Welcome to the Q&A Forum

That's right you posted that about link research tools in my other question but I haven't checked them out yet I will do that asap. I definitely have some more investigation to do but I still think that having a massive portion of their site as duplicate content is hurting. I will talk to them about adding content and see where that goes.

Yes I used semrush and raven as well as ose. I looked at the directories and any titles that caught my eye. I need to spend more time on Backlinks for the site I am auditing for sure though.

A question I asked elsewhere was how concerned I should be with high amounts of directory links. This one has quite a few but another site I am working on has about 60% of their Backlinks from yellowpage directories. I still don't know what I think about that.

Ya I was thinking they should add some more locally targeted content. The duplicate content has no local keywords in it. It doesn't mention their city at all. Like I said that is nearly the largest portion of content on their site and has no local terms.

So link metrics from OSE are that the site I am auditing has 69 referring domains with 1199 links a couple hundred are directories. There does not seem to be any spammy referring domains for either site after a quick once through. The competitor has 10 referring domains with 77 links. The average DA of the referring domains for the competitor is about half of the site I am auditing. The competitors anchor text is slightly better for the keywords in question on average. All in all though the link portfolios are not what is beating the site I am auditing.

No its a totally regional industry they aren't competitors and they have exclusivity in their contracts so they can't work with competitors inside a certain radius or whatever.

I didn't mean they should be ranking nationally I am just saying it is possible in regards to your question of is local or national seo more important.

Yes they are a local service company serving St. Louis. However I will say that the marketing company they hired have a client in the same field in New England that ranks top 5 for the same keywords nationally so to me there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do the same.

Ya you are totally right I have to dig into the Backlinks. I will post the results back here when I get it done.

The results are local results so that is why the site with the original content doesn't rank but the duplicate does. The original content belongs to a company half of the US away. Neither company ranks for the search terms on a national scale but when I paste content in directly to Google and search, the original content does beat out the site I am auditing.

2/17 isn't bad I think that's less than a 5 percent chance of having any Google problems. What those flags are is more important. Rand has said a few times that the flags are not suggestions to fix something. They are simply correlations. Many of the flags can not be avoided for some sites. I wouldn't worry about a 2/17 score. Look at what the flags are and if they are things you can change and feel you should then do it.

As far as removing links goes, these flags can be a good indicator for further investigation in my opinion. I personally am going to investigate sites that have 5 or more but the final decision will be based on my normal link evaluations. Does the link link with spammy sites, does it hold any relevance to my site, does it drive desired traffic to my site, does it help or hurt my brand, does it exist only to create links, etc. etc. I would not advise saying well any links that have over 5 or 8 flags I am now going to get rid of or disavow. Use it as an indicator and then do good research on the suspect sites.

I can't speak to PA and DA impact as I am not sure if spam score is being included into those at this time. My understanding is that they are not. If they are really poor links then get rid of them regardless of PA and DA. Where you have a low amount of links then I would say yes a single poor link could have a greater impact on your ranking than it would on a site with thousands of links. That's all just my 2 cents though.

Ok I am asking this question to hopefully confirm my conclusion.

I am auditing a domain who's owner is frustrated that they are coming in #2 for their regionally tagged search result and think its their Marketer/SEOs fault. After briefly auditing their site, the marketing company they have doing their work has really done a great job. There are little things that I have suggested they could do better but nothing substantial. They are doing good SEO for the most part. Their competitor site is ugly, has a terrible user experience, looks very unprofessional, and has some technical SEO issues from what I have seen so far. Yet it is beating them every time on the serps. I have not compared backlinks yet. I will in the next day or so. I was halted when I found, what seems to me to be, the culprit.

I was looking for duplicate content internally, and they are doing fine there, then my search turned externally......

I copied and pasted a large chunk of one page into Google and got an exact match return.....rutro shaggy. I then found that there is another site from a company across the country that has identical content for possibly as much as half of their entire domain. Something like 50-75 pages of exact copy. I thought at first they must have taken it from the site I was auditing. I was shocked to find out that the company I am auditing actually has an agreement to use the content from this other site. The marketing company has asked the owners to allow them to rewrite the content but the owners have declined because "they like the content." So they don't even have authority on the content for approximately 1/2 of their site. Also this content is one of three main topics directed to from home page.

My point to them here is that I don't think you can optimize this domain enough to overcome the fact that you have a massive portion of your site that is not original. I just don't think perfect optimization of duplicate content beats mediocre optimization of original content.

I now have to convince the owners they are wrong, never an easy task. Am I right or am I over estimating the value of original content? Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Thank you I will check them out!

I have one site with 4224 links from yellow pages which are all no follow. The domain only has 7219 links total. Do I do anything with that? From what I can tell they are not helping me from a ranking / authority perspective but are they hurting me? What you are saying  makes sense to me about being well rounded. 58% of the total links being not follow from one site doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Any thoughts?

2/17 isn't bad I think that's less than a 5 percent chance of having any Google problems. What those flags are is more important. Rand has said a few times that the flags are not suggestions to fix something. They are simply correlations. Many of the flags can not be avoided for some sites. I wouldn't worry about a 2/17 score. Look at what the flags are and if they are things you can change and feel you should then do it.

As far as removing links goes, these flags can be a good indicator for further investigation in my opinion. I personally am going to investigate sites that have 5 or more but the final decision will be based on my normal link evaluations. Does the link link with spammy sites, does it hold any relevance to my site, does it drive desired traffic to my site, does it help or hurt my brand, does it exist only to create links, etc. etc. I would not advise saying well any links that have over 5 or 8 flags I am now going to get rid of or disavow. Use it as an indicator and then do good research on the suspect sites.

I can't speak to PA and DA impact as I am not sure if spam score is being included into those at this time. My understanding is that they are not. If they are really poor links then get rid of them regardless of PA and DA. Where you have a low amount of links then I would say yes a single poor link could have a greater impact on your ranking than it would on a site with thousands of links. That's all just my 2 cents though.

I think that to go back to what the op was saying he is trying to build an authoritative presence. If you already have that then what you are saying is definitely true. However, if you are just beginning a blog or a brand then going to the audience can be a much better approach than waiting for them to find you. I agree with you that if you want to keep an audience over time then you must be building that great original content into your own site, its just that getting out into the face of your audience in my opinion is a no brainer for a new blog or brand and I think it is still overlooked.

No its a totally regional industry they aren't competitors and they have exclusivity in their contracts so they can't work with competitors inside a certain radius or whatever.

I didn't mean they should be ranking nationally I am just saying it is possible in regards to your question of is local or national seo more important.

Ya you are totally right I have to dig into the Backlinks. I will post the results back here when I get it done.

The results are local results so that is why the site with the original content doesn't rank but the duplicate does. The original content belongs to a company half of the US away. Neither company ranks for the search terms on a national scale but when I paste content in directly to Google and search, the original content does beat out the site I am auditing.