More authority back links but lower MozRank than competitor

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi All,

I have a basic understanding of SEO and the various factors that contribute to higher search rankings. This question is specifically related to MozRank, which I understand to be defined as:

Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them. The higher the quality of the incoming links, the higher the MozRank.

In my case, I am wondering if somebody could explain to me why I have a lower MozRank score than my competitor when I have both:

1. Larger number of followable inbound links to my siteAND
2. Of my larger number of followable inbound links, the page authority (and domain authority) of these links are greater than the page/domain authority of the lower number of links to my competitor's site.

I have attached 3 images to help explain my points.
Comparison Image: My site is on the left.
Competitor Inbound: Shows a snippet of the volume of inbound links and quality of inbound links of my competitor's site (filtered by highest page authority).
My Inbound: Shows a snippet volume of inbound links and quality of inbound links to my site (filtered by highest page authority).

Any feedback or help is much appreciated!

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[Dr-Pete]

The result count at the top is always the total count, regardless of how you filter. I'd look at only external links that are 301ed or followed, and that should be a much more accurate number.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

Go under "linking domains," and keep expanding until you find one with a bunch.  Right below that group it will say something like "see all links from this domain."  That will bring you back to the inbound links section with a few different filters that weren't originally there.

Another option is to check your Google Webmaster Tools.  If the domain has enough authority it will pop up with how many links you are getting from the one source.

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Dr. Peter,

Thanks for chiming in on the question.

I'm still fairly confused as to why the competitor has a higher MozRank score as we have a higher number of links and a higher number of quality links (please view the image in the original post titled 'Comparison').

I'm not using the tool to try to chase down their links, I'm basically trying to figure out why we are not ranking above the competitor in search, which lead me to diagnose our MozRank score and why we were not getting a higher score than the competitor. At this point, I'm just curious as nobody seems to be able to figure out what the reasons may be!

If you have any other thoughts, would love to hear them!

Cheers.

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Cody,

Thanks for taking the time to get involved here - it's getting more and more interesting as I investigate the different results.

Regarding your questions:

1. Based on the site:domain.com google results, we have 499 pages and the competitor has 1890 pages

2. We've used the SEOMoz Site Crawler

3&4) We have 216 internal links to this page and they are mostly just from menu and footer links. I am waiting for the results of the crawl test on the competitor.

5. This was interesting to check out:

When you view our page comparison (image included in the original question at the top of this thread), you see that we have a total of 2,249 total links (216 internal links and 2,033 external links).

Let's just focus on the External Links:
External Followed Links: 259 links coming from 46 Followed Linking Root Domains
Total External Links: 2,033

Given your comment about a low ration to domains to links, I wanted to see where all these external links were coming from. I headed into Open Site to run a check by using the following criteria:

Show [all] links from [only external] pages to [this page]

The results said we had 2,033 links but when I went through the results they only showed 5 pages of 50 results per page (max 250 results), and when I download the CSV the file only produced 216 links external inbound links!

Am I missing something here?

[Dr-Pete]

No, not at all - honestly, you remember more about mR than I do We're definitely not trying to hide anything - it's just complicated. We've also sort of slowly moved away from mT/mR, because they just weren't as predictive as we'd like.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

Very true.  Also, if I came off as being a jerk in my post, I do apologize.  That wasn't my intent.

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry, I should've said "I'm not sure how / how much we measure..." - it's been a while since I've dug into mR and mT, and I don't know how much an internal link structure could tip the balance. Like PageRank, it's iterative, so you'd have to crunch the numbers - it's not a simple, linear equation I could spell out here (even if knew/remembered it).

Truthfully, it's rarely worth getting hung up on, especially if PA/DA are solid and the site is ranking well. Knowing exactly why the competitor has a higher mR would rarely provide much or any advantage. It's generally better to track their strongest links and see if you're missing anything.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

From SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/mozrank

"MozRank measures the link juice (ranking power) of both internal and external links"

If the competitor has fewer pages, or at least less pages being linked to from each page, then the "link juice"  being passed between internal links can be greater.  So, while you may have a lot more links going to your home page, you may be linking out to so many different pages from the home page that the link juice passed to internal pages is minimal.  Thus, diluting any return you might get from those internal links.

That's assuming that the official Mozrank page isn't lying about internal links.  Dr. Peter is the only one that can tell us that for sure.

[Dr-Pete]

I'm honestly not sure if we measure internal links as part of MozRank - I'd have to check into that. If one site were much larger, with a ton of indexed pages (including duplicates), it might dilute mR, but I can't say that with any confidence. It's similar to PageRank, but not exactly the same.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

Dr. Pete:

The competitor has a lot less links, actually, but I'm super pumped for this tip!

Rogs.SEO:

How many pages does the competitors site have compared to yours?

Have you ran a screaming frog or a xenu of both sites?

Who has more internal links pushing into the page you scanned?

Are they just menu and footer links, or are some of them in the body?

Your ratio of domains to links is pretty low, do you have a bunch of site wides pointing at your site?

[Dr-Pete]

It's tough without seeing the sites, but MozRank is a bit more of a pure quantity score than DA/PA (which are built to predict ranking power). The fact that you have a lower MozRank but significantly higher PA suggest to me that the competitor is playing a numbers game. Your top links may have a higher quality, but they may just have more overall links, multiple links from some domains (site-wide maybe), etc.

I'd rather be higher on PA, buy our numbers. The picture I'm seeing here suggests your overall quality is better than your competitor's, so I don't think I'd go chasing after their link profile.

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Jeepster,

Thanks for the response. I can see how the link relevance might make a difference to the search results - this makes complete sense.

Putting search results aside, I'm more just confused as to why the competitor has a higher MozRank score as I have superior backlinks, which you can see from the images attached when I first posted the question. Do you have any idea why? Is there something about MozRank that I am missing from their definition of MozRank:

"MozRank represents a link popularity score. It reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet. Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them. The higher the quality of the incoming links, the higher the MozRank."

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[Rogs.SEO]

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, but I'm not sure that the answer to the question has been nailed down.

I'm not asking why the competitor is showing up higher on the search results. I'm just trying to figure out why the competitor has a higher MozRank, when it appears (from the MozRank description page) that MozRank is focused on the link building aspect of a page: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/mozrank
"MozRank represents a link popularity score. It reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet. Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them. The higher the quality of the incoming links, the higher the MozRank."

[WhoWuddaThunk]

Mozrank does take into consideration both internal and external links.  Perhaps he has a better structured site that utilizes internal links in a better way?

[Jeepster]

Hi Greg
I think MozRank and MozTrust are good indicators but not failsafe predictors of search engine ranking (which I'm guessing is your ultimate goal)

In my sector (real estate) I've seen sites with seemingly low metrics (DA, number of links, social shares, MozRank, MozTrust) outrank sites with figures twice and three times better.

I'm no guru, but what I've seen suggests to me that link relevance is becoming more and more important -- ie, a site with 40 highly on-topic links (even if from low/medium authority domains) can rank far, far higher than OSE metrics would suggest.

[Asher]

Just a guess here but it could have something to do with age of domain as well as age of links.