Competitor Ranking in Positions 1 & 2

[Kevbyrne]

I have seen an increasing instance of where the same company, one of our main competitors, are ranking in positions 1 and 2 for the same search phrase.

It appears that both the homepage and dedicated service page relevant to the search term are ranking, but surely having them at position 1 & 2 is not something search engines like Google want to encourage?

I have also seen other instances of the same company ranking twice on page 1 but not necessarily in #1 or #2. Is this an anomaly or just something I have to live with?

[donsilvernail]

Is the search phrase brand specific? I have seen in numerous instances that brand specific phrases will produce more results for a particular brand. Some of these results will include facebook and other listings that are not directly tied into a url but mention the brand.

[EGOL]

This isn't an anomaly.  It occurs when one domain has two pages that Google feels are both relevant enough and strong enough to earn a position on the first page of the SERPs.   It used to happen a lot more often but you still see it a lot today - especially in niches that are not extremely competitive or where one site is far more powerful than others for the niche.

When one domain has two pages that are strong enough to earn a position on the first page of the SERPs, the second page will position right below the first and this can result in 1,2 or 2,3 or other consecutive position on the first page.   One site occupying three or four positions can be found but are much less common.

Some sites that are strong in their niche can intentionally produce these double listings by publishing two very strong pages that are both optimized for the same keyword.  In your situation it is a competitor's interior page and homepage taking the first two positions.

[NickW816]

If the search phrase isn't brand specific, I would assume this is due to relevant backlinks, dang good on-site optimization, and probably a fast loading, content heavy website for both the homepage and the service page. I have seen this before as well and if you were to do some in-depth competitor research on them, I believe you would find that it is more than likely a pretty well optimized website, and they have quality backlinks pointing to both the homepage and service page.

I would do a full analysis on their on-site factors (meta titles, outbound links, H2s, amount of content on both pages, internal linking, etc) and then use Moz Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs for both rankings pages to see what backlinks they have. Use that insight to see if you can, to a degree, duplicate what you see. Once you feel you have duplicated as much as you can, while still keeping the content original to your website, try and out-do them in both helpful, relevant on-page content and quality backlinks they don't have. Each situation is different and I am assuming some things here based on what I've seen in the past with this situation, hope it helps though and best of success!

[Kevbyrne]

Really appreciate the responses, collectively they have answered my question, The companies in question do have some high quality backlinks and it's not an incredibly competitive market, relatively speaking.

Think its time to start building some content to challenge their backlink portfolio.

[KevnJr]

I agree, our main page ranks for our #1 term and we have /products/ pages that do as well.