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
-
How can I make a compelling financial forecast on how SEO will bring tangible value?
Hi all, I am currently doing keywords research and matching it to our sales data. With an input of resources, do you know if there is a good way to create a growth forecast as a result of SEO investment? How do I work out a strategy and align it to a compelling financial forecast? Your experience on this will be super helpful! Many thanks, Eric
Local SEO | | Eric_S1 -
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 -
Getting Schooled in Local by 'Lesser' Brands?
Hi Moz! First question I've asked here. I've been working on campaign for my company (regional solar installation company in Northeast USA) for close to 7 years, we've always done well in local search but recently have noticed sites that, for lack of a better word, we 'school' in terms of all the usual metrics - better/more consistent local listings, better domain strength, better backlink profile, bigger company (in the real world), brand recognition, etc... However recently we have started seeing smaller competitors beat us in state-specific rankings, using stuff I would call 'old school' SEO that is no longer really tolerated, in theory - stuffing keywords onto page, keywords in domain, etc... domains of much less strength pulling #1 or #2 terms. Based on data I don't actually think keywords like "solar + state name" are actually that powerfully but frankly it is bit embarrassing to get crushed by 1-2 person companies when you have a 150+ company with a three-person in-house digital marketing team. My strategy so far has consisted of building a better Google review solicitation process, adding schema markup to our project gallery, and some SEO 101 stuff like reworking keywords and title tags. I've noticed a strong uptick on our site of leads from outside our territory (like folks from all across the USA who are NOT in our service territory) - I'm almost thinking I've done 'too good' a job of building a nationally relevant website and not enough state-specific options. Has anyone ever experienced something like this? Any clever strategies beyond the obvious? Can share more specifics if it'll be helpful. Cheers,
Local SEO | | revisionsolar
Fred0 -
Community Discussion: When The 'Coupon Drawer' Is More Influential Than Your Best Friend ...
Howdy To Our Super Community! When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by ladies who spent hours combing through newspapers and mailers, clipping coupons to put in a coupon drawer for future shopping excursions. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to in order to save a a few bucks, especially given that I grew up in an era that still boasted a pretty stable middle class, but, it turns out, those ladies of yore were really onto something. A recent survey by Bazaarvoice and CMO Council found that coupons and discounts drive way more return/loyalty business amongst modern shoppers than any other factor, including recommendations from family and friends and paid advertising. Another survey by ROTH and Research Now discovered that 70% of millennial moms sought and downloaded mobile coupons while doing their shopping chores. There are a couple of facets of these findings that should interest any e-commerce business or local retailer. We've learned from a variety of studies that it can cost up to 7x more to earn a new customer than to retain an existing one, making loyalty programs smart business. Meanwhile, publications like the Wall Street Journal have made it clear that, in the U.S., the middle class is no longer the majority. These two factors seem to lend themselves to an important discussion for our community here at Moz, and in the marketing world at large. What is driving 70% of young mothers to use mobile coupons, as per the above study? Is it tight budgets, the love of a deal, pride in outsmarting 'the system' with a little extra effort? Is your company using coupons? Which ones have you seen convert most highly? Is there some element to them you've discovered to be a real winner? Interestingly, price is repeatedly cited as a minor factor in customer complaints, and yet, I've personally seen discounts/sales drive business like mad in both e-commerce and retail settings. Just how powerful is the love a deal? I would love it if you'd contribute your coupon/discount savvy to a discussion here, to help our community better latch onto this massively powerful influence. What are your thoughts and first-hand experiences?
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis2 -
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 -
Implemented schema.org on our website and it's showing up as being correct but I've been told its wrong- can someone please have a quick look ?
Dear Mozzers, We have implemented schema.org on our website and it's showing up as being correct. However, I've been told by a SEO company that what we have done is incorrect and is therefore giving out wrong signals to google and that it needs fixing but they haven't told me whats wrong with it. Would someone please be able to have to have a quick scan and highlight anything that is not correct. I have enclosed 4 urls belows of the different sections of my website. My website homepage - is -- http://goo.gl/2F80w2 We have a number of branches- An example branch url is - http://goo.gl/8FpcaS example category url - http://goo.gl/gbAaD2 example product url - http://goo.gl/EXI1Sr Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Many thanks
Local SEO | | PeteC12
Peter0 -
My First SEO strategy - What's next?
I have recently embarked on an SEO strategy for my website. I've done a lot of reading and researching here on Moz and on search engine land and have got a good idea of how to build a basic SEO strategy. My own expertise is in PPC, so keyword strategy came easy to me. I rebuilt my website and focused on the on page SEO with every single page, this has brought really great results - instantly. For some of my chosen keywords I have gone from not being ranked to being on Google's first page - within a couple of days of my new website going live, for other's I've gone from being outside the top 50 to being ranked in the top 50, so my on page SEO has really strengthened my position and I now understand how important it is as a ranking factor. I've also started to create content on a regular basis with 2 or 3 new blogs being uploaded each week, the blogs are based around my businesses main target market's - PPC, Web design, digital marketing etc. These blogs have a lot of links out to good websites, EG "to learn about adwords check out the adwords fundamentals course on lynda.com" and useful info like that. I also signed up to whitespark for citation idea's so have started adding my site to all relevant directory suggestions that it gives me. So my question is this, after seeing great early results because of my on page SEO, what are my next steps to increase my rankings? And more specifically how do I use Moz to help increase my ranking? During the week, I've started using Open site explorer to find my competitors backlinks, should I now spend my time trawling through these links to find opportunities to add links for my website where I can. Is this a good thing to be doing at this stage? Anything else that I should be doing now to capitalise on my early results please let me know what it is and please tell me how to take full advantage of Moz to gain a better ranking. I appreciate all insight!
Local SEO | | michealbren0 -
Have you heard of any white hat methods for influencing Google's auto suggest/auto complete?
We have a client who has a "friend" who says he can get keyword phrases that include their business name to show up in Google's auto suggest when doing a search. We have not heard much about this and are skeptical to these claims as we know how Google comes up with these suggested keyword phrases. Wondering if anyone in the community heard much about tactics to influence auto suggest/auto complete and would like to know your opinion about it.
Local SEO | | CraigSDM0