How can a site with no content, non SEO optimized or any value rank better?

[Droidman86]

I understand there are many more variables to rank #1, but this site is currently #1 for one of our top keywords and I really don't understand what they

• Competior site barely has 200 words on any given page, very few content other than images with no ALT tags, titles, No H1 tags. in other words the website is not SEO optimized.
• My site has content, product descriptions, images, relevant titles, and definitely more optimized than competitor.

My site VS competitor

• Total pages: 246 (me) vs 49 (them)
• Page Authority: 34 vs 26
• MozRank: 5.3 vs 4.5
• MozTrust: 5.7 vs 5.4
• Domain Authority: 22 vs 17
• External Links: 65 vs 7
• Internal Links 152 vs 1
• Followed Links 14 vs 5
• More C-Blocks 14 vs 4
• Total Social Shares: 127 vs 4

[gazzerman1]

Out of those 7 links they have, is one very powerful? Quality over quantity maybe?

Do they have the keywords in their domain name?

Is it their homepage vs your internal page?

[Digital-Diameter]

• Are you being penalized or over optimized for this keyword?
• Are their links (any or all) very high quality?
• Are they more focused / content of the website pages semantically centered around this other keyword?
• Lastly, those numbers are not particularly high and can be build in a few months, so Google may be seeing this as more of an apples-to-apples comparison than you may.

[Droidman86]

Not really, his few backlinks come from sites with a 11 or less domain authority while mine come from sites with domain authority of 50's through 70's, 80's, and 90's.

The do indeed have the keyword in the domain. The stats I posted are homepage vs homepage.

[Droidman86]

I'm not being penalized - I've verified this

Their links are definitely not high quality at all - I've verified this

The keywords barely appear on any pages - they just throw some words and photos on every page

[Dr-Pete]

It can be really hard to pin down without seeing the sites, but one possibility - are they 301-redirecting another domain to this one? Sometimes, you'll see a domain ranking that makes no sense and it turns out someone is passing authority from another site with a 301 or cross-domain rel=canonical. We try to pick up 301s in OSE, but we miss some, and we don't detect cross-domain canonical.

[customerparadigm.com]

Jorge-

Can you check the age of the domain name?  I've seen instances where sites that have been alive for a long, long, long time can outshine other sites with better statistics, but they've withstood the test of time for Google.  That's one place I'd look to see if there is a substantial difference.