Can someone explain how a site with no DA, links or MozTrust, MozRank can rank #1 in the SERPs?

[TobiasM]

I do SEO for a legal site in the UK and one of the keywords I'm targeting is 'Criminal Defence Solicitors'. If you search this term in Google.co.uk this site comes top www.cdsolicitors.co.uk,  yet in my mozbar it has 0 links, 0 DA etc, I noticed it top a few weeks ago and thought something spammy was going on; I thought if I was patient, Google would remove it, however it still hasn't.

Can someone explain how it is top in the SERPs? I've never seen this before.

thanks

[FrontlineMobility]

Hello Friend!

Could be a stretch but since the SE can't read the flash version and that is the only version with domain authority the only thing they would be seeing is the title which is Criminal Defence Solicitors which could cause the SE to find the site most relevant? I'm not sure, it looks very strange, good luck on your quest for knowledge though!

Justin Smith

[randfish]

There's a few likely explanations, but it's hard to know for sure which of these (or what combination) is at work.

#1 - They redirected other pages/sites to this one recently and Linkscape hasn't yet seen it (or they're hiding it from all bots except Google/Bing). That could explain the fast rankings on a low quality site, and why we haven't seen any links to it.

#2 - The site recently started gaining links that are helping them rank that Linkscape has yet to catch. This is certainly possible, as the latest index launched earlier this week with data crawled the first 2.5 weeks of November. Lots of spammy sites will often get ranked based on crap links for a few days or weeks before being caught and pushed out of the SERPs. The next Linkscape update (likely mid-end of December, possibly as late as early January) should show it. You might also check Majestic's "fresh index" which doesn't offer metrics, but does have pretty fast updates.

#3 - The site's doing something very shady (cloaked redirects as mentioned above or links that only the engines' bots can see).

Hope that helps!

[TobiasM]

I initially thought it was anomaly also, however it's been hanging around for almost a month now.

I just would've expected it to drop some rankings already, wouldn't you?

[TobiasM]

but it's not an exact match domain!

[activitysuper]

well check out how many exact match domains rank #1 with no PR

[StalkerB]

Well, I don't think there is any SEO going on. That site has not been made to be more accessible to search engines (or users), however still ranks number one.

The exact match title, domain age and legit info on the site appear to be the only significant factors as I don't see a much else going on I'm not convinced they're doing anything dodgy though, just lucky.

Possibly an anomaly or perhaps as other factors catch up with it the site will drop in rank.

[TobiasM]

Thank you both for taking the time to answer however I'm not convinced with your answers. Domain age by itself is not really a powerful ranking factor (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-age-how-important-is-it-for-seo/7296/); if a domain has been around for a while it's generally acquired authority through links and social shares, these are the key factors with domain age.

The title does match the keyword I'm searching but there is absolutely no other content on the page.

SEOmoz may not be Google but it's only a pagerank 1 site according to my SEO book toolbar.

It just doesn't seem right, and I'm convinced there is something spammy going on here. If this is legit SEO, why isn't everyone doing the same?

thanks again

[StalkerB]

Well, the simple answer would be that SEOmoz isn't Google.

Just because SEOmoz haven't crawled any relevant links, etc doesn't mean that Google hasn't.

It is a horrid little site though, the HTML version has "INSERT TEXT HERE" all over it. I would say activitysuper may be on to something with the domain age, plus the fact that it's for a real company (lots of contact info).

[activitysuper]

Well the domain was registered in 2004, its using a .co.uk domain and its title tag is exactly the term.

I think the age of the domain is playing a big part of it.