Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
-
Moz Friends,
A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well.
I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use
Just my thoughts and notes on the two:
Our Page
- Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things)
- Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability
- Fresh content updates
- Mobile optimized
- Reasonable page speeds
- Good on-page optimization
- Good back links from industry influences
Competitor Page Negatives
- Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy
- Lower quality content site wide
- They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm)
- Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look)
- Less focused on page optimization
- Not mobile optimized
Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences,
Engine: www.google.co.uk
Keyword: Sound level meters
**Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/
**Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this
Thanks
James
-
Wow... Thank you very much for the replies and time taken to look at my problem.
I will take all advice on board and as Shawn advised carry on following best practice.
I am really happy to get some reassurance and second opinions on some of the spammy techniques they are using and feel sure Google will catch up eventually
Thank you,
James
-
Hi,
your competitor has 344 links from 11 RD's while you have 92 from 5 RD's . I feel that is the main reason why they are outperforming your site.
Also even though things like keyword stuffing is bad practice it takes a while for search engines to catch up with them. In some instances its hard to find the balance between keyword stuffing and adding the right keywords.
Other things that might be working for them is publisher markup verified and outgoing links to some authority and relevant websites.
I would suggest doing the following
- Run the on page grader and fix everything you can
- Do a link analysis of the competitor and try to replicate every link you can
- Build few more quality links
- Link to some relevant authority sites
Hope this helps.
-
And as Erica prob knows...that timeline can often be speeded-up by simply reporting the site...as many competitors do just that!
-
Some great suggestions already! But I'd add that sometimes it just takes time for Google to catch spammy practices.
-
Hi James,
There is so many factors to consider aside from backlinks towards your competitor. You both rank relatively the same in regards to PA, DA, Links, etc.
One thing I would consider evaluating is what the trend is for your keyword rankings versus theirs. What I mean is, who is slipping in rankings and who is climbing. I personally like to evaluate the Alexa results for my competitors to understand what direction they are moving towards.
I attached rankings for both of you to do a side by side (First image is your companies results). You can see your company is trending upward strongly as for your competitor is trending downward quickly. I believe it's only a matter of time before you pass your competitor. Keep doing what you're doing and you will be rewarded within the search results.
Also, your exercising schema on your website, which in turn, provides a better search result experience with pricing, reviews and helps your listing stand out more regardless of first or second position.
Hope this helps and best of luck on your adventure.
Shawn
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
-
Hacked Websites (Doorways) Ranking First Page of Google
Hello Moz community! I could really use your help with some suggestions here with some recent changes I've noticed in the Google serps for terms I've been currently working on. Currently one of the projects I am working on is for an online pharmacy and noticed that the SERPs are being now taken up by hacked websites which look like doorways to 301 redirect to an online pharmacy the hacker wants the traffic to go to. Seems like they may be wordpress sites that are hacked and have unrelated content on their websites compared to online pharmacies. We've submitted these issues as spam to Google and within chrome as well but haven't heard back. When searching terms like "Canadian Pharmacy Viagra" and other similar terms we see this issue. Any other recommendations on how we can fix this issue? Thanks for your time and attached is a screenshot of the results we are seeing for one of our searches. 1Orus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | monarkg0 -
Surely this cannot be a good SEO technique?
I have a client whose competitor has great positions in Google, and a quick look at the meta data revealed this (I removed the company name): I'd love some opinions on this. My gut feel tells me this is spammy. But all my client sees is that this site is on page 1! ~Caro
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Caro-O0 -
Ranking without SEO?
We have a client that we've been doing white-hat SEO for for over 3 years and they've always been number 1 in Google for all their targeted keywords. This year, their competition has been ranking above them and our client has been pushed towards the bottom of the first page. After thorough research, we discovered that this competitor is doing no SEO at all, just regular PR which our client is also doing. Our client is even spending money in Adwords and their competition isn't. Can anyone explain how a website that does zero SEO can magically be ranked at the top now and above our competitor who we're doing everything possible for?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOhughesm0 -
Competition cheating on seo
So im trying to rank for O'fallon lawn care. And my competitor bought a domain lawncareofallonmo.com and now ranks number one....there is even a link to "take me to my homepage" What is going on i thought this was so 2008 not 2014.....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | grnside10 -
If I am getting links on competitor websites, is it safe to assume those competitors are doing this to hurt our SEO?
We have received a few notification from Google Webmaster Tools and Moz that our competitors have "mentioned" our page on their website. This is incredibly odd as you wouldn't think they'd want to do this. Further, when I go to the page that we are supposedly mentioned on, the link to our site is not on the page. What is going on? Thank you in advance for your insights!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brits0 -
From keyword rankings to ......... what KPI?
Hi Folks, I have a customer whos keyword rankings for Google have fluctuated rather widly over the past two months which has caused some consternation on their part dispite our reassurance. This is caused in large part due to their lack of understanding of SEO, little effort on their part in implementing changes for SEO and what I belive to be unrealistic expectations (having done no SEO work on their site wanting to see first page ranking for competitive keywords like 'heart attack' within 4-8 weeks). At the moment we are using just keyword rankings as a KPI and I wish to reframe them by using additional or alternative KPIs so that as rankings fluctuate with future Google seach algorithm tweaks and changes that the customer isn't solely focused on them. I am still in the process of formulating this list but so far I have decided to include the KPIs listed below. Month-on-Month / Quarter-On-Quarter Organic search traffic volume (should be rising) Top landing pages excluding branding keywords and homepage (should corelate to content created to target specific keywords) Number of landing pages on the client site that rank List of landing pages and bounce rates (are the 'gateway pages' holding visitors due to meeting their search requirements?) Average number of keywords per landing page (possibly integrated with the landig page reports above as a dimension to demonstrate correlation of # of keywords to landing pages) Some visibility on top keyword search terms (provided from Adwords where possible and GWT also) Top organic keywords (from adwords and GWT) Conversions from organic search (will vary from client to client for their own needs but will primarily be implemented using Google Tag Manager event tracking for things like enquiry forms etc) Referral traffic Delta/Ranking trends over large set of datapoints (will depend on how often you poll/track rankings but for example if you track rankings weekly then assess the trend of the rankings over 3-6months to smooth out the fluctuations) Your thoughts and feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icanseeu1 -
Are these links bad for my results?
In the past we have requested links on multiple directories. Since we have seen a mayor drop (60% in traffic) in results around the pinquin update 24-26th of April. Our results have been slowly getting lower and lower in Google. Is it possible to tell if these links are in fact doing my site harm? Before the 26th of April it was easy to see that the results where benefiting from the submission to those directories. We did not have any messages in webmaster tools and reconsideration says "no manual spam action taken". What would be the best strategy to turn this around and go up again? A selection of the requested links can be found below. <colgroup><col width="266"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 2Hillz
| www.thesquat.org |
| www.directmylink.com |
| www.thegreatdirectory.org |
| www.submission4u.com |
| www.urlmoz.com |
| www.basoti.org |
| www.iwebdirectory.co.uk |
| www.freeinternetwebdirectory.com |
| addsite-submitfree.com |
| opendirectorys.com |
| www.xennobb.com |
| mdwerks.com |
| www.directoryfire.com |
| www.rssbuffet.com | To give a good view on the problem: The requested links anchors are mostly not in the native language of the directories. Thanks!0 -
Has anyone ever reported a spammer and actually seen them de-ranked?
I have a few competitors outranking me using black hat SEO. I reported them to Google, and I'm just wondering if Google will even look at it. What has been your experience with this? Has anyone ever gotten results?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | UnderRugSwept1