Competitor Out Ranks My Site

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Hi

This is my first question on SEOMoz and I am confused how a competitor can out rank me for a local search term SEO Tamworth. I have a higher Page Authority, Domain Authority, Number of links etc..

Would this be down to the quality of the links to my site or could it be down to the structure. I score an A for SEO on the on page analysis.

Regards

James

[MattAntonino]

Hi James,

I (and others) have answered this a number of times recently so I'm mainly going to link you in.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-does-this-site-rank-higher-than-a-seemingly-better-one

http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-t-for-the-life-of-me-figure-out-how-this-is-possible-any-ideas

http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-would-a-site-with-virtually-no-external-links-and-low-authority-rank-very-high

The basics of it are you are looking at maybe 3 or 4 metrics of maybe 200 that affect SEO.  DA and PA matter but they are heavily influenced by other factors such as domain age, page loading speed, time left on registration (surprisingly!), number and quality of anchor text vs branded text, follow vs. nofollow (not in the ways you'd necessarily expect), and again, like 175 other factors.  There are always a million "could be" answers.

Let's say the other site had a PR7 SEO site before and it is now offline.  Maybe they used it for the "black hat" version of their business.  They've seen the light, black hat works less than ever, and they've gone all white hat.  Now they 301 that domain over to the new one.  You can't "see" the 301 but the effect would be massive.  Maybe they have one big client who they managed to ask for and get a big link that isn't on the Moz index but it's showing up in WMT.  Maybe their average visitor visits 3 times as many pages as on your site or stays for 10 minutes longer per visit.  Those type of metrics make a huge difference in SEO.

I hope that helps answer your question!  A huge amount of factors control SEO - social, possibly, the platform of the site, +1s on Google, local citations that may not include a live link so they aren't picked up by Moz.... see the issue in figuring this out?

~Matt

[danatanseo]

Matt, This was a great response. I especially like that you didn't stop at just offering links but you offered a complete answer in addition to those. That's something that makes this forum great.

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Matt what an excellent response... I am going to look at the links you've provided as well.

Yes it definitely answered my question I am going to get Google +1 onto my page ASAP as that is an easy step.

I need to look at the copy to make sure users stay on the page, I am pretty sure the page is all white hat but may be in my early days I used board line methods which could be impacting it.

I have some good results for my clients and I can get them to do me a nice little testimonial on the good work I have done on possible Google places, Qype and some others which rank well.

Thanks again... (I am actually very excited today after reading this response)

[MattAntonino]

Thanks Dana.  I love talking about SEO and I type fast so it helps get those thoughts out. Appreciate the comment.

[MattAntonino]

Hi James,

I'm glad it helps and excites you going forward with your business.

Check your Analytics data as well - see if there are ways to quickly improve time on site, loading speed, bounce rate, average pages per visit - anything Google gives you could be an insight into what they want you to improve.

If you have any related questions, just ping me to let me know and I'll check back.

~Matt