Can Someone explain why this site ranks #1 and #2? I am confused.

[Davit1985]

Hi everyone,

Here is my problem. This site: https://247ride.com/town-cars/ ranks for bunch of really good keywords. Such as lax car service, car service to lax etc. The keyword does not appear in Title tag, and only partially on meta description. The site's DA is 23 and PA is 22. Less than 29 links overall, and linking domains 8. Why in your opinion Google is ranking this page #1 and #2 for many competitive keywords. I know it's a hard question to ask but any input would be greatly appreciated. I am working really hard to rank for same keywords and  so far i am at #11 position.

Thanks in advance,

Davit

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

Something very important to take into consideration here is that this is a local business and you are competing for local queries, including localized organic queries. This means that Google's local and organic results will be localized to the searcher, basically creating a scenario in which there are no static #1 rankings. Whether you are competing for geo-modified or non-modified keywords, the SERPs will change based on search language and searcher location.

It sounds like you've begun a competitive audit between yourself and this competitor (we have a free spreadsheet for doing that, mentioned in this blog post, if it helps). Have you studied the geographic relationship between your physical location, your competitor's physical location, the centroid of the city you're competing in, and the relationship of both your businesses in regards to the perimeters Google shows on the map when you look up your city? What are you seeing when you do so?

Also, if you can share your own domain, that should help the community better understand your scenario. Hope this helps!

[Davit1985]

Hi Miriam,

Thank you for you answer.

One more thing I am not looking at the 3pack, only the organic results that appear below.

The page that I am trying to rank with is: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html. Our company is based in Washington DC but we launched in several cities about a year ago. LA is one of the cities that we would really like to rank in as there is a lot of business In Denver and Cleveland we have had good results but LA seems a bit harder. We have a GMB listing in LA linked to the above landing page. Now we are working on a complete site re-design to make it more user friendly and appealing to clients. When I mentioned their #1 or #2 position I was using Moz's Serp Analysis.

Oh one more thing I could not find their GMB listing, but the Yelp profile sucks big time- https://www.yelp.com/biz/24-7-ride-orange

1.5 stars with over 600 reviews.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Davit,

Thanks for the links! I agree with you that it seems a bit weird seeing this business, with no GMB listing, doing so well organically. I looked at a few things I normally look at, and couldn't see a "easy" explanation.

So, I asked one of our organic SEO experts, Britney Muller, if she could take a glance at this, and she suggested a couple of things:

• Your competitor has been around since 2006, so pretty established

• Your competitor has invested in links, which appear to be paying off

• "LAX car service" is one of the phrases they are doing best on, though they are not doing so well on other terms

• They are investing heavily in PPC, which could be producing what she described as some sort of "halo" effect

Taking all of that into consideration, I do consider this competitor of yours as having earned rankings for this term that don't make immediate sense. Give this, I believe if you could hire a good company to do a full competitive audit for you, you should be able to map out a strategy to surpass them, but it may take some doing.

Hope you'll receive other feedback.