How come a site with low PR and DA is first on everything?

[BeytzNet]

Hi All,

I've encountered a site that has PR3 on most important pages (and less on others but no more on any)  and DA according to MOZ in the low 40's however it is first on everything on his niche (many keywords).

How is it possible?

Since it is possible, what is the importance of these metrics anyhow?

Thanks

[lauratagdigital]

I'm having a similar problem with a site that has popped up as a #1 ranking - all of the links in their profile are really spammy.  I've reported to Google webspam a few times and just focusing on a building better links for us.

I think a "more" exact match domain has been at the root of this

[Personnel_Concept]

A low PA or DA doesnt mean it cant rank in Search Engines. The site might be exact match domain having an advantage over others, It might have less competition, further it might have optimized the keywords on site very well. moz Trust can tell how spammy they are! PA and DA are there to judge authority of the page.

A sudden good link with great quality might increase the Google ranking of a site but in that short amount of time, the PA and DA might still be low.

I have noticed many low DA sites doing top 5 rankings in Google. Some of above mentioned factors are the reasons behind some of those site's good rankings.

[MoosaHemani]

I think there are two ways of looking in to thinks...

One is what Fedrico discussed in detail that the websites who do spamming usually get tons and tons of link from low quality websites so their PR and DA is low and as they somehow manipulated Google they will not stay in ranking for longer period of time... so may be when you are looking at the websites it’s their lucky time...

There is another way you can think about this... he must have a powerful and strong on-page optimization that Google likes it and rank it against the targeted key phrases. In most cases, if you have your on page SEO properly optimized you can win your competitor even with less links...

[FedeEinhorn]

I find Moz numbers much more accurate than Google rankings.

There could be several reasons why other site is ranking higher if you have done all the right things. The most common one is link spam (which will backfire to them later).

I've seen several of those cases that you mention, and usually are pages that come up, stay for 1 - 6 month in the first places and then disappear.

The real problem is that usually, the person behind that page does the exact same thing with another Website, while you keep loosing money. Behind all that, Google, which apparently can't sort that thing out.

You are only left with reporting those sites and, if you are really lucky, someone from Google will look into it and take the appropriate action.