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Thanks for the detailed response, Mike. I appreciate your time. Everything you said makes a lot of sense and gives some insight as to optimizations that can be made.

I understand what you're saying about the site needing to be more informative and friendly rather than focusing on competition. Unfortunately in this case, this is an ecommerce site with a very specific product line (one which is actually patent infringed upon, mentioned this above), and there really is only one competitor for my client. As this is the case, my client isn't just one in a giant pool of competitors in the shuffle, but really 1 of 2 in the space. With such a niche market, I think that top placement probably means a little more to most casual buyers searching out their type of product.

Anyways, thanks again for all of your insight. I appreciate it!

I definitely agree. I'm not looking to recommend a new domain name or anything like that, but based on the high level stats I have looked at, it seemed on the surface like it may be more of a factor than other people seem to think. I think my client's website has the edge on load times, content, and overall aesthetic. The big thing that was standing out to me was the domain, so I was trying to make sure it wasn't simply a battle that couldn't be won. And in this scenario, the client that has this particular domain is infringing on the patent of my client and is part of an ongoing lawsuit... so that's all the more frustrating.

Well maybe you misunderstood then. I'm not just looking to copy techniques that the competitor has used, but obviously there's a reason that they are ranked higher (especially considering the stats that I outlined in my initial post). I'm simply looking to improve the rankings of my client's website. Looking at the competition is generally a part of that process, no?

The load times are great on both sites and both are mobile friendly in this scenario.

Beyond the tools available in Moz Pro, do you have any recommendations on ways to figure out what those reasons might be? I'm a longtime web developer (although I didn't build this particular site), so I'm savvy with the technical end of things. I'm just relatively new to SEO (beyond the basics anyways).

To provide an example for this scenario, let's say the keyword is "Closet Organizers." My client domain would be superclosets.com and the competitor is closetorganizersystems.com. Not sure if that provides anymore insight with the domain thing, but I assumed it had some weight. Maybe not though.

I've read that Google has lowered the relevancy of a keyword rich domain name in recent years, but I have a scenario with a client that makes me think otherwise. My client has a particular phrase that they're trying to get rank for and are currently in position 3 of Google. Their primary competitor has position1.

Using the Keyword Analysis in Moz Pro, my client has a competitor beat out in Page Authority (45 vs 36), # Root Domains Linking to Page (98 vs 9), Domain Authority (35 vs 24), and # Root Domains Linking to Domain (122 vs 15). The main difference is that the competitor has the exact phrase as part of their domain. Other than that, the phrase (on my client's site) is used in title tags, heading tags, and throughout page content.

I can provide additional information if necessary, but does anybody have any general advice about this scenario?