How does this site rank higher than a seemingly better one??
-
Ok, I'm really trying to wrap my self around all this SEO stuff. Right when I think I'm grasping it, I come across something like this.
When running a keyword difficulty report for the term "essay editing", the top two results are:
www.papercheck.com/essay-editing.html
www.gradesaver.com/essay-editing/
The first result has a PA of 37, 2 linking page domains, DA of 48, and 197 root linking domains.
The second has a PA of 65, 32 linking page domains, DA of 68, and 2,572 root linking domains.
What the heck is going on here!?!? I can't understand it. I checked anchor text and that doesn't appear to be it. The only thing I can find is that the papercheck has a link from a site (marketwire) with a DA of 90 while the #2 guy's highest linking domain has a DA of 60.
However, I have a really hard time wrapping my head around this considering the total linking domain stats compared to one another.
Any insight is much appreciate... this is frustrating trying to grasp these situations!
Thanks!
-
You're not considering a lot of factors that go into SEO:
-
Page speed could be better on #1.
-
Over optimization on page 2 - with many links with anchor text that includes "editing"
-
"editing" appears 80 times on page 1, 66 times on page 2, despite page 2 having more text. I'm not saying this is a case of keyword density/spamming it, but maybe they're on the line and #2 is under it.
-
Better overall inbound link authority to #2 possibly.
-
Page 2 has repetition of both keywords in the title. Google already punishes this if you don't have noODP by replacing your title with a more suitable one. They aren't big fans of duplication but even so, #2 has a much different title.
-
Co-citation. Even with a better DA and PA, the related inbound links may be more relevant to essay editing on page 1. Also, more domains may point directly at the subpage essay-editing.html than they do the absolute page at /essay-editing/index.php
-
Analytics matter. If #2 bounce rate is double #1, and the time on site for #1 is 4 minutes longer per visitor and they get more traffic through an email list that actually stays on site, they'd have a natural boost in the "analytics" department, as well.
There are always a million reasons why one site could or may outrank another. All you can realistically do is improve your site as much as possible, create relevant links back, get citations that all match, engage on social and have a site that responds well when people click it.
-
-
The seo moz stats for a site is not the exactly same as what google uses to determine authority/trust so just because one seems to have more authority does not mean google thinks it is more relevant.
Hence why even some new sites with minimal back links can outrank some very trusted sites on the same topic.
Welcome to the wonderful world of seo, strap in and get comfortable because it's a never ending journey.
All the best
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
-
Major Dip in Keyword Rank - Why?
Last week my ranking for "keyword A" was relatively high at 16. Since then it's dropped a staggering 31 spots. It's certainly the most important keyword we can rank for so seeing it go -31 spots is rather frightening. I have a couple of theories: We haven't included it in our blog content as anchor text but once in the past 2 or so weeks since the last crawl was done by moz on oct. 21. The lack of recent links with the anchor text of "keyword A" pointing back to the blog is causing it to lose it's rapport. I've been adding most of our blog posts to Reddit and we've been getting almost double the traffic from Reddit alone. But with that comes a much higher bounce rate (~80%). Could posting and having visitors bounce from our blog posts cause the ranking to go down? I would love to get your thoughts on this issue. Thanks,
Link Building | | smf434340 -
Gifly.com: url structure for new site with only one kind of page
Hi, we are launching a new site called Gifly.com, it's all about Gifs. At the moment, our robots.txt is blocking everything because we want to have a solid url structure before going public. There is only one kind of page, the permalink which has this form: http://gifly.com/QPmf/ (the four characters 'QPmf' are completely random) What we made different from the multitude of other Gifs site is that we are
Link Building | | mylittlepwny
trying to categorize gifs with hashtags, so we introduced these kind of urls: http://gifly.com/FoYi/
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#fail
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#blonde
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#dumb This was done for several reason, the first is that each gif can have up to 10
hashtags. Another approach to this could have been: http://gifly.com/fail/FoYi/
http://gifly.com/blonde/FoYi/
http://gifly.com/dumb/FoYi/ ...but we will face tons of duplicated contents for search engines because the same gif
would have 10x permalinks this way. The way we use to navigate between hashtags is via buttons/ajax (see the list of hashtags on the left)
We know that google may have a hard time understanding the site's structure, We'd like to know if the current set of urls, as: http://gifly.com/FoYi/
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#fail
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#blonde
http://gifly.com/FoYi/#dumb could be okay if we provide google a solid sitemap. We are thinking about a first sitemap with the list of hashtags,
each hashtag points to a second sitemap containing the list of new gifs uploaded for said hashtag. Thanks! gifly_logo_r_a.gif0 -
Tool sharing sites
Hi All I have a finance calculator that our IT team have built and I would like to get it distributed to sites will find it useful, I am contacting sites that I think will directly benefit from the calculator, but are there sites that I can share it on (like you would use youtube for video)? Thanks Sean
Link Building | | MotoringSEO0 -
Open Site Explorer Changed?
I am getting this at the bottom of Open Site Explorer. I have never seen this message before. "Why does my number of inbounds links listed not match my total links count? The listed number may be slightly different because we only show 25 links per domain (so that you see a variety). Additionally you have 18 links from no-indexed pages. Unfortunately, we can't get info for those links." Did SEOMoz change something? If I look at a site, SEOMOZ's OSE doesn't show me all the links it can find anymore? It only shows 25 max???
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Safe to link to another site you own?
Hi mozzers, I have some external links on a resource page on my established site. I have a new site in the same niche with content that if linked to, would improve the resource page. If I linked to it using branded anchor text, would it be safe? My thoughts are yes...as long as it adds value and isnt keyword anchored. The sites are on different C class IPs Would welcome some thoughts Peter
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Local service site link building
I have a local service site http://winecountrycarpet.com/ and I have been link building as much as possible for my landing pages (which aren't local to my city, but are within 20 miles). I would like to keep my link building as above board and white hat as possible (so i do a lot of forum sigs and links in do follow forum in my industry) I do not seem to be seeing any results though. My pages are on the first page for their targeted keywords, but I think this has more to do with onsite SEO and non competitive keywords. I am wondering if anyone can recommend any strategies that I might find more effective. I have thought about leaving blog comments on do follow blog's but it just seems so spammy its hard to imagine it working. I am open to any ideas.
Link Building | | ayetti0 -
List of High Ranking Directories
Hi, Does anyone have a list of high ranking free or almost free directories that have high search engine rankings and have an opportunity for a link or links for a personal development site in the USA? The directories should have the following qualities: Old Site Age A lot of unique content (or as much as a directory can have) A clean site Plenty of Backlinks going to it Facebook followers (if possible, though this might be stretching it) high search engine rankings I think you get the general idea. I'm looking for directories that are high ranking and in for the long haul. They don't have to be free, but it's best if it's inexpensive. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0