Less relevant/not optimized competitor sites ranking higher in SERPs?

[WWWSEO]

Has anyone else noticed their rank positions falling to competitor sites that aren't optimized and are less relevant? I've noticed that we've lost some rankings or have dropped over the past few weeks and the competitor pages that have replaced us haven't been optimized, aren't as relevant, and it doesn't look like there has been any updates (looking through archived versions). For example, their main "shoes" gallery is ranking for more specific shoe types, like "sandals", and "sandals" isn't even mentioned in their metadata and they have no on-page copy. Their DA is slightly higher, but our sites have a denser link profile (although, yes, I do need to go through and see what kind of links, exactly, we've gained).

Has anyone else seen this happen recently, or have any ideas of why or what we could do to get our rank positions back? My main initiatives have been to create and implement fresh on-page copy, metadata, and manage 404s/301 redirects, but I'm thinking this issue is beyond a quick copywriting tweak.

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

It'd be something that Rand Fishkin has already spoken in a Whiteboard friday:
What to Do When the Wrong Page Ranks for Your Keyword(s) - Whiteboard Friday

Hope it helps.
GR.

[WWWSEO]

Ah, my bad, I didn't specify that I'm actually referring to competitor landing pages rather than our own. It's strange because the landing pages we had ranking were optimized for specific terms, have on-page copy, etc., but over the last couple weeks, a few competitors overtook our sites and their pages aren't optimized at all and I've looked through archived versions and there haven't been any changes.

[GastonRiera]

Well, without specific information its imposible to determine why other pages outrank yours.
I suspect that you already know, instead I'll remind them, these are the ranking factors that moz have stated.

There are many posibilities that those pages, instead of being badly optimized, have more "juice" in other ranking factor, such as some better backlinks, better internal linkbuinlding, better CTR, pagespeed or many others.

Don't cruch yourself only in on-page optimization, its a big reason to get better rankings, but not the only one.

[WWWSEO]

Right. Like I said, I'm sure it's not just a simple tweak to metadata or copy, and I've looked at their link profile compared to ours, authority, etc. I've noticed that their internal linking is kind of insane (10+ links within a short paragraph plus additional "popular links" at the bottom), but none of this is new for them, even of this year. It doesn't look like they have made any updates recently that would have boosted their performance all of a sudden, which is why I'm dumbfounded as to what happened.

[GastonRiera]

There are lots of misteries around the reasons for a specific SERP.

I'd advise you to work in a different way so as to get even better than them.
Also remember the data we have access is always a part of the data that actualy google crawls. You'd never tell if them have disavowed links of if there are a big backlinks recently created.

Wish you best of luck!
GR.

[MattRoney]

Hi WWWSEO! Have you done any competitive research in Keyword Explorer? The SERP analysis section might give you a sense of what's going on.

[WWWSEO]

Good point on the disavowed/backlinks! I think it's so easy to get sucked into the nitty gritty details and lose sight of those bigger picture initiatives that will have a bigger impact in the long run. At least, I know that's something I struggle with.

[WWWSEO]

Hey Matt! Hmm, I don't think I've used Keyword Explorer for that purpose, yet. I still need to go back and really dive into the tool. I'll check it out! Thanks!