How does a site get to no 3 in Google with no KW in their links?!!
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Hello everyone, my first post - ahhh
I'm investigating a niche and there is a site that should have no right being there in my view.
It's no. 3 Google UK for 'company formation' with a small site with 65 weak links from only 7 domains and hosted in the US.
But more importantly, the Open Site Explorer says there is not 1 link with that term in its anchor text. This I find crazy and makes me suspicious.
But before I go back to my client saying "oh they must be black hat" I would like your expert views. I'm not sure whether to tut or congratulate them and for the first time I'm not sure what reasons to give for their amazing performance!
What's your views?
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Yeah tried that, only 3 in Google and stopped my Magestic subscription.
I'll accept it for now and move on, but I haven't come across a white hat site that doesnt give some indication of why they rank so highly. This site goes against the grain with me in so many ways that it looks suspect.
The big issue is as 'the SEO expert' I have a question mark and the client will want to know why I dont know.
I'll just have to bump them down with my client's site wont I. Thanks for the reply.
Oh and nice G btw ;o)
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Hi Stuart,
Even though OpenSiteExplorer has a decent index, it doesn't have all the data Google has. You might want to look into other sources like MajesticSEO, Google link: command or Yahoo Site Explorer Inlinks.
Recently, I was also looking at a competitor website and I was like "man, how can they rank for that query with such a low number of links and no good anchor text". I discovered that using the link: command on Google returned much more links than OSE.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Did anyone else have a thought on this or shall I give up on SEO and just invest in EMD's! (joke).
Although I appreciate one members view I would like another, as I persoanlly cant believe that they have the strength to be where they are just based on the domain.
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Exact match domains are still very powerful in Google. Matt Cutts said the team was going to look at them in 2011, but that has not happened yet to my knowledge and even if they do, no guarantees of if or when they'll make an algorithm adjustment.
It is an exact match domain because the term "company formation" is in the URL, it's just the words are switched. But the phrase still appears in the URL and none of the other URLs are like that.
Right, they're only ranking because of their domain, at least in my opinion. Their DomainAuthority is very weak otherwise compared to the others.
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Thanks for the response, I didnt say which domain but I dont consider www.theformationscompany.com/ to be exact match; it is they Im confused about.
As I understand EMD are not so powerful anymore in Google' s eyes, just that you get great backlink anchor text even with directory submissions.
Plus the main point is the strength of all the sites around them. I would Put them on page 4 at best!
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I looked up the domain you're referring to.
The easy answer? They have an exact match domain. They have a somewhat okay title tag, and they do have backlinks.
Exact match domains are way overpowered and I think this is the case for this term!
It's not blackhat, just taking advantage of EMD's.
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