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
-
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Too many wordpress redirects impact Rankings?
Our website cms is WordPress. We have recently changed the URL pattern of our blog pages which resulted in hundreds of crawl errors in Google search console. Even though we don't have any broken links; old pages have been reported at Google. We are trying to redirect the old URLs to new which will be handled by auto redirects or manual redirects. Will so many redirects impact on website? I don't mean about internal redirects. I mean about redirects made for the cause of reclaiming non existing pages referred from external sites
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How can a site with two questionable inbound links outperform sites with 500-1000 links good PR?
Our site for years was performing at #1 for but in the last 6 months been pushed down to about the #5 spot. Some of the domains above us have a handful of links and they aren't from good sources. We don't have a Google penalty. We try to only have links from quality domains but have been pushed down the SERP's? Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | northerncs0 -
Seperate Blog vs Blog in Site
Hello, When is it useful to have a blog as an external entity, versus a blog embedded in an ecommerce site. My thoughts lean towards making it part of the site to build new content, but I'm open to suggestions.
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Why is my domain URL ranking instead of individual pages?
Hello, Google is ranking my homepage for many keywords instead of showing the various sites pages? Any idea why? Thanks, David
Algorithm Updates | | DavidSpivac0 -
2 Domains With Same Name But 1 With A Number
We have been marketing a website for a client with a domain name example2.com. Their main site example.com is used to post information about their services and example2.com is their eCommerce site they use to sell their products. After the Google Penguins update, we have lost all rankings for example2.com. We did not do any unethical, black hat SEO and I am pretty sure its wasn't just mistakenly blocked. We use the same strategy for our other clients and they have not been impacted. Do you guys think the domain name has anything to do with it? Whats odd it example.com is now ranking for some keywords that example2.com used to rank for. We have never marketed that website or anyone else for that matter. I have been scratching my head over this one for the past week and this is the only feasible problem I can think of.
Algorithm Updates | | ArgosSEM0 -
Are multiple domains for my website hurting my Google ranking?
Hello, I currently have two domains showing up in google search: shwoodshop.com shop.shwoodshop.com These domains are currently ranked in the #2 and #3 spot, however my page is much more trafficked than the current #1 ranking. I am wondering if the fact that I have two domains competing for the #1 spot is hurting my search ranking. If so, what is the best way to remedy this issue and get back my #1 spot? I'm rather new to SEO and teaching myself as I go, so I appreciate the feedback!
Algorithm Updates | | shwoodshop0 -
Dramatic Rankings Drop
We've been slowly working up the rankings for some targeted keywords, and though it's been slow we have recently moved up to pages 1,2 and 3 for some of these kwyrods. Friday I got the rankings report from SEOMOZ and we have completely dropped from all rankings. Everything is gone. We've dropped at many at 40+ positions almost overnight. I haven't gone into deep research as to why this happened yet, and I have not asked the client if he did anything off-site to hinder our rankings, but I know that I have changed nothing in terms of SEO techniques in the past week...and these techniques have been working and moving us up so I'm at a loss as to why all of a sudden we've lost everything. If anyone has dealt with this issue before or can take a look at this site I'd appreciate it: http://www.EraseDisease.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Linwright0