Spam affiliate outranking quality site?
-
I purchased a site hotkeyit.com which was making decent revenue without much work (all via PPC or CPM) but then afterwards started looking at the SERPs and realized I was being outranked for the main term, 'starcraft 2 guide/s' by crappy ClickBank sites like starcraft2guide.com and many others. Researching starcraft2guide.com specifically in SEOMoz/Rush/Majestic shows hotkeyit.com as being quite superior in everyway, not to mention it has quite a social following for a small gaming site, yet Google seems to care not.
Can someone please explain what's going on here? It seems like the site was penalized, but there was never any link building done for it aside from word of mouth on forums (this was mentioned beforehand).
Thank you everyone.
-
Yeah, it seems that it may have something to do with the lack of varied linking root domains. I'd do some link building and see what happens. Keep an eye on webmaster tools although it doesn't seem like you should have any penaltys. Just keep at it, check out the SEOmoz guide and you'll see those rankings rise.
Also, don't get stuck on a few keywords. Check out your analytics and see if there is any 'low hanging fruit' that's driving traffic and you may be able to boost your rankings for that.
-
This is the biggest disappointment with Google's rankings though. 70% of the sites above me are not even selling anything, they're just spun content with ClickBank hoplinks and they have terrible usability (even a bot can tell from the coding). Yet they still dominate me with far less of a link profile AND nothing to add to anyone.
And I don't believe it's just the EMD. It must be either something with my site that Google doesn't like (no clue) or they're doing something very tricky. I just wish these things were easy to discover. None of the SEOMoz tools seem to help at all, and cleary you guys, even as professionals, can't make it out =(
I'm being a whiny little bitch, but in this instance I can't help it. Once again, you guys rock.
-
You're welcome.
I also forgot to mention that your site has a very clean layout with a clear call to action. While you may have a hard time being #1 for some of those terms you can never forget the importance of usability and having your customers feel comfortable entering their personal information. Compared to your competition I would feel much better using your site than theirs.
-
I had no idea that keywords in the URL were that powerful. After you and Collin both mention it, I guess it must be a major factor. Seems pretty silly why Google would take that into account though, seeing as sites using EMD are more spammy than branded URLs (at least in my experience). How unfortunate.
Anyway, thank you, Joseph.
-
Some of the sites ranking on the first page are exact match or close to exact match domains which you can't ignore.
I also noticed that your site has a good amount of links but a lot are from the same domains while some of your competitors have a much more varied backlink profile. I'd open up open site explorer and compare your site to the competition, pay special attention to the links/linking root domains. I'd try to build a more diverse backlink profile.
You have a lot of likes, I'd add a google plus button as well, it can't hurt.
Good luck!
-
Thanks, Collin. We already do rank #4 and #1 for training and coaching. I really do appreciate the help.
If anyone really knows, please don't pass up... this is such a blatantly awkward situation that I'd really like to get to the bottom of it. AM sites in general seem to use a lot of blackhat techniques since the products they push are short-lived, but I can't seem to track down anything these sites are doing. They're just... ranking super well for no apparent reason.
-
This is purely anecdotal evidence, so take it with a grain of salt - but I've seen for myself and heard reports of Domain URL factoring in very prominently when it comes to SERP rankings.
That being said, I'm quite the gamer myself... when people search for "guides," I believe they are typically searching for things more along the lines of Walkthroughs and FAQs. What you seem to be offering is more accurately described as a training/coaching service. You can attempt to rank for "guides" if you like, but you'll almost certainly acquire higher quality traffic by focusing on the more relevant keywords of "coaching" &"training" and the like.
Just my 2 cents.
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
-
Cant find any keyword for my site
I searched for keyword rank for shoreloop.com but couldn't find any. What could be the problem?
Competitive Research | | killerseo20200 -
Non ecommerce site with high DA, being outranked by lower DA sites with ecommerce - help?
I have a website that we look after, up until January this year the rankings were really strong - the site has a much higher domain authority than the competitors, much more links and much more relevant content (all measured with moz's tools). About 6 months ago the rankings started to dive for national search terms. Now one thing ive noticed is that nearly all of the other sites in the search sell products online where we have no such function - could this be correlated - has anyone else experienced this?
Competitive Research | | rhysc1 -
Why would a newly created site, have ranked ahead of our site for keyword that we are optimized for?
This newly created site has a DA of 1 and PA of 1, no backlinks, no optimized urls, the keyword they ranked better than us on was listed a total of 6 times on the homepage. Our PA is 29 and DA is 18 for the page that ranks for this keyword. They really copied a few elements of our site but made sure to change a few things, but also list at the bottom of their site 5 keywords that are crucial to our niche industry but they're all linking to the same page. Any ideas? It's an SEO guy running the site, we've watched them toy with adwords trying to be number 1, but not liking the price, so they are here and there with it. Mainly I don't see why they'd rank better for this keyword, we our site have prolly 500% more content that's both of quality and relevance to our customers, in the form of Pdfs, infographics, help sections, and video. Very baffled here, any advice would rock!
Competitive Research | | Deacyde1 -
Finding new links to site
Is there a way to find sites that linked to my site during a certain time period? Say in the past 2 weeks or from March 1-March 15th ?
Competitive Research | | priceseo0 -
How Do You Create an excel spreadsheet of all blog post content on a site?
Is there a quick and easy way to create an excel spreadsheet with a list of all blog content and it's SEO factors i.e. URL, title, description, etc.? I know I could use screaming from to get the entire site but is there a way to just get the content on the blog?
Competitive Research | | RonMedlin0 -
Local Real Estate Site vs Larger National Sites
Hello all, I am a local realtor that created my website with an idx feed. I am on page one but at the bottom. Question is how can a local real estate website rank better in the SERPS than the larger national brands? Any tips out there from those who have worked with real estate websites and seo? I'm trying to out rank the larger sites for my main keywords. Thanks all.
Competitive Research | | bronxpad0 -
Image only site on top of Google
Hi Everyone, I'm trying to rank in Google for 'Hid xenon' in the netherlands, but there is one site above all results: http://bit.ly/qlsjne As you can see the site almost has no backlinks, and has not a single word in it's content, all images. it's a keyword only domain, and that's probably the only reason why it's ranking that high, but that means then that i can never get higher then him in Google because of it's domainname? Even when it's such a shitty site? Thank you, regards yannick
Competitive Research | | iwebdevnl0 -
IP Address Of Site
Hi there, really new to seo and loving being able to research everything on seo moz. I have a question about the ip address of my site: I use a company that sells templated real estate websites (I'm a realtor) and I'm noticing all of their websites show as having the same ip address. There are probably 100's of sites on their server targeting the same keywords as I am, would this affect my ranking at all? I'm just considering switching to a Wordpress site with a unique IP address, so I'm curious to find out how the seomoz members would answer this question. Cheers, Adrian
Competitive Research | | adrianaldous0