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[sdwellers]

I'm frustrated, so want to ask a stupid question....My site..

www.seadwellers.com

outranks my biggest competitor in most Moz catagories...

www.rainbowreef.us

...EXCEPT Facebook likes...(he has a ton)  **And yet, rainbowreef.us outranks me in most keywords on
Google?!  I know it's not simple...but  Can anyone take a quick peek and give me any insight as to why???  **

Example "Dive Key Largo" keyword...he is #1 and I am #5...typical in the most important keywords!

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi sdwellers,

Tools give you an insight in what might be the cause of ranking problems but they don't tell the whole story about a websites rankings. Algorithms are very complex and they do take in account a lot of different signals. A few signals that are very hard to take into account by any tool.

-       Dwell time (the time people spend on your site, and if they do or do not find the information needed)

-       The total backlink profile. Moz has its own index (PA/DA are based on this index) which only covers a fraction of all the links. A normal backlink audit would at least combine links from three different sources including the links from Google Webmaster Tools

-       Reviews about your business.

If you are serious about beating your competition I would dive deeper in SEO, or hire an expert. That said, I can give you a few tips based on my first impression of your website.

1. The black text (on the blue background) above and under your website are very toxic. This is a classic spam tactic which gets you discounted by Search Engines.
2. Your website isn’t mobile friendly (this will become an important ranking factor on 21 of April this year (next week). Google has been talking about this date for a while.
3. On first sign, I would say you could make your content more engaging. Your competitors website give a whole different feeling. I would take a good look at your design and the use of visual content. Scuba diving is all about a life time experience, keep people hooked to your site and you  dwell time (and sales) will go up.

I hope this helps! Good luck, and I would love to hear if you could make a difference the coming months.

_PS. Facebook likes aren’t used to rank website. Although a big social audience can help you get more backlinks which help a lot.  _

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

Even if your site outranks the other site in Moz, it doesn't mean anything. Moz is not Google, they have different ranking signals (have a second read at what Bob said) and the most important thing, Moz doesn't show all the links websites have, it shows only the links it found. This being the case, Google is probably aware of more links (hidden ones as well), so that's why your website is outranked.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi there,

Unfortunately, this isn't something that anyone can tell you without at least a few hours of research - Google has a pretty complicated algorithm!

I can tell you some more things to take into account, in addition to Bob's list:

• **Keyword relevance: **For the search queries that you want to rank for, does Sea Dwellers look the most relevant? Do you use the phrase that you want to rank for in your page title, the h1 of the page, and on the page itself? Be careful not to sound like you're writing for robots rather than humans, but using the exact same phrase as you want to rank for definitely helps with rankings.
• **Inbound link relevance: **Where did you get the links to your site? More links from relevant sites (for example, unsponsored posts about the best company to dive with) are going to help with local queries like "dive Key Largo."
• **Potential spam / paid links: **If you've paid for links or have spammy links coming to your site, Moz may have an inflated version of your PA or DA metrics, since it isn't as good at recognizing that as Google is (though they're working on it with their spam score).

Good luck! If you're feeling especially frustrated about this, I'd recommend hiring an SEO to give you some definite answers.

Best,

Kristina