Why are my competitors ranking higher?

[phoenixcg]

I know there could be numerous reasons here why they may be ranking higher but I hope I can get some answers from the details that I provide below

I am looking at one particular page so its

• www.mydomain.com/urlhere.html
• I have page rank 5 on this url
• I have had the domain for 7 years
• I have videos on this page (my competitors do too)
• I have 65 linking root domains
• 14,000 inbound links to this page.
• I have 6 keyword phrases in my title tag

My main competitor has a lot more pages and has been around longer, but has lower page rank and lower inbound links to that page. They also have less words in the title tag.

[josh-riley]

It could be a whole slew of things, as you know, and if you'd share actual domains, it could help uncover reasons. Better on page optimization? Fewer 404 errors or technical hiccups? They may have fewer inbound links but do they have more .edu or .gov which have more credibility? Do they freshen their content more?

Less words in the title tag is a moot point - do they have better keywords? You say "lower inbound links to that page" when if, as a whole, they have a better domain rank (vs just page rank), that can influence.

There's a lot of ways that this can be sliced.

[NakulGoyal]

I agree with Andrea's comments. I'd also like to highlight the answer from within the question.

"My main competitor has a lot more pages".

Great content, strengthens your entire website. Attracts more social media activity, more shares, more time spent on site etc etc. So If I were you, I'd see what I can do to provide useful content. Find the gaps. Look at your analytics, see what keywords people are using to come to your website. Do you update your content ? Is there an opportunity there ? If you can, see what people are looking for in your site-search.

I hope this helps.

[josh-riley]

Great point - the entire domain has influence. It's not just a page to page comparison.

[phoenixcg]

The strange thing that I find about my competitor is that they do not have great content, they actually have almost 0 content, and it is either filled with a video or a link to a site holding the video. What they do however have is age, they've been around for a very very long time, and have some edu links, but all in all, the site is really bad. Could those links be the only thing propping the page up?

I, in the mean time (in another thread) identified with the help of seomoz private some issues with my site, and i created another thread which relates to video, content and where they should be placed on a page and if ads above the fold hurt serps, but then you have the dilemna of loosing revenue.

I have started updating my content and providing very relevant and useful content.

[phoenixcg]

As in most cases of seo, there's always a slew of things. i've reduced the 404's but these shouldn't have any implication on my landing pages, the competitor in question certainly has more edu links. But i would not say they freshen the content more.

It is most probably better domain rank in that case, in which I will look into building my domain rank. and improving my on page optimisation (which im yet to figure out which is the best route through the other thread).

[josh-riley]

Again, it's really hard to hypothesize without knowing the specific site because there could be a ton of other things at play you may just not be seeing.

Videos are content so if they have a lot of videos, then they don't have 0 content. Especially if they have a transcript or CC file attached to it that can be crawled. And, if they have a video sitemap and how their hosting is set up all factor in to some degree.

Even with the changes to Google's algo, links are still powerful, especially links from .gov or .edu - just a few of those can mean more than tons of links from regular .com sites.