How Are Competitor's With Zero Links (According to SEOmoz) Ranking Highly?
-
Hey everyone! This is my first post in the community after just signing up for SEOmoz. I've already got a ton of value from this community so I'm looking for to giving back as much as possible.
The keyword gets 8000+ monthly searches on Google. Not so many, but the keyword indicates high buying intention.
The funny thing is that the top ranking page has 0 backlinks (according to OSE). It seems as though there are some black hat tactics being used, as I doubt that they are ranking solely with on-page optimization.
Any idea what's going on? Have you guys/gals seen this before?
-
Thanks for the replies! It was simply the www subdomain throwing things off.
Now, I've got a clear picture of the link profile for these competitors. Thanks again for helping out!
-
Likely, you looked for backlinks to www.ambienmed.com. Try checking OSE for ambienmed.com (without the www):
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=ambienmed.com
Boom! 898 Links!
They may get busted eventually for anchor text optimization, with 114 links for "buy ambien". However, they've got 184 links with the url as the anchor so that seems to be helping them avoid Penguin for now.
-
Hi Edward, Welcome to SEOMoz!
There may be many reasons why the website in question is ranking higher than yours.
You'll need to factor in a couple of factors, regarding both your site and the competitiors.
How old is your domain? Theirs is almost 12 months old, which if I believe correctly, is long enough to avoid any 'youth website' penalisation. If yours is new then Google may not have crawled it properly yet.
Aside from this, OSE and Google do not share databases, therefore some pages that Google is aware of, OSE may not be aware of. Mozbot would need to follow links to the competitiors site for it to be added to the index (what I believe).
As a result of this, you will see 0 on the mozbar when infact there are some links pointing to it. In fact there are some (rather dodgy) links pointing to ambienmed:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=link%3Aambienmed.com&sugexp=chrome,mod=2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
On page content can also play a part in ranking factors. Ambienmed has a wealth of content on the home page which is very keyword heavy.
Also, as mentioned previously, your competitiors are fortunate enough to have an exact match domain name.
I hope some/all of this helps!
-
OSE is not working for me but I suggest searching using ambienmed.com (without the www.) as on Google they rank with ambienmed.com
This is a different subdomain and would be the reason there are no links to www.ambienmed.com
As well as that they are also in a fortunate position of having the keyword ambien in their domain name.
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
-
Links with high spam scores - how to delete?
A number of sites that link to mine have high spam score. I went to Google console to disavow them but they don't appear in the console. How can I get rid of these? Thanks.
Link Building | | wonderdome0 -
Has your site ever been targeted by malicious link building executed by a competitor?
I'm pretty sure one of my client's sites has been targeted by malicious black hat link building tactics employed by a competitor site. Over the last few weeks we've gotten 100s of super low quality spammy backlinks. No one has been doing link building, so the only thing I can think of is that competitor entered our URL into some spammy backlink building sites. Has anyone else experienced this? It's the real estate industry, so I wouldn't be surprised considering how competitive it is, but I'd love to hear your experiences.
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup1 -
Link building for a 'boring' eCommerce site
Hey all, I'm in need of some serious inspiration and I'm hoping one of you generous people can help. We're looking to do a spot of link building for an eCommerce site which I would describe (without putting it down too much) as 'boring'. This isn't our fault per se as the site sells printer cartridges and there's only a certain amount of excitement such a product can create. As a result natural linkbuilding is quite tricky, especially when it comes to creating links to anything other than our homepage. For the past couple of years we have focused on creating good content and indeed have a thriving database of hundreds of helpful articles and videos on the site. These are generating decent traffic (and rank #1 for many different help related search terms) but the problem with these articles is that they don’t convert in to sales at all well. I’m also conscious that it will ultimately end in us developing a link profile which would classify us as a printer repair resource rather than cartridge sales website. I have read numerous guides on Moz but they all tend to focus on products which are a little sexier than those that we sell. Getting someone to share and link to a truly unique product would be incredibly easy compared with asking someone to engage, share and link to the latest Epson cartridge. I started writing articles on some decent quality business blogs however the links given don’t look particularly natural and the link would always be to our homepage. We have the staff and the time but we built a whole host of rubbish links back before Penguin and I want to ensure that we are going to head in the right direction before embarking on something new. If you had a site which was really dull how would you devise a link building strategy that was relevant and, most importantly, natural? Thanks for your help. Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate1 -
Links from my Own Blog to my Own Website and Link Scheme
Hi There, I use my own blog to give advices and offer information related to my business service. Of course in terms of SEO my blog is useful not only to expand my brand presence but also to acquire long-tail traffic. I use to insert a maximum of one link with a relative matching anchor text in every article of my blog pointing to my own webpage. Said that, the questions are as follows: Am I involuntarily participating in a Link Scheme with my blog? And If so, how many links can I send to my own webpage ? Shall I limit the number of links to a minimum? Thanks a lot for your advices.
Link Building | | Midleton0 -
Link building strategy - my weak link!
Please help me understand link building. I've read the articles on Moz, but they seem vague to me. Specific questions: 1. How do I get my webpage on good quality sites? 2. Guest blogging? Good or not? 3. What about when people pick up one of our blog stories and publish it on their site with a link back? Is that bad now because it is duplicate content??? 4. Forum posts with a link in the signature? Good or not? 5. Directories - I get it that these are no longer good... are they severely negative? Should I take them down. 6. PR - Looks like this is bad... right??? 7. Youtube - any value? 8. Pinterst, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram? Any value to backlinks here? 9. What about sites like redit? 10. Anything else I should consider?
Link Building | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Track the links of your competitors?
What are the best tools to find the links gained on (monthly basis) by your competitors?
Link Building | | wellnesswooz0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
Can changing our links page make our rankings drop through the floor?
Hi all, When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page! Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful. My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends" I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess. However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones. Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours? If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us? Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? Look forward to hearing from y'all!
Link Building | | TEFLScot0