Why are my competitors ranking higher?
-
I know there could be numerous reasons here why they may be ranking higher but I hope I can get some answers from the details that I provide below
I am looking at one particular page so its
- www.mydomain.com/urlhere.html
- I have page rank 5 on this url
- I have had the domain for 7 years
- I have videos on this page (my competitors do too)
- I have 65 linking root domains
- 14,000 inbound links to this page.
- I have 6 keyword phrases in my title tag
My main competitor has a lot more pages and has been around longer, but has lower page rank and lower inbound links to that page. They also have less words in the title tag.
-
Again, it's really hard to hypothesize without knowing the specific site because there could be a ton of other things at play you may just not be seeing.
Videos are content so if they have a lot of videos, then they don't have 0 content. Especially if they have a transcript or CC file attached to it that can be crawled. And, if they have a video sitemap and how their hosting is set up all factor in to some degree.
Even with the changes to Google's algo, links are still powerful, especially links from .gov or .edu - just a few of those can mean more than tons of links from regular .com sites.
-
As in most cases of seo, there's always a slew of things. i've reduced the 404's but these shouldn't have any implication on my landing pages, the competitor in question certainly has more edu links. But i would not say they freshen the content more.
It is most probably better domain rank in that case, in which I will look into building my domain rank. and improving my on page optimisation (which im yet to figure out which is the best route through the other thread).
-
The strange thing that I find about my competitor is that they do not have great content, they actually have almost 0 content, and it is either filled with a video or a link to a site holding the video. What they do however have is age, they've been around for a very very long time, and have some edu links, but all in all, the site is really bad. Could those links be the only thing propping the page up?
I, in the mean time (in another thread) identified with the help of seomoz private some issues with my site, and i created another thread which relates to video, content and where they should be placed on a page and if ads above the fold hurt serps, but then you have the dilemna of loosing revenue.
I have started updating my content and providing very relevant and useful content.
-
Great point - the entire domain has influence. It's not just a page to page comparison.
-
I agree with Andrea's comments. I'd also like to highlight the answer from within the question.
"My main competitor has a lot more pages".
Great content, strengthens your entire website. Attracts more social media activity, more shares, more time spent on site etc etc. So If I were you, I'd see what I can do to provide useful content. Find the gaps. Look at your analytics, see what keywords people are using to come to your website. Do you update your content ? Is there an opportunity there ? If you can, see what people are looking for in your site-search.
I hope this helps.
-
It could be a whole slew of things, as you know, and if you'd share actual domains, it could help uncover reasons. Better on page optimization? Fewer 404 errors or technical hiccups? They may have fewer inbound links but do they have more .edu or .gov which have more credibility? Do they freshen their content more?
Less words in the title tag is a moot point - do they have better keywords? You say "lower inbound links to that page" when if, as a whole, they have a better domain rank (vs just page rank), that can influence.
There's a lot of ways that this can be sliced.
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
-
SEO rank down 35%
So I recently switched from an Opencart website to a Magento 2 website and my rank has dropped by 35% two weeks later, this is bad news. My old Magento website was 5 years old and was in desperate need of an upgrade, hence the Magento 2 site. I realised today that the canonical URLs on my stores were set to the individual stores as opposed to one store, thus I expect resulting in duplicate content issues (even though Google Webmaster Tools didn't show it). I'm just wondering if anyone else can see something I may be missing? My sites are: thespacecollective.com (primary) thespacecollective.com/us/ (canonical to primary) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
I am lost at where to go. My optimization rating is 95% + and rankings are on pages 4+. I would like to know what I should do to increase my rankings.
My site is Glare-Guard.com. My Domain Authority has not moved from 17 in a long time. i have done everything to optimize the different pages. I have 90%+ ratings for the various pages, yet I am still not even close to the first page for many of the keywords I am looking to rank for. Do you have any tips or ideas? Should I try to rewrite my content and add more information? I am just at a loss for where I should go to get the right traffic to my site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigskyinc0 -
Homepage not ranking for main keyword, all other pages ranking slightly for their own keyword phrases.
Dear Mozzers, We have an ecommerce website (www.pashmina-boutique.com), we want to rank the homepage for the keyword "pashmina". Problem is, we are nowhere to be found, not even in the top 100 search results of Google. It is indexed, we have no crawl errors, except that we had some problems with our hosting (503's), the crawler of Google bumped in a few of those. And we are fixing it. Our other pages, e.g. (http://www.pashmina-boutique.com/15-white-pashminas) ranks for "white pashminas" 24th and "white cashmere pashminas" 23rd. We have done no linkbuilding, in Majestic, you can check that. We have been offline for a long time (over 6 months) and about 3 weeks ago, we did a redesign (SEO). We relaunched, everything is looking fine except the homepage isn't ranking for the main keyword. Could you guys check it out? Is it over-optimization? It can't be Penguin, Panda would be a surprise too. Or do we still have to wait for the monthly Panda data-refresh? We are currently busy with this issue, once this is solved - that the homepage is ranking - we will start linkbuilding. Mr.1000
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr.10000 -
Loosing Ranking
Hi, I'm working on a real estate website last 2 years. I've get top position on local and organic search result. But last 2 month I'm loosing ranking on some keywords on both local and organic search. I'm doing boomarking, guest posting related to real estate and social media promotion but getting no result that's way I'm looking seo person for my website. Thanks and waiting for your feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KLLC0 -
Visited stats affecting rankings?
If visitor stats affect rankings should we be worried as we are making our website probably the most user friendly useful site in our field but this includes cutting down the time it takes for a user to order and our pages are also one page so all the information is there and easy to use the problem is this results in 1 page visits and probably one of the lowest visit times of our industry. Say for example a user sees all of the information and and gets a quote another website has 5 pages the users spends more time and visits more pages to find how to order but they eventually leave after they have give up would this site win via Google user stats?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Why is google ranking me higher for pages that aren't optimised for keywords those that are?
I am finding that our homepage and other pages are being ranked higher against keywords that we have optimised other pages for. e.g Keyword: Luxury Towels Google Ranks our homepage http://www.towelsrus.co.uk at 20 for this and the page I am trying to rank for it is nowhere to be seen http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/sport-spa/luxury-towels/catlist_fnct498.htm Why is this and is this why our position for certain keywords fluctuates? How do I remedy this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How can you rank for several cities ?
I have a website design client who wishes to rank for several cities they are willing to service locally. I have seen a competitor do this, Main-site.com/web-design content all about web design subcategories main-site.com/web-design/city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the city itself and hiring a website designer in that city main-site.com/web-design/next-city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the next city itself and hiring a website designer in that city Is this a great strategy, it seems to be working for them, or will Google eventually penalize this ? Or would you just put all 4 city names in the title and descriptions and content on one page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
How do we get individual products to rank ?
Hi, We have a site that sells music and we have been researching SEO and things we can do to help SERPs. We have started on link building and have added links to the footer of our page We have friendly urls, meta tag description added to all products. My question is, Yes we can work on getting keywords to rank better in google, one of ours being buy cds. But when it comes to individual products these keywords and results are useless if people are searching for a CD by artist or title which most do as they know what they are looking for. How do i get better results for all these unique products ? One or more of our competitors constantly show up in first few results for nearly any CD search by artist or title, yet we cant seem to get anywhere near this type of result ? Thanks Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PressPlayMusic0