Why do some websites that have hardly any backlinks, poorly optimised get placed above sites that are doing all they can with SEO?
-
For example take these two websites. www.rfasecurity.co.uk is a site that Iam working on and have had some success with yet snifferdogs.org.uk seems to be poorly optimised with little backlinks and still gets place higher. is it due to the key word in the domian name?
The key search word is sniffer dogs
New at this so any help would be appreciated
regards
Dave
-
I do some local SEO work and regularly see exact match domains with little or no other SEO positives (relevant links, great content etc) outperforming much better, optimised sites.
That is why people believe that exact match domains have to be knocked down a peg or two at some point although it doesn't seem to have happened yet.
My advice is to continue to ensure you have relevant, keyword targetted, unique content and to build up your link profile so that even if that isn't enough currently to overtake the exact match domain site, when the expected algorithmic tweak occurs the site is perfectly placed to leapfrog its rivals.
Likewise where I manage/advise sites with exact match domains I tell them not to be too complacent and that they have to follow the best practices so that if they lose their domain name advantage at some point in the future that the site will still remain number 1 on merit.
-
Thank Barry for your comments which are taken on board. Dont you just love SEO? We must of jumped a place overnight how weird is that?
-
I see you ranking higher than them.
However, that video the EGOL linked to and the exact match domain are definitely things to recognise.
-
Hi, had a look at the video, and understand whats being said, but still doesnt stack up in this case. If the site had great content then OK that combined with the domain i could live with. I need more evidence somehow
-
thanks I will have a look now and come back to you,
-
ExactMatch.com keyword domains tend to rank a little higher than optimization and backlinks warrant.
However, watch Matt Cutts in this video....
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
-
How does this site get a youtube backlink?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzMdpgJ-7Is is a video with a clickable external link to their website. How do they do this??
Competitive Research | | brianw100 -
Ecommerce seo - competitors are using spammy links to rank HELP
After setting up SEO Moz and whilst waiting for it to crawl my site i have checked out my competitors who are ranking for the keywords i am going after. It appears from what i can see in OSE that they are ranking with back links from spammy looking sites and lots of exact match anchor text. I have tried to match a few links with what they have currently without getting myself into anything too spammy but i really don't want to follow how they have done it exactly. The niche i am in is pretty boring but the rewards are great but i am finding creating content and distributing it correctly difficult which is why i need some help. My site is roughly 9 months old and the product descriptions are hand written trying to give as much info as possible with a hint of personality so no cookie cutter back of the box descriptions. i have matched a few of the links from competitors which weren't too spammy and as relevant as i could get to my niche, i have also created articles for some article directories - all of which isn't really getting me very far and i am running out of ideas on how to create new content & the types of new content to help me get back links naturally. If any of you friendly guys could offer me some assistance in setting up a basic seo campaign which would help me target my keywords i would be very much in your debt
Competitive Research | | GarethEJones0 -
Local SEO questions
Been getting into Local SEO a bit but still not completely up to speed on a few things. Would appreciate any input by experienced local SEO's to any parts of this: Ill ask my broader questions within the context of an example. I have a client who is a part of a keyword niche that isn't exactly what Google might consider "local". What i mean by this is that if you are a car accident lawyer and you type this into Google Google with spit out local results because it seems to know which terms are searched for with intent to find local results. This client makes essentially medical form software which I dont get any local results for when I search for their keywords. But they do have a local focus as in they have an address in a city which is a target market. The client told me they are looking to target other markets nationally as well down the road. However they don't have brick and mortar locations for these other cities so I am under the impression that it wouldn't be something we could target locally. This brings up a strange question in my mind though - if you need an address for a physical location for each city you want target...if you want to target the whole country locally, you would need to have a location in every city? Is there any way to target local focus without purchasing a new office in every city you target? Or can you target a state with one office etc or is Google bond things down to cities or understood regions? Does it sound like this company should even be doing local? The last part to this is whether or not there is any way (tool?) to figure out what local areas are searching for you keywords? Why doesn't Google allow us to use the Keyword Search Tool to see traffic etc for more than just a nation or the globe? What I would love to see is, which cities get the most traffic for X keyword term and have the lowest competition. Then it might justify having to buy some Regis office in a random location. I feel like this doesn't exist but maybe some of you have some ideas to direct me...
Competitive Research | | eastco0 -
Local/Geo-Targeted SEO Keywords
Hey everyone, I work for a local jeweler who only has one store and wants to rank for geo-targeted and local results. We want to rank for "jewelry Minneapolis", "Minnesota engagement rings" and terms like that, since we're not an e-tailer we don't need to rank nationally... just in the MSP metro. I've been trying to find a service that has accurate search volume information for local search. I want to see how many searches are being conducted for various terms so I know where to focus our time and effort to rank for these terms. Does such a service exist? Or something that is more geared toward a strictly local strategy such as ours? Thanks in advance for all of your assistance! Jayme
Competitive Research | | jpretz0 -
I don't get it
Hi...I'm new here....not a professional SEO at all....just been teaching myself as much as I can about SEO on my own as I'm a small business owner desperately trying to make something out of herself. Could use your thoughts on this...please forgive me if this isn't your usual type of question you get here: so...I've been going through all the suggestions for on page optimisation and researching competitors links given through this lovely SEO Moz pro account . One competitor in particular....has spammed A LOT of sites...I think she's hired some company to do it for her. There's article submissions that don't even sound like they are written by someone who speaks English and very low quality sites for back links including some with adult content...however she's got thousands of these links so she ranks extremely high on all keywords. All her pages have very high keyword density and could be accused of keyword stuffing big time. I put her website through the SEOmoz grader....she's got a C and I've got an A. She's completely catered her site to Google not the customer and its obvious. But other competitors in my product have started doing the same thing as this gal and low and behold their sites are popping up in google searches also. Beginning to feel frustrated with my hours of efforts and wondering how I can compete with people like this when I'm trying to be a good girl with Google and focus on creating a great site. My hits per day are increasing slowly, my Alexa rank (hoping this matters) is improving rapidly and you can actually find me on the google search when I couldn't before (I'm page 10 now yay) so I don't feel like a total failure but still am wondering if hitting page 1 for my keywords will happen this lifetime. Why does Google seem to reward people who go against all these countless books and resources on SEO I'm reading? Could use any thoughts/suggestions you might have on this matter. Thanks for your help. x
Competitive Research | | ldnwickless0 -
Why does website rank? PA-39 DA-24
This website is pretty nice, well done. The few links they do have are nice and clean, from his brothers website, very much white hat. However, it appears that they aren't doing much of anything from an SEO standpoint. This site, is PA31 DA21 is also doing unusually well. In both cases, these guy are outranking the best know, most famous, and most trusted company in the industry who is PA84 DA81. This is a HUGE company that wins the most awards and gets tons of media coverage both in print and on televisiton shows. I'm also noticing that the websites that are ranking well in my niche (every keyword) all have the name of their company at the beginning of the title tag, those with the name of the company at the end of the title tag are consistantly a few ranks lower. This seems to be consistant across all search terms. My niche is highly competitive for a very low amount of traffic. Adwords is crazy expensive for some of these keywords! That said, one valid sale generates a significant amount of money. Would love to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking the first company is being treated so well becase G considers them to be virgins, the purist of white?
Competitive Research | | dmac0 -
Google Places - Top Listing & Strange Analytics
Hello, we have been working with this customer for a few years, doing their PPC, organic marketing, and we had established one google places listing for them as well. I guess the owner got sold on having someone else work with us to do google places for an additional office location they recently set up, and for whatever reason, they bypassed having us do it. This company never gained FTP access to the website. And despite heavy competition (apparantly), they have that new location listed in the #1 - A spot, without making any changes to the website. And, to top it off, when you review the Google places performance, there is a weird result I had never before seen labeled as "* loc:". You can see what I'm talking in both screen shots. Is there any guidance you can offer, first as to what that listing label means, and second, do you have any ideas how to 'reverse engineer' how they were able to get top listing so quickly for our customer like that? local_results.jpg local_analytics.jpg
Competitive Research | | JerDoggMckoy0 -
How do you perform competitive research for SEO?
What metrics tell you the most when you're looking at your competitors across the search landscape? PageRank/MozRank Inbound links Keyword rankings Alexa/QuantCast/etc. Pages indexed Something else entirely? What numbers speak volumes to you when you want to get an idea of how you benchmark against your competitors? And how do you communicate these results?
Competitive Research | | jcolman2