Why is this site beating mine? I can't work it out!
-
I feel my site is not to bad. Needs more work and could be better but what site could not, However i'm bamboozled by some of the sites that are out ranking me on key terms.
e.g. Horse Rugs
http://www.fasttackdirect.co.uk/products-1-122/Horse_Clothing/HORSE_RUG_SALE.html ranking 8th
http://www.centralsaddlery.co.uk/horse/horse-rugs/ not ranking in first 10 pages
I dont expect my site (the later) to rank well as its not up there with the bigger players in our industry yet however I can't see why a page like the one i mentioned is ranking so well when as far as i can see its not as well optimized and has very little content.
This is not me ranting about it or whining about why i'm not top etc. I just can't work it out and would love sombody to explain the reasons for this? The only thing i can think of is that they have more category with the words "Horse Rugs" in them. Other than that i'm stumped!
Ideas on a postcard please!
-
Thats why its good practice to compete on price but not go nuts as if you do its just a race to see who is out of business first,
I agree. Lots of these people can not do math. They don't know what their profit margin is.
-
They do but as with all retail.
But if you are for instance an Apple reseller and you buy and iPhone for say £100 and they sell them for £500, you will get away with say 10% variation on MSRP but if you think im happy making £50 profit ill sell them for £150 and make a killing it will not take long for Apple to get shot of you as you are devaluing the brand it for everyone else.
Thats why its good practice to compete on price but not go nuts as if you do its just a race to see who is out of business first. A sale in my opinion should only be when the new version comes out or you need to cash the dead stock up. The problem these days is in the tough times that we are in, people are desperate and will sell things with very low margin just to survive. Its more like a game of last man standing, if you can pay your staff less and run a mega lean business you can win.
-
As myself and the other top 3 sell quality big name brands (big in the UK horse world anyway) we can't really do the SALE SALE SALE selling style ...
Why can't your supplier provide an MSRP and MAP structure that allows for sale prices?
-
I understand what you are saying.
One of my retail sites sells a line of products that range in price from $79 to $279. I sell them with little or no discount. I sell the quality brands.
But Amazon and a couple other e-retailers sell a cheap, plastic, model for $49 that breaks right away that I would not think of selling to my customers.
They outrank me. They probably sell more. But that does not change my mind. I am not selling that crap because I don't want the phone ringing. Does not bother them to sell it because you can't call them on the phone. It's really hard to get in touch with them.
-
Its not a thing I spend many work hours on, its more just a thing that interests me.
Interesting answer.
As myself and the other top 3 sell quality big name brands (big in the UK horse world anyway) we can't really do the SALE SALE SALE selling style as you will get dropped as a stockist if you do. But then again just because you sell the good stuff doesn't mean you are making more money.
-
I'll be honest and say that I spend zero time on this type of analysis for my own sites. Why? To understand why they are ranking you have to look at an awful lot of factors. Too much time. Not worth the return. I am out to beat people with informative content and then entice the huge traffic produced into Adsense or to sales pages on my own site that compete with adsense because they are promoted with house ads on the Google DoubleClick ad server.
I looked at the top three that you listed. If I was going to pick any site to run as my own, based simply on the design of the horse rugs page my choice would be ..... Fast Track Direct. I am betting that site converts like crazy.
-
Other than the constant sale and the title tag we have most of the same components just in a different style. Sale info, Free Delivery are all on our site. I think the sale could be more in your face. Is it just the more subdued style on my site that you think is letting it down?
On another note this is the top 3 for the term Horse Rugs, who would you say is the best and why? Other than the fact that the top rank is always the best.
1st - http://www.derbyhouse.co.uk/Equestrian/Horse/Horse+Rugs/
2nd - http://www.rideaway.co.uk/horses-rugs/
3rd - http://www.robinsonsequestrian.com/horse-clothing/rugs.html
I find it very interesting trying to work out why each site wins for a specific term. I don't know enough yet to be able to pin point what I think its causing what. Really enjoying learning though.
-
I see where you're coming from but no I avoid site like that at every turn.
I think that you should try what you don't like about the competitor's site and see what happens.
-
I see where you're coming from but no I avoid site like that at every turn. It may just be me but i find the style crass and the site ugly. but then again my taste is not what im selling so im happy to take your comments on board.
On that note what would you change on my own site?
i like the email and phone number at the top however our site is responsive and putting them in the header causes spacing issues on smaller screens. I could just drop them on mobile etc.
-
I remember reading a post by either Rand or Dr. Peter (can't remember which) that said they did a poll of top SEO's and speed was around 10%. However, if I were you, I'd pay more attention to the points EGOL made.
Best,
Ruben
-
The competitor has an excellent page, IMO. EXCELLENT.
I will bet big money that the competitor has an asskicking click-through-rate and conversion rate. I bet lots of people return to this site by domain queries and brand search.
HIGH CTR
Look at his title tag... **Horse Rug Sale | Discount Horse Rugs | Clearance Horse Rugs **the only thing that would make it better is "free beer while you shop". People love a sale, love a discount. They will click this in the SERPs.
HIGH CONVERSION / LOW BOUNCE RATE / HIGH TIME-ON-SITE
Then, when you land on this page... Look at those red ribbons for discount prices, and look at those yellow ribbons for free shipping.
Look at his top banner... with the subtle "Free Delivery"... also trust marks on the left
VISIBLE TELEPHONE NUMBER / EMAIL
Their phone number and email are at top of site. Kickass.
DEAL OF THE DAY
This is a great idea. Look at the banner at bottom of page. I bet that brings lots of people backk to this site. They might type the domain into google, or into chrome. Deal of the day will make lots of people request your site by name.
Can you see why people might really like their page, make purchases and return?
-
I found similar results on MOZ pro and in almost all metrics we win yet google does not agree.
Page speed could be the issue. i have been aware for about a year that our site is slow. We are working on this however our current CMs is working way beyond what it was designed for and is struggling. we have a new system under construction which should solve the issue however its still 6 months away.
How much of an issue is page speed? Could it be keeping my site down in a big way?
-
I ran your site through OSE, but that wasn't helpful. You actually have more linking domains, higher DA and higher PA. However - and I doubt this is the main reason, but it is a reason - why that pages outdoes yours is speed. I ran the two pages through pingdom, and his loaded in 1.42 seconds, whereas yours took 3.24 to load.
Good luck!
Ruben
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
-
Hi Mozers, is the AMP project is supposed to be an SEO factor on mobile platforms? Also, can it be used on ecommerce sites such as Magento or Shopify as well? Thanks!
It stands to reason that Google will favor early adopters of Accelerated Mobile Pages, but it seems heavily geared toward news publishers so far. What about regular Wordpress sites, or ecommerce sites like Shopify, should AMP be pursued on that type of CMS?
Technical SEO | | CalamityJane771 -
The word 'shop' in a page title
I'm reworking most of the page titles on our site and I'm considering the use of the word 'Shop' before a product category. ex. Shop 'keyword' | Brand Name As opposed to just using the keyword sans 'Shop.' Some of the keywords are very generic, especially for a top level category page. Question: Is the word 'Shop' damaging my SEO efforts in any way?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Can anyone show me a good example of Microdata for a site
Hi, i am just learning about microdata after being told that it would be a good idea to have this for my site www.in2town.co.uk as i understand it, if i put this in, then it will allow google to understand more about my page I have been reading about it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 and would like to know if anyone is using it and if it is making a difference, also can anyone show me some good examples on a working website please i work in joomla so as i understand it, i would have to put this in each page to help google understand more about the page and its content any help would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
WMT - Googlebot can't access your site
Hi On our new website which is just a few weeks old upon logging into Webmaster tools I am getting the following message Googlebot can't access your site - The overall error rate for DNS queries is 50% What do I need to do to resolve this, I have never had this problem before with any of the sites - where the domains are with Fasthosts (UK) and hosting is with Dreamhosts. What is the recommended course of action Google mention contacting your host in my case Dreamhost - but what do you need to ask them in a support ticket. When doing a fetch in WMT the fetch status is a success?
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Panda or Penquin -Website Fell - Shouldn't this Recover?
On March 23rd our site fell 47% in one day. www.TranslationSoftware4u.com but we still held quite a few #1 to #7 rankings on Google and thought it would just recover. Our top keyword "translation software" was #4 , now we are #19 Over the next week I waited to see if it recovered. We have been online 10+ years and always stayed with white hat. I admit to learning as I go over the years but always felt content was king so I focused on information. I really do not see my site as using spam techniques but maybe I am missing something on the way I have it. March 23rd, major drop -47% On April 2nd I started with SEO MOZ and the Research tools showed we had duplicate content warning. This was from a blog we were trying to start that only had 7 posts but it had about 20 tags per post. I did not realize that tags actually created that post under that tag. I went in and deleted the tags again being stupid and not realizing it was then making that come up 404. The blog was so small we do not get hits on it anyway so hoping it just clears itself up. ( still get duplicate warning on our directory due to using "php Link Directory", but it's due to how it reuses the title tag and description, 2 instances per category page"). Still trying to fix the php directory issue. Seems many others are running it and did not have a drop. April 24th, we dropped another -10% It keeps falling -70% now. I have gone through the site and tried to clean up any warnings like duplicate title tags, meta descriptions. With regards to links I put up a small web directory with some reciprocal linking. Our product translates languages but software is not the same as a human so we often set clients up with human translators, the directory is a nice place to help our customers find a translator or see online tools that can help. The links were not excessive, there were maybe 100 links. After the fall I went in and found some translators had gone out of business so I deleted those, I am down to 65 links now, about 45 are exchanges. I have submitted to some online directories manually, but looking back through the links there is not really anything that makes me concerned. The link back to my site was really the most neglected SEO thing I did. Again concentrating on content. I did find a few links that I was not happy about but I did not put those links so had no control. I have been working on cleaning up my title tags, and making sure the content just reads better. I have been hoping that my site would just start recovering but it keeps sliding. Has anyone seen recovery from the updates. Should I see anything yet? I cannot seem to get Google to return to the site and reindex. Am I doing somethign spammy on my site and I do not realize it? Thanks for any advice in advance!
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Google Has Indexed Most of My Site, why won't Bing?
We've got 600K+ pages indexed by Google and have submitted our same sitemap.xml's to Bing, but have only seen 100-200 pages get indexed by Bing. Is this fairly typical? Is there anything further we can do to increase indexation on Bing?
Technical SEO | | jamesti0 -
How Best to Handle 'Site Jacking' (Unauthorized Use of Someone else's Dedicated IP Address)
Anyone can point their domain to any IP address they want. I've found at least two domains (same owner) with two totally unrelated domains (to each other and to us) that are currently pointing their domains to our IP address. The IP address is on our dedicated server (we control the entire physical server) and is exclusive to only that one domain (so it isn't a virtual hosting misconfiguration issue) This has caused Google to index their two domains with duplicate content from our site (found by searching for site:www.theirdomain.com) Their site does not come up in the first 50 results though for any of the keywords we come up for so Google obviously knows THEY are the dupe content, not us (our site has been around for 12 years - much longer than them.) Their registration is private and we have not been able to contact these people. I'm not sure if this is just a mistake on the DNS for the two domains or it is someone doing this intentionally to try to harm our ranking. It has been going on for a while, so it is most likely not a mistake for two live sites as they would have noticed long ago they were pointing to the wrong IP. I can think of a variety of actions to take but I can find no information anywhere regarding what Google officially recommends doing in this situation, assuming you can't get a response. Here's my ideas. a) Approach it as a Digital Copyright Violation and go through the lengthy process of having their site taken down. Pro: Eliminates the issue. Con: Sort of a pain and we could be leaving possibly some link juice on the table? b) Modify .htaccess to do a 301 redirect from any URL not using our domain, to our domain. This means Google is going to see several domains all pointing to the same IP and all except our domain, 301 redirecting to our domain. Not sure if THAT will harm (or help) us? Would we not receive link juice then from any site out there that was linking to these other domains? Con: Google will see the context of the backlinks and their link text will not be related at all to our site. In addition, if any of these other domains pointing to our IP have backlinks from 'bad neighborhoods' I assume it could hurt us? c) Modify .htaccess to do a 404 File Not Found or 403 forbidden error? I posted in other forums and have gotten suggestions that are all over the map. In many cases the posters don't even understand what I'm talking about - thinking they are just normal backlinks. Argh! So I'm taking this to "The Experts" on SEOMoz.
Technical SEO | | jcrist1