How can competition outrank you if your site has better Domain/Page Authority, More links, and More Social sharing?

[webestate]

Say you have a site that has better Domain/page authority, more links, more social media sharing, and a lot more indexed pages (thanks to blogging) than the competition.

Of course all of these metrics are based off of data from SEOMoz open site explorer tool which I am not sure if it produces accurate data.

1.  Other than exact match domains or the age of a domain what would be other reasons why competition would outrank you?

2.  Can anyone suggest other ways to help increase a sites domain/page authority besides creating more indexed pages, link building, etc..?

[Zoolander]

I have 2 free eBooks which got me to 9 on Google US for a secondary and 20 - 30 for my main primary keywords.  I'm new to SEO joined SEO moz abour 2 months ago.

scribd dot com for example is Page and Domain Authority over 90, I've a link on there but I don't know if they give juice.  Free ebooks dot net have over 70 P and D authority.

A free eBook you can use forever with no duplicate content issues becasue it's either downloaded or linked to your page to download (I might be wrong as the book description is the same).  Either way it gets me access to many places I would otherwise not get.  I've already been contacted by a charity (for children's literature) to use / link to one of them.

While I was writing it I would never have dreamed to give it away for free so I put a lot of effort in at the time, it is 132 pages long (the guitar one).  If you're writing an eBook that you know will be free you have to make it good, like 50 pages, and good enough content that your link is merely informative.   Because I write books this suits me but if there's an area you are knowledgable about then it could be something to consider.

[JaredMumford]

Nathan - the truth is that simply having more social media signals, more links and more indexed pages doesnt mean you will outrank a competitor. Although theses statistics may give you a better DA than your competitors, that metric is used more as a general reference. What you should be doing is breaking down the three signals above as follows:

1. Social Media: OK so you have a lot of 'likes' - are people tweeting, posting on your fb page? Bookmarking? Social activity is the big signal.

2. You have more links - are they relevant? Are they from separate relevant domains? I've had instances where clients come on board and say "I have 5000 links and my competitor has 200 and they outrank me". Further investigation shows that the '5000' links were from only 58 domains, most of which were spammy blog links that were not directly relevant in content (paid blog networks). The competitor however, had 200 links from about 150 domains, and many of those domains were specifically about the vertical. In other words, they were natural relevant links.

3. A lot more indexed pages. Again this means nothing - what matters is that each page has value, is unique and informative according to Google. In fact, if the pages aren't deemed informative and unique, having more indexed pages can be harmful. Just because Google hasn't dropped duplicate/spammy pages from their index doesn't mean that they are 'helping' you rank. In this case you are blogging so as long as the blog posts are unique then you should be ok, but always remember quality not quantity.

[webestate]

On page is good however can always be tweaked a bit.  Site is all about one topic so very relevant.

Domain Auth = 41

Page Auth = 51

[webestate]

Thanks Egol.  What is your website?  I would like to check it out.

[CMC-SD]

Useful content, amusing copy, appealing design, intuitive navigation, easily crawled HTML ...

[EGOL]

I am making more content, better content, videos, free printables, expanding my keyword reach.  I make sharing very easy with addthis buttons.

Traffic is going up every month, sales are going up every month.... eventually I will overtake them on the "trophy keywords" but for now I am gutting them everywhere else.

[webestate]

When you say focus on making a better website what do you mean by that?

[nyanainc]

Even if its little hard the answer I have to agree with Egol. (few times he did it also to me) but not always the truth is soft. I think you should start to look what you did wrong, and maybe study more in the seomoz resources to find out how to build a fantastic site. By the way, in case you are buying the links,social shares Google knows it. I saw a special offer few days ago (somebody send me in my twitter inbox) where you could buy plus,tweets etc. I dont know how they do it but for shure Google know it that they are fake. So check where is your mistake and correct it...Im shure that you will recover if you do it right. Thanks

[CMC-SD]

Everything you mentioned is about links. What about relevancy? How's your on-page optimization? Your anchor text?

[EGOL]

1.  Other than exact match domains or the age of a domain what would be other reasons why competition would outrank you?

Google thinks that they have a better website.

2.  Can anyone suggest other ways to help increase a sites domain/page authority besides creating more indexed pages, link building, etc..?

You have probably decided for yourself that these metrics do not translate into google rankings... so placing your focus on making a better website in the eyes of google would give you a better return.