How on earth is this site ranking so highly?
-
I'm trying (& struggling) to rank for the keyword property in italy.
Yet in the past 5 weeks I've seen this site -- betterpropertyitaly (dot) com -- rocket from about #30 to #2 for the keyword and am trying to figure out why.
The obvious is that it's in the domain name, but that can't be the be-all-and-end-all, surely? It's a 2 yr 9 mth old site, so why the sudden spurt?
I look in Open Site Explorer and the metrics look pretty weak:
Domain Authority: 17
Page Authority: 29
Linking Root Domains: 9
Absolutely zero social shares.
Good luck to him and all -- but I'm trying to figure out what he's doing right and I'm not.
My site apart, he's beating some pretty big-hitters.
-
The sheer volume of pages surely isn't a ranking factor. (otherwise everyone would simply auto-generate tons of pages on their site).
He has backlinks from 9 domains of which:
gohome.it - NO-FOLLOWED
comproperty -- a forum signature. also NO-FOLLOWED
www.servicesforyouitaly.com/ -- EXPIRED DOMAIN
So that leaves six -- and other than the italymag one (which dates from 2010) they all look pretty low-rent.
Backlinks from .it domains are a huge plus when trying to rank internationally.
I'm based in the UK and looking at a .co.uk and also .com search.
My website is optimised for the term (and used to rank No1 until last year)
I'm just trying to figure out what's going on here.Why the sudden rapid rise?
-
Site is well optimized and has 25k+ pages indexed in G. Looking at his backlinks, he may not have many links but a few of them are very good (italymag, gohome.it, comproperty)/ Backlinks from .it domains are a huge plus when trying to rank internationally.
I don't know what your site is but you can probably get those same backlinks fairly easily. Just generate content and optimize your website for your terms and you should be able to outrank him.
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
-
How important is a keyword rich domain name for ranking?
I've read that Google has lowered the relevancy of a keyword rich domain name in recent years, but I have a scenario with a client that makes me think otherwise. My client has a particular phrase that they're trying to get rank for and are currently in position 3 of Google. Their primary competitor has position1. Using the Keyword Analysis in Moz Pro, my client has a competitor beat out in Page Authority (45 vs 36), # Root Domains Linking to Page (98 vs 9), Domain Authority (35 vs 24), and # Root Domains Linking to Domain (122 vs 15). The main difference is that the competitor has the exact phrase as part of their domain. Other than that, the phrase (on my client's site) is used in title tags, heading tags, and throughout page content. I can provide additional information if necessary, but does anybody have any general advice about this scenario?
Competitive Research | | robotninja0 -
Why would a site with virtually no external links and low authority rank very high?
Hey there: I'm not sure anyone's going to be game to answer this but... I have designed, done on-page optimization for and done ongoing content marketing and linkbuilding for a local fitness site. The site is about nine months old and I am attempting to achieve rank for the keyword "personal trainers in philadelphia." We've made progress; having taken a new site from +100 to 19 in about four or five months worth of content creation and linkbuilding on a very modest budget. I'm not complaining. What has me confused though is that there are one or two sites that are ranking very high for this keyword string with considerably shoddier metrics than our site and I'm wondering how a stock WP theme site with very few inbound links can rank top five for a reasonably competitive keyword? Our site is http://vtrainersinc.com. The site I've noticed that ranks top five and seems to have an inferior SEOMoz profile is bodycrafters.net. Anybody got any ideas as to why these things seem to occur? I have this feeling this site has stumbled upon a magic SEO elixir which I'd like to get my hands on!
Competitive Research | | splatdude0 -
My average visit duration is UP by 110% from 2 minutes to 4 minutes... and my visits (rankings) are down by 6 %.... I would have thought to see more positive ranking affects from that..
Latttteee last night I asked this question Just like the question says, I would have thought that Google would reward a site with more traffic that clearly has a growing level of user engagement. I can't imagine that there are other sites in my niche that are having a longer rate of user engagement... Well, since I can't guarentee that, let's not debate what we don't know.. But shouldn't SOME benefits be seen for a 110% increase? I mean shit, if I could replicate those results with sales, I would really be able to afford higher rankings... Maybe that's how they feel? If I get longer duration, I should get more sales, which means I should be able to afford to pay a professional more to get me to rank higher....? A nice guy Marcus Miller(http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/78416) answered by saying Hey Tyler Google analytics data is not used in anyway in the search ranking algorithm. It's a great thing that your user engagement is up, but it will not benefit you with a better rank on the back of that. That said, if people are enjoying your site more, it should be easier to generate more links and sharing to get more traffic and hopefully boost your standing in search. This is worth a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg... Hope this helps. Marcus I was still a little unsure though, so I said Solid answer man, I really appriciate the youtube link too, gotta love when an answer is chizzled in stone. I was thinking though.. Google does track data for bouncing back to search for similar queries, and some types of time on site, etc, right? Do you, or does anyone else know the specifics about the data that Google tracks, in relation to how a user interacts with your site?
Competitive Research | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
Hi, I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days? According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL. You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain. So what are we supposed to do here? Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...) Do what they do? Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
Competitive Research | | Gamer070 -
Why is this site ranking #1?
I've done extensive research into http://www.maggiesottero.com/ and cannot come up to any definitive conclusions as to why this site is ranking #1 for the term "wedding dresses." The page is not optimized for the keyword. **Any thoughts? **
Competitive Research | | craigsmith3330 -
How many Page Rank 8 sites are there?
Anyone have any estimate of how many Page Rank 8 sites are out there? Best, Steve
Competitive Research | | Aggie0 -
Site redirect
Hi, Our site www.suncamp.nl has, for language reasons, 2 redirects So : www.suncamp.nl is redirected with a 301 to www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl and is than redirected 301 to http://www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl/home/uc19-l1-n804/ My question is; is this bad for our SEO? Recently we've been doing a lot of linkbuilding and SEO copywriting, but in comparison with our competitors were lagging behind. So I'm looking for other bottlenecks. Kind regards, Dennis Overbeek My email: dennis@acsi.eu ACSI
Competitive Research | | SEO_ACSI0 -
Is there a tool that could list all high PR pages of a domain?
Is there a tool that could list all high PR pages of a domain? Ideally, non subscripton based but if the tool is awesome then I wouldn't hesitate forking out for it.
Competitive Research | | rmteamseo0