Why is a site that does all the wrong things dominating?

[Harbor_Compliance]

A site that is a competitor of ours is basically dominating the search results despite doing everything you're not supposed to do, including:

• Purchasing links
• Having content that is thin, templated, and duplicate - adds little value
• Owning half a dozen other sites for linking to each other (link wheel?)

We spend a lot of time on our content and making it the most useful it can be for our visitors.  Granted our site is newer but we avoid these gray/black hat practices and yet we're not ranking nearly as high.  What gives?

[MickEdwards]

Google will catch up with them, you can be sure of that.

[anthonydnelson]

Hi Mike,

As Michael mentioned above, most likely their domination will be short lived. Also, you have to remember that showing up in the SERPs is not even 1/2 the battle. If their site adds little value, it's most likely that people do little on their website and perform no conversion steps. Most likely, those same people go back to the search engines and hopefully find a site like yours after doing another search or clicking on the next result.

Keep doing what you're doing (great content) and you will get there with time.

[TammyWood]

Hi Mike,

It's infuriating! I've had competitors tell me - "Well, we just build blogs and link all the sites together" we do great for our customer(s). Sadly, they do for the right now, it's hard to explain to prospective and current clients who see that  but all we can say is, give Google time.

Focus on great content, following the rules, code compliance and optimization- the good guys eventually win!

[CandymanKen]

I agree with the other responses.

If it makes you feel any better, think of all the victims of Penguin and Panda. On top for a while, then "blamo" out of site. When Google catches up, out they go but if you keep doing the right things, in you stay.

[Harbor_Compliance]

Unfortunately this company is one of the largest - they're just raking it in.  So not only are they ranking high but the pages must be converting well for them.