How does this site rank no 1 for big terms with no optimisation?
-
Hi,
A client recently asked me abut a site that appears to have popped up out of nowhere and is ranking for big terms within their industry: http://bit.ly/11jcpky
I have looked at the site for a particular term: Cheap Beds I was using unpersonalised search on google.co.uk with location set to London.
The site currently ranks no 1 for that term and other similar terms.
The question is how?
SEO Moz reports no backlinks (they must have blocked?) Ahrefs and Majestic report report some backlinks but not many and no anchor text with the term in. The Page title and meta do not contain the term nor does the page seem to contain the term anywhere. The domain does have some age though has no keyword match in the URL. I'm a little stumped to how they are achieving these results.
Any Ideas Anyone?
-
I thought this may be the case initially but its not as they have been ranking for a while now, also their backlink profile is not anchor text targeted.
The only real backlinks I can see for them is Groupon, is Google favouring sites featured on Groupon?
-
how recently has the site been ranking? Maybe the site got a load of targeted backlinks very quickly (black hat) and OSE has not picked them up yet.
I have seen this before were the site will rank for a few days ( maybe a week +) before google realises it spam and dumps it.
-
I am aware of other parts of Google's alg's though generally the above mentioned algs are required for a decent listing, location of your server does not make a huge difference and yes agreed with .co.uk making a difference but the site in question is not .co.uk its .com so that point is irrelevant.
The question is not about my clients site ranking higher but a site that ticks none of the major alg factors being number 1 for a big search term.
No optimised meta for target keyword, no optimised backlinks for target keyword, no onpage optimisation for target keyword and a low social metric score.
The only optimisation I can see is meta tags, which Google does not use any more and apparently can do more damage than good if you spam in them which technically this site is doing.
I have also ran the Moz onpage report card for the term Cheap Beds and they get an F! In comparison to the next site down who get a B.
The website is very relevant for the term my question I suppose is how does Google know its relevant without it being optimised?
I am thinking either LSI which doesn't make a lot of sense in this situation, or Google is actually doing some sought of price comparison and working out that their products are cheaper than elsewhere, or Google is actually taking their meta tags into consideration (Highly Unlikely!)
Any suggestions please?
-
There are 200 total parts to Google's algorithm so for me to give you for you to give me only two metrics and for me to give you an honest answer is absolutely impossible unfortunately. However, that domain is ranking higher than you for whatever the keyword search I can twopence is what he said in UK. Make sure that your server is running out of UK mean to say that I mean that the IP address originates in the UK, and you already have a.co.uk TLD I'm assuming? All those things give me one bit. But you've given me two metrics there are so many others nearly 198. If you want an excellent resource I was going to distilled.net/u
sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Huge difference in browser and search console rankings: Any latest updates?
Hi, We know that it's common to see some ranking difference in browser and GSC for a keyword. But I can see there is a huge difference from last 3 months. We position at 15 to 20th position when we search in browser (different IPs without signing in to any Google account; where as the rank in GSC varies between 35 around. I wonder if anything changed in the way Google reports and does anybody face the same issue? Is there anything we can do about this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How long for google to de-index old pages on my site?
I launched my redesigned website 4 days ago. I submitted a new site map, as well as submitted it to index in search console (google webmasters). I see that when I google my site, My new open graph settings are coming up correct. Still, a lot of my old site pages are definitely still indexed within google. How long will it take for google to drop off or "de-index" my old pages? Due to the way I restructured my website, a lot of the items are no longer available on my site. This is on purpose. I'm a graphic designer, and with the new change, I removed many old portfolio items, as well as any references to web design since I will no longer offering that service. My site is the following:
Algorithm Updates | | rubennunez
http://studio35design.com0 -
Is it a good idea to 301 redirect one same niche site towards another site for seo benefit
Hello friends, I have 2 android niche sites, one site is running on a technology dropped domain i catch 1 year ago it has, almost 400+ domains linking to different parts of the site, the other one i established from scratch and both are running from jan 2015. Now i want to redirect first site which already has 400 links pointing towards it to the home page of my 2nd android site. Is it a good idea to do so and does it give any boost in terms of seo?
Algorithm Updates | | RizwanAkbar0 -
Local SEO: 1 Location Covering Multiple Surrounding Cities
I am setting up local pages on our main site for each of our dealers. Some of them cover multiple cities. For example, one dealer in Santa Rosa, CA, but also covers San Francisco (50 mile drive). While I know that with Google+ Local I can add coverage radius or zip code/cities covered, what about on that dealer's local page on our site? Should I create local pages for each city covered or cram local optimization into one? Keep in mind I only have one address to work with for each dealer (P.O. Boxes or Virtual Mail Boxes are NOT a good solutions). Looking for any white hat tips before I implement for all 100+ dealers.
Algorithm Updates | | the-coopersmith0 -
What is the point of XML site maps?
Given how Google uses Page Rank to pass link juice from one page to the next if Google can only find a page in an XML site map it will have no link juice and appear very low in search results if at all. The priority in XML sitemaps field also seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Google determines the priority of a page based on the number of inbound links to it. If your site is designed properly the most important pages will have the most links. The changefreq field could maybe be useful if you have existing pages that are updated regularly. Though it seems to me Google tends to crawl sites often enough that it isn't useful. Plus for most of the web the significant content of an existing page doesn't change regularly, instead new pages are added with new content. This leaves the lastmod field as being potentially useful. If Google starts each crawl of your site by grabbing the sitemap and then crawls the pages whose lastmod date is newer than its last crawl of the site their crawling could be much more efficient. The site map would not need to contain every single page of the site, just the ones that have changed recently. From what I've seen most site map generation tools don't do a great job with the fields other than loc. If Google can't trust the priority, changefreq, or lastmod fields they won't put any weight on them. It seems to me the best way to rank well in Google is by making a good, content-rich site that is easily navigable by real people (and that's just the way Google wants it). So, what's the point of XML site maps? Does the benefit (if any) outweigh the cost of developing and maintaining them?
Algorithm Updates | | pasware0 -
Non .Com or .Co Versus .ca or .fm sites - In terms of SEO value
We are launching a new site with a non traditional top level domain . We were looking at either .ca or .in as we are not able to get the traditional .com or .co or .net etc . I was wondering if this has any SEO effect ? Does Google/Bing treat this domain differently .Will it be penalized ? Note : My site is a US based site targeting US audience
Algorithm Updates | | Chaits0 -
Rankings changing based on location within a country... normal?
I recently had a satellite office across the country come to me and say that they couldn't find us on Google, based on a number of keywords they were searching on. I thought that isn't right... I know we rank for those terms. So, I did a search here, and there we were for those very terms, and ranking quite nicely. Sooo, what's going on there? I know there are variations from Google.com to Google.ca in terms of ranking. But within Google.ca I've not seen this before. Can anyone shed some light on that?
Algorithm Updates | | atcosl0 -
High bounce rates from content articles influencing our rankings for rest of site
We have a large content article section on our e-commerce site that receives a lot of visits but also have very high bounce rates. We are wondering if this is hurting the rest of our site's rankings. **When I say bounce rates I mean what ever metrics Google is using to determine quality content (specifically after the Panda update). ** We are trying to determine if having the content articles on our domain hurts us. We only have the content articles for link building.
Algorithm Updates | | seozachz0