Competitor ranks high, but how?
-
On our campaign, I have three local competitors which I like to keep an eye on. Two have been around for years but the other is pretty new. According to Moz, he has a Domain Authority of 1, has no backlinks and ranks lower on every keyword I keep track of.
How then is he getting ahead of us for certain search terms? Can Moz not give any more information?
-
If you click a users profile, you can click a link that allows them to message them directly.
-
Very welcome. I came across that article yesterday so it was fresh in my mind when I saw your question.
Best of luck!
Zack
-
That is very useful, thanks Zack.
-
Thanks Robert. I suppose really I'm a bit frustrated that Moz doesn't do a bit more when it comes to competitor information. Majestic and a couple of other FREE tools list quite a few backlinks (though less than ours) while Moz reports... zero.
-
Thanks for your response. Is it possible to send URL privately? Distinct possibility that the other person is on here!
-
I think it's well worth mentioning also that there are many other important factors beyond backlinks. You find the following article very helpful:
Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List by Brian Dean for Backlinko
http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factorsBest,
Zack -
Hi Rob and Sarah,
My first guess is that the websites is answering that specific question/query better than yours. Are those well performing pages significantly different than the pages that don't come up so high?
Ps: keep in mind that Domain Authority is an interpretation of Moz, and not from Google. Also keep in mind that Moz is nog aware of all the backlinks. Even if the links are out there for a year. Moz tries to "only show the most important links to the domain".
Google sees a lot more links to a domain than Moz does.
-
Rob and Sarah,
I would like to point out a few things:
1. Try Majestic's backlink checker. It more comprehensive than Moz's.
2. Don't forget that Google Algo isn't that simple. There are a ton of factors that could be influencing it: Maybe the website has great user signals like CTR, dwell time, etc. Do they have a great social presence that has provided visitors?
Anyway, i am speaking in generalities and we would need more specifics to help further...like both your web addresses
Nails
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
-
Screaming Frog for competitor research
Hi guys, Does somebody experienced an issue with Screaming Frog spider while trying to crawl a website? It's weird since no error message appears and at the same time the crawler cannot crawl anything. There is no restriction in the robots.txt. Has someone encountered such an issue? Thank you. Cheers
Competitive Research | | lgrozeva0 -
Competitors SERP's
One of our competitors is routinely achieving excellent SERP for brand related keywords within only a couple of months of adding the respective brand to their website. Full details are explained in the attached image to avoid the competitor being notified of this post via Google Alerts. Can anyone identify how they are achieving this and point me in the right direction? The other thing is that I was also achieving good SERPs for these and other brand related keywords but I seem to have dropped off the face of google for them, where my competitor has not and who continues to achieve the seemingly impossible. Thanks TOfVHD8
Competitive Research | | UnderMe0 -
How to top competitor's article
Hello, For bobweikel.com I'm going to work on getting some natural backlinks by making a better article than http://www.medicinenet.com/weight_loss/article.htm even though they're 30 times more of an authority than me. If you think this is a good idea, how do you recommend I top this thing? I'm just brainstorming
Competitive Research | | BobGW0 -
Help! New site won't rank locally but should...
any help would be greatly appreciated... picked up a new client, a used car dealer in New Jersey. Have a VERY spammy site before, tons of keyword stuffing and lots of dupe content. also had a horrible design. (www.coopscars.com) We updated the design and the content, made it relevant and unique, fixed title tags, etc. Now he's not ranking for anything locally other than his business name. He's got a decent number of links, we've added relevant citations, his social signals are much stronger than they were... We do lots of SEO for car dealers, and we know that he should be ranking SOMEWHERE at this point - not saying he should be page 1, but he should at least be somewhere in the top 5... and yes, bing/yahoo are different, but he ranks over there... one page 1 for "used cars south river" - so why completely non-existant on Google? just as a test, he put up a free website at www.coopscars.net just last week - and it's already ranking for several local terms. I'm completely confused here - i'm not a noob, I know the tactics we've used on him work for other dealers. Thinking there's got to be something that's blocking him, especially since there aren't but maybe 15-20 car dealers to compete against locally and he still doesn't show up... thought i'd come over here and see if anyone has any ideas...
Competitive Research | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Tracking competitors in search engines
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Advanced Web Rankings (AWR) to track my site and a number of competitors in Google - seeing how rankings and brand visibility change from week to week. I didn't set this up from scratch and I'm worrying with all of the recent algorithm changes that I might well be tracking the wrong competitors. Is there a tool or methodology I can use to find the biggest players in the market? I'm in the travel market so there's lots of choice and I track the large sites but want to be sure I'm aware of smaller/mid-sized sites gaining visibility without me tracking them via a platform like AWR. Many thanks!
Competitive Research | | panini0 -
Question about Keywords & Ranking
I hope this isn't too basic of a question, but I am confused about something. If you use the Keyword Research tool and type in "Stained Concrete Flooring", the 3rd result (stainedconcrete.org) has the lowest numbers of any of the sites in the top 8-10... Is it because they have a large amount of traffic? or is there some other factor that I am missing?
Competitive Research | | Timvroom0 -
How can I find the pages on my site with the highest page rank?
I have a lot pages on my site and I'm wondering if there is a tool out there that will find all the pages with the highest pagerank for me? Also, it would be helpful to find that on competitors sites as well. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | shawn810 -
Can't Grasp Why Pages rank Higher?
The first result "Bankruptcy on IRS" is the search term. Why does the first url rank higher in google. The second one, the IRS.gov page beats them in PA, DA root domains links. The title meta has bankruptcy near the front. unclefed does have the IRS keyword in the title, but an I missing something here? What are the other factors, that are most obvious. Sure one can have bad links, and other negative criteria, but these are pretty decent sites that probably don't engage in much in seo, let alone bad SEO. Sure link text and mix of links can help, but am I missing something here? Actually what I think I really need IS A CHECKLIST OF WHAT TO CHECK IN WHAT ORDER WHEN COMPARING WHY ONE PAGE RANKS BETTER THAN ANOTHER. Appreciate all discussions. Thanks in advance. http://www.unclefed.com/AuthorsRow/Daily/Fwdcsea.html http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98701,00.html
Competitive Research | | joemas990