Why is this site at no.1?
-
In the last 2 months, a previously unranked/unheard of website jumped straight to no.1 position for a particular keyword when searched from USA and is even ranking over many other big brands or stronger DA/PA sites.
I did notice some very strange JavaScript popup links that are heavily keyword linked from the first mention of the keyword on the page content. What are they trying to do here?
Otherwise they don't seem to have much PA/DA or seo going on.
Why are they doing so well?!
-
It definitely does look "spammy/unnatural". What I mean is that it provides no useful content for visitors if it's hidden and looks like it's put there simply for the spiders. So I would say it's spamming (even though some items are ok to use solely for the spiders).
In this case, I would say in the short-term probably does not yield any significant positive results and in the long-term it will actually hurt them.
-
Thanks for your ideas. What do you think about this keyword stuffed on-page hidden popup code they're using - could it be that it is helping them?
There are over 20 of these with small variations repeated in the source code near the head. Is this not a kind of spamming?
div = document.createElement('div');
div.style.display = 'none';
div.style.position = 'absolute';
div.className = 'jsLinks';
div.id = 'jsLinks_travel to turkey';
div.onmouseout = function(ev) { jsHideDiv(ev, this); };
div.innerHTML = '<d< span="">iv class="jsWord">travel to turkey</d<>iv><d< span="">iv class="jsLink"> <a< span="">href="/travel-to-turkey/wedding-ideas/bodrum-hotels/destination-wedding/selected-venues-in-bodrum">Bodrum Hotels | Travel to Turkey | Travel to Bodrum| bodrum wedding | travel insurance|</a<> ></d<>iv><d< span="">iv class="jsLink"> <a< span="">href="/travel-to-turkey/turkey-tours/turkey-travel">Turkey Travel | Travel to Turkey | travel in turkey | turkey tours</a<>></d<>iv><d< span="">iv class="jsLink"> <a< span="">href="/travel-to-turkey/turkey-tours/travel-agent/why-choose-us">Travel to Turkey |Turkey Tours | travel agent | travel agencies</a<> ></d<>iv>';
document.body.appendChild(div); -
Typically a site that is previously unranked/unheard makes a sudden jump high in organics could be a number of reasons.
Two of these are:
1.) a high pagerank (let say popular) site gave you an inbound link from a popular page
2,) or a naturally high ranking (typically after launch) from Google that drops rapidly (called a reverse sandbox - positive indexing for initial period)
In this case 2 month is a long time so I expect it is #1 (#2 should have worn off by now). After looking at their link profile, I could not say #1 is the reason either.
So emarald is probably right, good on-page seo took the site there...
-
After a superficial look I couldn't see anything terribly wrong with it, it's just a bit over-optimized, but it has fare enough metrics, the keyword on the domain, a reasonable url structure and relevant content, so why shouldn't it rank well? It doesn't look like a highly competitive keyword combination. Also, if you say the site just jumped in, bare in mind that Google maybe testing it and it could go down soon enough.
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
-
Our site is slow..
We have noticed that our site is much slower than many of our competitors and expect that this is affecting our organic ranking. We are on dedicated UK Fast server with [20/08/2013 16:44:35] Tony Jackson: Operating System: CentOS 6 64-bit
Competitive Research | | seanmccauley
CPU: 1x Intel Xeon E5-2620 @ 2.0GHz
Memory: 8x 8GB DDR3 RDIMM
Hard Drive: 4x 128GB SSD RAID10
[20/08/2013 16:46:28] Tony Jackson: Nginx, percona, tomcat/solr, Magento CE, cat: 25200 products I could really do with your thoughts on this page for example http://www.pretavoir.co.uk/sunglasses/ray-ban-sunglasses.html0 -
Why do some sites perform great but show no data on the tool bar?
Hey everyone, Been a paid member for 3 days and this is my first time posting 🙂 I have a quick question about competitive analysis with the MozBar. I do not want to point out the exact website (unless that is something cool to do on this forum), but there is a site ranking for a single keyword in the local 7 pack in slot one, which is also slot one for the SERP entirely. When I go to look at the page in more detail, the MozBar is showing no DA, PA, anything at all, and the Open Site Explorer is showing no links internal or external. I know that the page has to have at least some of these elements populated in order to be ranking for a term this competitive, so why is the bar not showing anything? The bar works GREAT on other sites below this one. Thanks for any help!
Competitive Research | | tonyflorespsa0 -
How Do You Create an excel spreadsheet of all blog post content on a site?
Is there a quick and easy way to create an excel spreadsheet with a list of all blog content and it's SEO factors i.e. URL, title, description, etc.? I know I could use screaming from to get the entire site but is there a way to just get the content on the blog?
Competitive Research | | RonMedlin0 -
Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?
I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site; My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's) Has 1 backlink. Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP. It's a 1 page site made with Flash. They do not have FB or Twitter accounts. So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company. And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | Eblan0 -
Few backlinks, no social signals and PR of 1 in the #1 SERP. How is this possible?
Hello everyone, I've been busting my head now for a bit and for the life of me I can't understand how this website is ranked #1 or #2 for a moderately competitive keyword (45% According to the Keyword Difficulty Report). Anyone has any idea how is this possible or how are they doing it? Please note page and domain authority as well... Included: reports from SEOmoz and ahrefs Thank you in advance! With the purpose of protecting mi client's identity, I've hidden keywords and domains. Keyword Difficulty Report ahrefs_comp.png SEOmoz_comp.PNG
Competitive Research | | 7decode0 -
Can anyone suggest how they're #1
Hi, I'm really struggling to see how these guys are number one on google (from the UK) when searching for "picture framers york" Their SEOMOZ on page grading for the term is an F, so on site SEO is minimal if any. Their backlinks are almost nonexistant, take a look at the competition report (attached) through market samurai. Everything I thought I understand about SEO is currently being turned on its head because with the information available, they shouldn't be there. I thought maybe its the proximity to 'York' center, but they aren't that close to be honest. So any advice greatly appreciated as to why they are #1 so I know what it is I can do as an SEO. Thanks, Dave samurai.png
Competitive Research | | davebrown19750 -
How does a site get to no 3 in Google with no KW in their links?!!
Hello everyone, my first post - ahhh I'm investigating a niche and there is a site that should have no right being there in my view. It's no. 3 Google UK for 'company formation' with a small site with 65 weak links from only 7 domains and hosted in the US. But more importantly, the Open Site Explorer says there is not 1 link with that term in its anchor text. This I find crazy and makes me suspicious. But before I go back to my client saying "oh they must be black hat" I would like your expert views. I'm not sure whether to tut or congratulate them and for the first time I'm not sure what reasons to give for their amazing performance! What's your views?
Competitive Research | | GOYMedia480