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 -
What to do about one site dominating search results? (multiple pages ranking)?
Anybody have thoughts on dealing with search results where the same site gets listed multiple times? "weebly vs wix" is one example (same site #1-3, repetitive articles, not crazy high authority), but I see this now and then. I know Google likes variety, so it's weird for me to see results like this dominating search results. Thoughts? What gets these sites to take over the top rankings for a specific term? Any way to rise up in this situation, outside of the usual? Any tips on duplicating this kind of success?
Competitive Research | | davidwaring0 -
How can stie A be outranking site B?
Hi everyone. I seem to have a lot of questions the past couple of days! Take a look at these two URLs: Site A: http://www.peachstateaudio.com/products/Mixing_Consoles/Digital_Consoles/Roland/peachstate-audio-roland-m200i Site B: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/roland-m-200i-digital-mixer I will mail 2-dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies to anyone who can tell me why Site A massively outranks Site B for the term "roland m-200i" - Seriously. Thanks in advance!
Competitive Research | | danatanseo0 -
Site Architecture for a Services Company
Hey everyone, I'm doing the keyword research for a new virtual assistant services website that I am building. Being that there's almost a limitless number of services that a customer can outsource to a virtual assistant, I have a lot of service keyword options. Here's the problem: I don't know how to layout my services in a scalable fashion so that I can continue to add onto the services list (each with their own unique and helpful page) after the website is published. I have two options: 1. Create a service page with categories, each with links to the individual services. Like on my competitor: http://www.virtualemployee.com/services but with links to pages focused on the individual service keyword (ex. virtual receptionist services). 2. Don't have a services page, but include the services as blog posts like on my competitor's website: http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/blog. Obviously, the blog would be much more "scalable" in the terms of adding more services. It also reduces a lot of clutter on my website. However, it's not categorized like the average service or e-commerce website. Not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing. What do you think? Your help would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | Stryde0 -
Is there a SEO Moz Competitor Analasys tool that will show me how many Vistors their site receives?
I'm trying to find out how much traffic a competitor gets. Is there an SEOmoz tool for this?
Competitive Research | | starkSEO0 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
My site is ranked in the top 5 for my keywords, but howcome I'm low in an organic search results for my key words?
Are the other factors such as page rank, Alexa rating and mozRank used to determine where I will show up in search results, over Goggle's key word rank for my key words?
Competitive Research | | allstatetransmission0 -
How can a site rank higher when you beat them by A LOT on virtually every SEOMOZ factor?
Any insight into what's driving these results would be appreciated. Another site ranks #6 and we rank #22 on a keyword that scores 67% for "Keyword Difficulty", but we score significantly higher than them on almost every ranking factor including having nearly 10 times more backlinks along with higher PA and DA scores,etc. Here is a comparison from the Keyword Difficulty Tool report. Question: What could be going on? Factor and ranking comparison (us v. them) with our higher rankings are listed first. PA: 61 v. 39, mozRank 5,85 v. 4,54, mozTrust 6.00 v. 5.49, mT/mR = 1.0 v. 1.2, total links = 4,198 v. 90, internal links = 4198 v 90, external links = 275 v. 57, followed links = 4171 v 85, no follow links = 27 v 5, linking root domains = 46 v 30 on-page grade = A v B broad keyword usage in title: yes v yes broad keyword usage in document: yes v yes keyword used in url = no v no keyword used in domain = partial v no KW exact match - no v no exact anchor text links = 2373 v 13 %links w/ exact anchor text = 56% v 14% linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 7 v 8 % linking root domains w/ exact anchor text = 15% v 26% partial anchor text links = 0 v 0 Domain Authority = 54 v 27 Domain mozRank = 5.4 v 3.2 Domain mozTrust = 5.8 v 3.7 DmT/DmR = 1.1 v 1.2 External links to domain 9261 v 63 Linking root domains to this domain = 355 v 33 linking c- blocks domains to domain = 267 v 30 tweets = 4 v 3 FB shares = 13 v 11 Google Plus one shares = 1 v 0
Competitive Research | | rickt0070