Internal Links Data on OSE and poor ranking despite excellent metrics

[LukeyB30]

Hi folks,

I use OSE a lot for comparing where we stand against our competitors and I'm always surprised to see most of our competitors have loads more internal links than we do. For example, comparing 'www.kensyard.co.uk' with 'www.sterlingbuild.co.uk', we are better on every Root Domain Metric except for the Total Links metric and this is down to a much smaller number of internal links.

They are ranking better than us in Google so I'm wondering if there is something wrong with the way our site is coded / structured that means Google and OSE are not picking up our internal link network properly? We have over nine times as many external root domains linking to our site than theirs, which is surely a far more valuable metric than internal links right? Or is there an issue with our internal link structure that is confusing Google and causing us to rank lower?

Many thanks for any advice, Luke

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Luke,

It really depends quite a lot on which exact keywords/phrases you are talking about. From a quick look at the two sites in open site explorer it is true that you have more linking domains than the other site. But...

If you look at the homepage metrics, they are ahead of you in the moztrust and mozrank metrics. This 'might' be partly due to a better internal linking strategy on their part.

The external links from both sites look a bit unnatural in that they have a number of non branded exact match links which are obviously pretty much there to try to influence rankings. Yours however are going the 'buliding materials' route and theirs are going the 'windows' route. They also have a lot less exact match and a lot less in percentage terms than your site which could be a factor if google is (likely) discounting a good chunk of those links. Again though, it really depends what keywords you are talking about.

Hope that helps.... a bit!