Please tell me why we can't outrank a competitor with such poor metrics
-
Hi ! New here
I'm trying to help a customer rank in the 1st page on a low-mid competition term in a specific city. I did a comparison of both URL in MOZ "Compare link Metrics" & we beat them on 85% of the metrics. They are on the 1st page, often top-3, the closest position we can get is about 13-15.
The only higher metric they have is Domain MozRank & MozTrust + equity passing link (??)
We are running WordPress with Genesis, they are running a custom site. See attached printscreen of the report.
Help !
-
Hi John,
What you'll need to do here is a fully audit of the business in question and of its competitors. There are several hundred factors that can contribute to why a business ranks where it is ranking. Here are some resources that may really help:
https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
http://searchengineland.com/rank-high-organically-not-locally-case-study-240692
Hope these help!
-
Here are the urls -> (see new printscreen)
The keyword we want to rank for : entrepreneur système intérieur (in montreal)
There will be a redesign soon, but for now we want to drive organic traffic, I can't figure out why with such good metrics we are being outranked. We just started working on the website so there are still things to work on obviously... and the previous "seo specialist" added a couple bold sentence here & there, created a couple page with 12 words urls (with about 50-100 words inside each page, duplicated content from other page) & was hoping the site would rank top 3 (believe it or not).
Any advice appreciated !
-
Hi there John
Without seeing your website or the competitor website, it's hard for the community to help. If you could send the links to the both websites this would give us the opportunity to use our tools to give more insights and ideas as to why you have this situation.
Let me know if you have any other questions or comments!
Patrick
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
-
Local Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!
Local SEO | | Seanthewood1230 -
Miriam's 7 Local SEO Predictions for 2019
Greetings to our great Moz Community! It's been a fascinating year in Local Search, and I thought it would be good to jot down a few of my personal predictions for the year ahead. I'd love you to add yours, as well, so that we can all think together about the local businesses we'll be marketing in the new year. Here we go: 1) Major player weaknesses could lead to a changing of the local guard Whether it's Facebook's ethics scandals or Yelp's downward stock trends, loss of public confidence could mean a shift in a local search platform hierarchy that's been pretty well established for some years. These brands' ongoing challenges could spell out opportunity for newcomer brands, or could simply drive more people to Google. Google has had its own problems this year, but nevertheless... 2) Google will continue to dominate and monetize local search For so many users, Google IS the Internet, and that's an advantage no competitor has been able to overcome. In 2019, I expect to see further monetization of local SERPs, including LSA, in-pack local ads, booking buttons, and other forms of lead gen. Local search marketing will become more spendy. For more on creating strategy in this environment, read: Why Local Businesses will Need Websites More Than Ever in 2019. And, for retailers... 3) Real-time Online Local Inventory will become a real "thing" I'll have an article coming out on this in early 2019 on the Moz blog (Update: Now Published: https://moz.com/blog/taking-local-inventory-online), but in a nutshell, we're on course to cross a new threshold in search. You'll finally be able to search for local inventory and get accurate information about who near you stocks what in their stores. Google's See What's In Store feature will be part of this, but so will emerging third party technology. User behavior will change as a result of this, and just like we've all integrated online mapping/local search into our daily lives, we'll soon be familiar with using search to find local inventory. This is really great news for retailers of all sizes! Meanwhile... 4) The line between brands and people will blur further 2018 has been a fascinating study in what appears to be a rising consumer expectation that brands align with customers at a philosophical level. We saw Nike's stock go to a record high due to their deft read of the nation and company alignment with Colin Kaepernick, while other retailers lost millions over culturally-insensitive content. Big rewards and boycotts represent the two extreme ends of this spectrum in which your CEO isn't really a private person anymore, but rather, a member of the larger society with a voice that will be assessed for its empathy to causes, groups and events. This puts brand employees in unfamiliar territory, having some of their fate rise or fall based on the public stances of company leadership, and it puts a new premium on skillful awareness of societal trends. Because of this... 5) Smart local brands will speed up focus on sustainability Political pundits are predicting that the 2020 US election may be referendum on Climate Change. This means that US customers will be inundated with messaging and news surrounding this over the next two years. We're already seeing big brands like Patagonia respond by saying that they're "in the business of saving the planet" and Salesforce co-CEO billionaire Mark Benioff promising that his company will be running on 100% renewable energy by 2022. I predict that a growing body of consumers will increasingly expect and reward sustainable brand practices. 2019 will be a very good year for the local businesses you market to do a green audit of their business model, implement change and then promote their Climate-friendly practices. Think big on this, because... 6) Reputation will be key Everything a local business can do to please and retain customers should sit at the core of the business model. Whatever it is that gets your customers to leave positive reviews, return for repeat business, recommend you via WOM to their friends and family, and view you as a vital component of local commerce will have a serious impact on your reputation, rankings and revenue. Google recently stated that 27% of local searches have an intent of reading reviews about a specific business and our recent State of Local Industry Report here at Moz found that 91% of respondents agree that reviews impact rankings. Reputation, and the awareness of its role, will be very big in 2019. 7) Link building will become more deeply integrated into Local SEO Local Search Ranking Factors 2018 cited links as the 6th most influential local pack factor. This means that smart local SEOs will double down on their organic skills and start pursuing relevant links for their clients with professional, organized strategies and good tools. Any Local SEM package that leaves out link building will be incomplete. All in all, I predict we're in for an exciting, challenging year in which clear vision and a dedication to service will be the keys to local business success. **Now it's your turn! Where do you see us going in 2019 in the local search industry? Please, share your own predictions! **
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis8 -
To Keep My Company's CO.UK Page Or Redirect It...
Hi Moz'ers - I have a question... Just to set the stage, we're a small recruiting firm, with an even smaller marketing department. I'm essentially a one man wrecking crew and don't have a ton of extra time. That being said, I know that page rank (and local office rank) are critical to our inbound lead generation, so I'm willing to invest some of my time into doing it right. The issue I'm having is ranking high as a local business in Austin, New York, San Francisco, and London, UK (to name a few). So far I've solved this through building dedicated subpages on our .com site and link building key word anchor text towards those pages. The only page that's not really gaining traction is our London page. So I decided to clone (most of) the site, tweak the text (to try and avoid dup text), and try and get that page to rank. I'm also having it hosted on a local server, have it using a local domain address suffix (co.uk), using local hreflang (on our .com site), created dedicated web 2.0 sites, and done my best to do some link building. The problem I'm facing is crapy local ranking, and limited bandwidth to maintain two sites. Should I: A) Scrap the co.uk site and focus on the .com (and subpages)
Local SEO | | bettsrecruiting
B) Keep the co.uk domain, and just redirect the URL to our .com page
C) Keep the co.uk domain, send all links from the home page to the relevant page on our .com page, and set up 301 redirects for all other relevant pages.
D) Hire someone to clean up, rewrite, and upkeep the co.uk site because it has the most SEO value in the long run and is the only way I'm going to be able to rank locally in London. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim Our European Site - http://bettsrecruiting.co.uk/
Our US Site - http://bettsrecruiting.com/0 -
Ideas on competitors website jumping so quickly?
Aloha Moz community! I've been chipping away on my site and have been happy to see progress on getting to the first page for some searches I'd like to rank for. That being said and during my time doing this I noticed a fellow photographer jump to the first page out of what seems like nowhere! http://emilyhelen.com/ It left me scratching my head trying to figure out where and how they're site jumped up to the front so fast and has been holding strong since then. Do you guys have any ideas or ways I could replicate that? Much appreciated as always guys! Warmest aloha, Jon Gibb
Local SEO | | Trey30 -
Community Discussion: Miriam's 2017 Local SEO Predictions ... And Yours?
I want to start this thread by thanking everyone in our community who has started and contributed to great threads this past year. You guys are an inspiration! I want to offer up a few predictions for the Local SEO industry in 2017 and ask you to contribute your own: Attribution will be big in 2017. Google will roll out a more thorough set of attributes in the GMB dashboard as we move forward through the new year. We'll see further rollout out of paid packs in service industries in which Google can play the middle man role. Free-packs won't be gone by the end of the year, but there will be fewer of them. Even SMB local businesses will have to start to tackle the ramifications of voice search. Local SEO will continue to merge with traditional, offline marketing. Local business websites will still matter, but Google will continue to do all it can to keep users within layers of its own local product, and some people will find this maze a bit bewildering. Reviews will finally be recognized as an integral facet of citations, rather than as something separate from them. Now, please, look into your own crystal ball and share your predictions with the community. What are your predictions for Local SEO in 2017? I'd love to know. And, while I'm at it, please let me wish each of you a busy and profitable new year in our exciting industry!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis4 -
Google cache is showing the wrong URL with CCTLD's
Hi Folks, At Lightspeed we decided to setup local websites with CCtld's. Momentarily we have issues with the Google cache. I'm not sure what's going wrong. For example if I check the Google cache of www.lightspeedhq.be in the Belgium Google it refers to www.lightspeedhq.nl. See link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fm0XIZ8sEe8J:https://www.lightspeedhq.be/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be We have the same problem for our www.lightspeedhq.co.uk website, which is referring to www.lightspeedhq.com: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OXdAIIFa7AYJ:https://www.lightspeedhq.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Does Google sees it as duplicate content? Or don't we have to use 'Alternative Hreflang'? A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com. What can we do now to make sure all is properly indexed? Best, Ruud
Local SEO | | Ruudst0 -
How Can I Outlink Web Designer Link Building from Their Clients' Footer
_I used open site explorer to view the backlinks for a competitor of an agency I work with. They have ten times as many links, if not more, than we do, and I noticed there were only a few more domains linking back to them. As I dug deeper I noticed these links were coming from the footer tag they put on their clients' sites like "Site Designed by __." If a site had 20 pages, they had 20 links back...weird and annoying that it counts. They have more clients for web design than we do, so their bulk linking could continue to outrank us. Any suggestions on how we can outrank them locally? We are in the midst of redesigning our entire site to build out more pages and have much better internal linking. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | Michael4g0 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0