Question about understanding Google Ranking System

[moonheart]

Hi,

I have too many question that I need answer to understand Google ranking system. I have been analyzing different website in different niche, but puzzling to understand how Google rank actually. Some websites have good number of backlinks with good SEO metrics, but some low SEO profiled websiites outrank good sites.

I am here with my first question.

I am working for one client website who sell sex toys online. So we are optimizing keywords like sex toys, buy sex toys, sex shop, sex toy store and too many keywords to rank on google.ca. My client website is cupidboutique.com. We have some competitors that I want to mention below:

1. PinkCherry: This is one of our big competitor. They have 2 domain one is for US and one is for Canada. Both websites ranking well for different keywords. Basically .ca domain is more successful than .com domain. But I am surprise why Google consider the websites for rank. If you see, both websites are identical, that means both website have same product, same category structure, and the most important all products description are duplicate on each domain. On google webmaster guideline, google mention that if 2 domain have identical content, then Google ignore the duplicate one in ranking. But still both websites ranking for different search term.

I compare the SEO metrics of our domain and their .ca domain, there is not big difference. Our websites also have good number of links, good PA/DA, even more good number of social sharing than them. But our rankings are not even comparable with them. They are ranking within 20-30th on Google for different product category keywords, but not our.

2. Hushcanada: This is another website ranking well, but I a surprise how? This website is ranking on very high competitive keyword with very fewer number of backlinks. Their PA/DA, number of backlinks, social sharing all metrics are very few. Their business also established recently that is 2013, which I found through archive.org, whereas our client business has been running since 2003-2004. As a Ecommerce business website their homepage is not showing any product , their catalog can be found under "shop online" page only.

There are even some more websites ranking well with very low SEO metrics in this niche.

If Google is not looking for these SEO staff, then what other staff Google looks to rank website?

Hope I will get some favorable answer of my question.

[Dr-Pete]

I'm having trouble getting hotme.ca to rank for anything competitive - I can get it in #1 for "Toronto sex toys", but here you've got a strong local SEO impact, which could easily over-ride a lot of standard organic signals.

In most cases, it's not that they're hiding anything in their link profile, but one of a few explanations:

(1) Other sites have inflated PA/DA due to spammy links. We've just introduced spam scoring recently, but keep in mind that PA/DA are generally measures of overall ranking strength, and they don't account for quality/spam. In an industry where spammy is common, and especially when you've got tons of sites in the 20s and 30s, these numbers can leave out a lot.

(2) We're not crawling a lot of the weaker or lower-quality links. We tend to take a quality-over-quantity approach in MozScape, but if an entire industry relies on low-quality links, Google could be seeing more than we're seeing.

(3) Other factors are over-riding these link signals, as Massimiliano says. On-page is definitely one, technical issues is another, and local factors (as I mentioned above).

When someone is masking a link profile, what we usually see is that they're 301-redirecting other domains to that domain (and we aren't seeing those links directly). Typically, though we'd see those 301-redirects, and I'm not seeing that for hotme.ca.

Truth is, if they are doing something unethical, there's almost nothing you can do about it, unless it's flat-out illegal. In SEO, chasing your competitors bad behavior is almost always a completely waste of time - believe me, I've done it for clients (and it was a colossal waste of time and money). You have to focus on your site and what you can do.

[max.favilli]

First, I really think you are underestimating the importance of on-page optimization. If you read that backlinks are all that it matters, it's true, but given that the html code is not a mess. And even so, when comparing two websites with a similar backlink profile, the more on-page optimized wins.

Second, let's take hotme.ca, for which keywords are you analyzing its ranking?

[moonheart]

Guys,

Please lets talk about a specific topic. What you said about our website I will fix the things.

So I have some specific question on the websites that ranking high in this niche. As I said previously most of websites ranking in this niche, showing very few backlinks as well as low DA/PA and all scores showing as on majestic, Hrefs and open site explorer. What I guess they are either hiding the backlink data or there are something that I am not able to find out.

No# 1 website in this niche is spencersonline.com and this is vital that this website ranking on #1. All of their SEO score is very high as compare to other competitor's website.

Open Site Explorer Data for this website:

PA/DA: 61/68, Number of linking root domain: 3370, Facebook/Twitter/Google Plus sharing: 2830/1575/1141

Now I am showing you some websites that ranking on good position in this niche, with low score:

hotme.ca:
DA/PA: 24/28, Linking Root Domain: 14 Only, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus sharing: 750/93/296

industrialuv.com
DA/PA: 25/37, Linking Root Domain: 40 Only, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus sharing: 0/15/78

loveshop.ca
DA/PA: 20/30, Linking Root Domain: 24 Only, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus sharing: 7/3/3

hushcanada.com
DA/PA: 22/30, Linking Root Domain: 23 Only, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus sharing: 11/16/20

Can you think that a website with only 14 linking root domain can rank in such a high competitive niche. I am asking do these websites hiding their backlinks or are they doing unethical way to rank high?

[Dr-Pete]

So, I've got you around #43 for "adult sex toys" (just to pick one), and PinkCherry.ca around #11.

It's tough, because there are a ton of sites in the first few pages with DA/PAs in the 20s-40s. This is a tricky range that covers a lot of sites - it's not particularly strong, and it can be easily skewed by bad links or hurt by technical issues.

I don't see any evidence of an outright penalty situation. I see a lot of small technical issues and sub-optimal on-page (such as the internal linking mentioned on Massimiliano's comments) that could make a difference, but it's hard to say how much of a difference.

At first glance, I do tend to agree that the link profile is dubious. I see a ton of free directory links, for example. They range from ok to things that look outright spammy, like:

http://seolinkcloud.org/Society_/Sexuality/?p=15

Now, any one of these directories by itself is no big deal, but if you have a link profile built on this stuff and a lack of a strong core to offset it, you can end up seeing your site devalued. Unfortunately, when you're in that 30s range for DA, this is a common problem - the strong links aren't strong enough to offset the moderately spammy links.

The good news is that I think some small-scale link clean-up, a focus on stronger/better links, and some technical changes could actually go a long way for you. I'm not seeing a smoking gun here (and admittedly Q&A can't replace a full audit), but mostly a lot of small things that may be adding up to harm the site.

[Dr-Pete]

I'd tend to agree that the top menu is spreading link equity far and wide - I'm seeing something like 800 internal links from the home-page. It doesn't give Google any sense of hierarchy and could really be harming the top category pages from performing well.

This home-page size is also huge - I know that's not uncommon for an e-commerce site, but you've got something like 1MB just of Javascript and multiple 200K images. This isn't penalty-level stuff, but it can really weaken your ability to rank, and generally isn't great for conversion either. The giant scrolling banner images would be an easy thing to lose - I don't know of one UX/conversion person who thinks those are good for sales, and they just take a huge amount of code and load-time.

[max.favilli]

That megamenu is giving that page too many external links.

Choose a main keyword for each page and optimize for it, choose some (few sematically related) secondary keywords and try to optimize the page for them without jeopardaizing the first.

Please go again through MOZ guides and blog post and very nice whiteboard friday videos to better understand what "optimize" mean.

Once done if you will look back at the source code of those pages you will notice yourself they don't smell nicely.

Depending on the keyword competition level you may need to get some backlinks for those keywords, which means generate good quality links from relevant websites, within relevant content, without a spammy anchor, etc...

Work page by page, keyword by keyword. It's a long and draining process.

[moonheart]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I don't understand what you say by "that megamenu is overkilling with external links". Can you please explain what you mean by that?

You are saying about pagegrader and onpage SEO of Hushcanada.

This website is ranking for different keywords like "sex toys", "sex toys online", "sex shop", "sex store".

But no any keyword phrase they even mentioned on any part of their website. Only "sex toy" keyword has been mentioned on title tag. For each keyword Moz page grader gave "F" grade. For a low competitive keyword it can be acceptable, but they are ranking with such a high competitive keyword.

There are some more niche, that I am seeing this type of ranking puzzle. Do you think that Google take some other major metrics to rank a website?

[max.favilli]

If I look at your backlink profile with ahrefs, there's few I don't like, I am referring to anchortexts stuffed with keywords which doesn't look natural to me, and I assume google would not consider them natural either.

Your competitor pinkcherry doesn't look much better, but that should not give you much comfort. And btw they have much more linking root domains so they beat you anyhow.

It's the on page which is really an issue in my opinion. Just starting with following advices from MOZ page grader would help a lot.

Take this page http://www.cupidboutique.com/vibrators which I assume from your early comment you would like to see ranked better than your competitors for the keyword "vibrators", and look at the source code. Starting from the head there's a lot I don't like, if you want to rank for vibrators, trim the title, that megamenu is overkilling with external links, the keyword density is overwhelming, and 50 h2 tag are simply too much. And content is thin.

You should rethink it. If you look at hushcanada.com page source for their best ranking results for the keyword vibrators you will see it's much much much better.

Pinkcherry rules because of the links, hushcanada beat you because of their onpage.

[moonheart]

Hi,

Yes I know pinkcherry.ca have some more number of backlinks than us, but not that much high as compare to our website. But hushcanada have very fewer number of backlinks, but if you see, their rankings are even better than pinkcherry and our website. For many keywords (such as sex toys, sex toys online, sex shop) they rank on first page.

Regarding backlinks anchor text, no website have anchor rich backlinks, most of anchor texts are irrelevant to keywords. I checked using Hrefs and Majestic SEO too.

As you said something wrong on my onpage, whats wrong are you saying about. I did not do any different things.

Thank you.

[moonheart]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your response. As per your questions, I am providing below some keyword ranking comparison for our website and pinkcherry:

sex toys: Pinkcherry.ca - 27, Cupidboutique.com - nowhere

adult toys - Pinkcherry.ca - 17, Cupidboutique.com - nowhere

adult sex toys - Pinkcherry.ca - 12, Cupidboutique.com - 60

Vibrators - Pinkcherry.ca - 12, Cupidboutique.com - Nowhere

These are some example only. There are too many keywords that they are rankings, but not we.

Now I am showing you their duplicate product URL pages:

http://www.pinkcherry.ca/5-function-p-e-prostate-massager-vibe-in-black

http://www.pinkcherry.com/5-function-p-e-prostate-massager-vibe-in-black

---

http://www.pinkcherry.ca/9-function-p-e-prostate-massager-vibe-in-black

http://www.pinkcherry.com/9-function-p-e-prostate-massager-vibe-in-black

---

http://www.pinkcherry.ca/anal-fantasy-beginner-s-fantasy-kit

http://www.pinkcherry.com/anal-fantasy-beginner-s-fantasy-kit

These are also just example, all of their products are duplicate each other.

Can you please analyze this and inform me what they are doing to achieve good ranking, which I am not doing.

Thank You.

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[max.favilli]

I can see the total number of referring domains decreasing for cupidboutique.com while it's increasing for the two others. That's not good.

Usual metrics, like DA/Trust etc... are definitely better for pinkcherry who also has more backlinks, but cupidboutique values are supposely better than hushcanada.

But... The count of positions in SERP top 50 is surprisingly low for cupidboutique (209) when compared to pinkcherry (1.2k) and hushcanada (823), something is definitely wrong with your SEO on-page in my opinion; but it could also be your backlink profile, you should check anchor text diversity and backlink diversity.

[Dr-Pete]

Could you provide a sample of a couple of phrases where you're popping up below these competitors?

In the case of Pink Cherry, there are many ways to operate a .com and .ca site without it looking like duplicate content to Google. If the sites are properly targeted, and Google doesn't think they're trying to "double dip", so to speak (rank two identical sites in one country), they can operate two sites in English without any penalties. There are risks and trade-offs, but it can certainly be done successfully.