Is my competitor up to no good? Strange site-explorer results.
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I'm researching a competitor using site explorer and the seomoz toolbar and getting some strange results.
When you search by the domain name in site explorer you get no results, but the toolbar shows 170K incoming links.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com
I noticed the top referring page was a strange internal url so I ran that through site explorer and discovered 19 links.. When you put the strange link in a browser, it redirects to the home url;.. At this url the toolbar shows 220 links and semoz shows 19
http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/?xid_78e7f=0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c
What is up with that url? What are they doing? This is a site ranking #1 for my local search term even though he has about 50 pages of almost duplicate content. See link below. I'm really scratching my head here.
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Looks like the "?all=categories" forces a different display in the content region of the page. The default homepage does not include this information as you noted.
"?all=categories" is basically a landing page that drives the google bot to town-specific pages dedicated to their services. If you note the copy they've customized each page to drive local SEO to the specific town.
Don't forget to log out of Google or use an alternative browser that you never log into to see anonymous results for your search. I sometimes have to remind myself of that.
There sitemap.php file is empty so not sure how that ?all=categories" link is getting indexed as I can't find it in the navigation either.
Competitor kind enough to share keywords he's trying to optimize for:
<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" content=" <a class="attribute-value">Snow Removal, Sanding Services, Roof Raking Services, Fall Cleanup, Lawn Mowing Service, Fertilization Services, Dethatching Services, Tree and Shrub Care Services,</a>" /> -
Here are the links in the site footer. Missed them: Site Map | All Cities
They've obviously optimized a page for each service in each town.
I am not seeing them show up #1 for various services within towns but I'm in Maine so not sure what affect that has on local search.
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Derek
I would do a http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit
Then get your site on a more SEO friendly framework like WordPress
I wanted to show you what just what SEMRush was showing me as far as back links and where you rank. For the keywords given.
Get rid of ?all=categories
I hate to ask but the white hat/black hat is that a joke or is that really how you practice it if so that is how the rank might look all over the USA
Alexa shows better keywords http://www.alexa.com/site/linksin/augustagreenlawns.com
Your site has not been hacked http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.augustagreenlawns.com/
please look at your links in the URL as you have no sitemap.xml
All the Best,
Tom
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Tom -
< sarcasm > I will be sure to pass on the tips to my competitor.. Gee Thanks
I think you read the post wrong.. I was wondering what my competition is up to.
Derrick
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Tom -
< sarcasm > I will be sure to pass on the tips to my competitor.. Gee Thanks
I think you read the post wrong.. I was wondering what my competition is up to.
Derrick
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hi Derek,
sorry about that I really didn't mean to be sarcastic I honestly read it in the top left corner and then him half asleep so I apologize. I realize now you categorized under white hat black hat not under your profile as I have seen in the past from people sorry again.
If you are no what your competitors are up to check out compete.com
I think Spider mate, rave tools, SEM rush along with spyfluw
will keep you up to date on their shenanigans.
Sorry about that man I didn't mean to be a jerk.
All the best,
Tom
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Derek,
PS you would get a much better rank and the site would look sharper if you swapped out YouTube for http://wistia.com/
videos they have S EO site map and you get 5 for free for life.
All the best,
Tom
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