysis.
Oh one more thing I could not find their GMB listing, but the Yelp profile sucks big time- https://www.yelp.com/biz/24-7-ride-orange
1.5 stars with over 600 reviews.
-
Hi Davit,
Something very important to take into consideration here is that this is a local business and you are competing for local queries, including localized organic queries. This means that Google's local and organic results will be localized to the searcher, basically creating a scenario in which there are no static #1 rankings. Whether you are competing for geo-modified or non-modified keywords, the SERPs will change based on search language and searcher location.
It sounds like you've begun a competitive audit between yourself and this competitor (we have a free spreadsheet for doing that, mentioned in this blog post, if it helps). Have you studied the geographic relationship between your physical location, your competitor's physical location, the centroid of the city you're competing in, and the relationship of both your businesses in regards to the perimeters Google shows on the map when you look up your city? What are you seeing when you do so?
Also, if you can share your own domain, that should help the community better understand your scenario. Hope this helps!
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
-
Rankings Shifting for the Past 2-3 Years
For the past 2-3 years, my site’s organic rankings have been dramatically shifting, ranking well for a few days and then dropping for a month or two, then ranking again for a few days, and then dropping again. During the time of higher rankings, form submissions increase significantly. The ranking increases or decreases are typically between 10-30 spots each time. I’ve done everything I can think of to address any issues: improved speed, limited 404s, changed the architecture of the site, updated link anchor text, etc. Nothing seems to work. The site has 88% of its traffic coming from desktop, with 9% from mobile and 3% from tablet. The disparity between desktop and mobile leads me to believe that the ranking issues are mobile-related, especially now that Google is using mobile-first indexing. I thought dwell time could be an issue, but session duration is 2:07 minutes and bounce rate is under 60%, with an average of 2.27 pages per session. That doesn’t indicate any quality of traffic issues to me. There are no warnings in Google Search Console, and speed is 58 for mobile and 86 for desktop on Page Speed Insights. I’ve been doing SEO for 12 years, but this has me stumped. My top suspicions are: Speed issues on mobile Penalties for redirects from old website to the new website Penalties for anchor text for the old brand name instead of the new one. The site is https://dragonflydm.com Has anyone seen anything like this? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dragonflydm0 -
Looking for someone to help with a delisted site after a malicious hack
Hello, My website - www.musillawfirm.com was recently hacked and has been de-listed by google. It had some sort of a crypto mining script on it that I was able to remove. It shows up if you type in the domain but even a generic search for "musil law firm" does not show the site - it used to rank # 1 for that term and #1 or 2 for immigration lawyer in my local area. If anyone can assist me in getting it re-indexed please let me know and let me know how much it would cost. I tried getting it re-indexed through the search console, but no luck. Thank you kindly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musillawfirm0 -
Can I undo a 301 redirect? Will it penalize my ranking?
I'm in charge of building a website for a company that made a mess. They own domain xxx.it (xxx is not the real domain, just a placeholder). Some years ago they 301 redirected xxx.it to xxx.com (they just changed TLDs). Last year they 301 redirected xxx.com to yyy.com (so, they actually changed domains). Now, after 13 months, the company failed and the new leadership wants me to undo everything and 301 redirect from yyy.com to xxx.it. So: 301 redirect is permanent. So, conceptually it's wrong to undo it. What happens if I undo it? Will my ranking be penalized, even if a significant amount of time has passed (13 months)? Will crawlers detect a loop (even if i remove any 301 redirect from xxx.it and theorically break the loop)? Here is the potential loop: xxx.it -> xxx.com -> yyy.com -> xxx.it -> etc... All of the articles I found on the web are quite old and not clear about this topic, that's why I'm asking this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naska19900 -
What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term. I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same? Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxcdn0 -
Can I use the same set of social media accounts on two sites?
I have a client who's company name / main site name is not his name. All his social accounts connected to his site are in his name. The site is verified with Google Places, etc. Now he asked for me to create a site for him in his own name with some similar info and a lot of new info. The million dollar question is do I use the same social media accounts on the new site? Facebook, twitter, youtube, etc? Will that hurt the organic rankings of the main site? I've seen this similar situation before. You may have someone who works at a large corporation who is mentioned on the main site has their own personal profile site just about them. Where they can go more in depth about things they are doing. If the other set of social account where in the company name it would be a no brainer to create new social accounts in his name. The issue is the main companies social accounts are already in his name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markpine3600 -
Need help on SEO for my site. Can't figure out what is wrong.
My site, findyogi.com, isn't ranking well in google SERPs. For some good content and matching keyword, my pages are ranking 200+ whereas other sites that have similar or lower authority are ranking in top 10. I must be doing something fundamentally wrong but can't seem to figure out what. I am not looking at ranking 1 on google right now but my pages don't appear even on page 2-4. Sample Keyword- "Samsung galaxy s4 price in india" . Matching page - www.findyogi.com/mobiles/samsung/samsung-galaxy-s4-b94a37/price Please help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | namansr0 -
Why does this 1-page doorway rank #2?
Search on "santa cruz custom cabinets." In my SERPs, I'm seeing exact match santacruzcustomcabinets.com rank #2. This is a 1-page site provided by Yellow Book as part of an ad it sold to this cabinet shop. The site has no other pages, no inbound links, etc. So much for Google saying it's going to turn down the meter on exact match domains because that's all I see this website, if you want to call it that, has going for it. what do you see? Why is it ranked so high? Why is it above the site below it for example? And why doesn't Google lower the boom on Yellow Book for these doorway pages? Thought you'd all find this interesting. Any comments?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KatMouse0 -
How Does This Site Rank So Well?!
So this website -> http://bailbondsripoffreport.com/ Ranks on the First Page for the term "Bail Bonds" It's the spammiest crappiest piece of junk website ever! lol - How does this site rank so well, it's not even a year old and it's link structure is crap. Can I like report them and have them removed lol. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | utahseopros0