Competitors ranking in top three with worse SEO

[boyackp]

Ok I am at a loss.

Our client is trying to rank for keywords like "dental assistant programs utah", but they are still on the bottom of page 1/top of page 2. The guys in the top 3 have terrible SEO. No links, newer domains, etc. I looked into it extensively and learned about the "honeymoon period" people talk about but we are long past that.

I've looked through webmaster tools to see if there are any issues, and I can't find a thing.

Anyone have an idea of what we could be doing wrong that is making us be put down so far on the page? Before I got here the SEO guys were doing older tactics which I think was starting to hurt them with penguin and what not so I tried my best to delete the crap content and clean everything up on the website.

thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it.

[boyackp]

sorry but I'd rather not give out the domain publicly. I appreciate the help and will continue to investigate

[DonnaDuncan]

boyakp,

We're still waiting for you to share your client's website....

[boyackp]

Here is something interesting. This is the company in the top spot:

http://www.dentalassistingschoolofutah.com/

but I also found this: http://assistingschool.com/

so they are mirroring their sites... which my client had been doing (they have several domains) and I assumed it to be bad (duplicate content?) so I turned it off...

also just did a backlink check and the top domain has ONE link, a crappy one at that. what the heck??

[EGOL]

When 16 is winnin' it means really easy SERPs and when 58 is loosin' it means they done sneaky stuff and got in trouble.

[DonnaDuncan]

I sometimes see that happen too and wonder if the competitors have one golden link, one super authoritative followed link incoming to their site that just blows your client out of the water. I know your question says "no links", but take a look. It's all I can think of.

[evan89]

Would you be willing to provide your domain so that I could look at it?

[boyackp]

my client has a score of 58%, the company in the top spot has a score of 16%

seriously I am so confused... I just don't get google sometimes

[danatanseo]

Have you tried doing an audit of your business citations to see if your NAP information is consistent across all the various business listing sites? Since Moz acquired GetListed.org (now called Moz Local), you can check your own site versus your competitors here: https://moz.com/local/search

You might try this and see if you gain any insights. It's a place to start at least. Hope that helps a bit!