Competitor sites vs mine - No links, lower DA, and still beating me.

[Berner]

Thank you for taking the time to read my question.

I have a website - berneseoftherockies.com - it is a bernese mountain dog website

My competitors are

Rockymountainpuppies(dot)com

and

Coloradobernesemountaindog(dot)com

When using the Moz tools, I see they have no incoming links, except for one site has 5 links from its own pages.

But when I type in Bernese Mountain Dogs Colorado - I am no where to be found, except for a you tube video.

So what am I doing so wrong? They are basically doing nothing, and killing me in the serps.

I have gotten social media stuff like Google +, facebook, twitter, pinterest, and youtube.

They are still behind the times. So any thoughtful advice is appreciated. I mainly cater to the state of Colorado where I live. So just curious if there is something at the top of your head that you may think of that's causing my issues?

Like could it be my hosting? Like can you have a black listed host? I am with Hostdime

I did have a few, like 10 foreign backlinks, which I did remove or disavow I think its called.

I have used the title tag tools here to get proper size title tags, and decent keyword density.

I built the site for people first, then Google etc.

So not sure if you are allowed to tell me, but maybe you can advise me on a decent seo company, or maybe give me a couple tips that may help me out.

Please no - read the moz book, I am reading it and trying to do what I am reading. But maybe something simple is keeping me from showing up, while these other sites are.

Thank you so much for any advice.

[Travis_Bailey]

The way you're building links isn't going to work. Stop doing it that way.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Chris,

There are so many possibilities to what is causing this that is could be impossible to cover all points here.

For example, how old is your site - how old are your competitors sites? Which site carries the most trust in the eyes of Google? Who has the most unique and useful content? Have you ever ranked well but now might have a penalty?

-Andy

[Berner]

I understand the linking issue. After having 100's of bad ones from a 2011 seo, I have cleaned them up to about 10.

I just don't understand how another site with no links, like social edia, yellow pages, local citations etc are doing SO well.

Either way it is confusing on how to find a proper seo.

Maybe there is a blog post here or something on how to find a good seo?

[EGOL]

After having 100's of bad ones from a 2011 seo, I have cleaned them up to about 10.

You could be penalized for those ten... or just one if you had a ton of crappy links... or the 50 that you can't see with the tool that you are using.

Most of the time when people come here pointing at a crap site above them... it is their site or their knowledge that is deficient.  Google thinks your site deserves to rank lower.  Understand that question before you ask what the sites above you are doing.

[KeriMorgret]

Keep in mind that Moz tools use their own resources. We don't have access to Google's index or tools, and we don't have their resources, so we're not going to be able to show you data that's based on every link in existence for every site out there. So, when you look at your competitors and see they don't have strong metrics, it could be just because our tools haven't picked them up.

As far as companies go, if you want someone to take an in-depth look at your site and competitors and figure out a plan of action, we have a list of recommended companies in the footer that could be a good place to start.