Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?

[Antony_Towle]

Moz Friends,

A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well.

I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use

Just my thoughts and notes on the two:

Our Page

• Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things)
• Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability
• Fresh content updates
• Mobile optimized
• Reasonable page speeds
• Good on-page optimization
• Good back links from industry influences

Competitor Page Negatives

• Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy
• Lower quality content site wide
• They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm)
• Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look)
• Less focused on page optimization
• Not mobile optimized

Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences,

Engine: www.google.co.uk

Keyword: Sound level meters

**Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/

**Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this

Thanks

James

[ScrumAlliance]

Hi James,

There is so many factors to consider aside from backlinks towards your competitor.  You both rank relatively the same in regards to PA, DA, Links, etc.

One thing I would consider evaluating is what the trend is for your keyword rankings versus theirs.  What I mean is, who is slipping in rankings and who is climbing.  I personally like to evaluate the Alexa results for my competitors to understand what direction they are moving towards.

I attached rankings for both of you to do a side by side (First image is your companies results).  You can see your company is trending upward strongly as for your competitor is trending downward quickly.  I believe it's only a matter of time before you pass your competitor.  Keep doing what you're doing and you will be rewarded within the search results.

Also, your exercising schema on your website, which in turn, provides a better search result experience with pricing, reviews and helps your listing stand out more regardless of first or second position.

Hope this helps and best of luck on your adventure.

Shawn

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[EricaMcGillivray]

Some great suggestions already! But I'd add that sometimes it just takes time for Google to catch spammy practices.

[JVRudnick]

And as Erica prob knows...that timeline can often be speeded-up by simply reporting the site...as many competitors do just that!

[Nishadha]

Hi,

your competitor has 344 links from 11 RD's while you have 92 from 5 RD's . I feel that is the main reason why they are outperforming your site.

Also even though things like keyword stuffing is bad practice it takes a while for search engines to catch up with them. In some instances its hard to find the balance between keyword stuffing and adding the right keywords.

Other things that might be working for them is publisher markup verified and outgoing links to some authority and relevant websites.

I would suggest doing the following

• Run the on page grader and fix everything you can
• Do a link analysis of the competitor and try to replicate every link you can
• Build few more quality links
• Link to some relevant authority sites

Hope this helps.

[Antony_Towle]

Wow... Thank you very much for the replies and time taken to look at my problem.

I will take all advice on board and as Shawn advised carry on following best practice.

I am really happy to get some reassurance and second opinions on some of the spammy techniques they are using and  feel sure Google will catch up eventually

Thank you,

James