Am I missing something?

[reegs]

Hey guys,

First of all, a big thanks to SEOmoz and the community.  I've been an avid reader for about a year now and have seen some great improvements.

I'm always focusing my efforts on strategies that work well for my niche.  Although I've come accross one of my competitors that doesn't seem to have much going for him, although he ranks very well.  His root domain is ****E and the URL where (seemingly) spammed links point to is ***.  If you do a site: command he has 1000+ pages although most consist of "events calendar" (empty).  Also, I ran some of his content through copyscape and there seems to be multiple versions of it throughout the web.

After all this, he ranks very well for money keywords in our niche, although his on-page is horrible so there are many opporunities I've capitalized on.

Is there something I'm missing?  I'm trying to find the value in his website but its not very clear to me since his backlink profile is (seemingly) junk and his on-page goes against all I was told to implement.

[FrankWickers]

First you might want to post the non shortened version of the URLs. I know many people do not trust shortened links from sources they don't know well enough.

Your competitor may be buying links en masse with customized anchor text for the links. I see it daily with the competitors of my client's sites. If you aren't in an overly competitive keyterm space, a few thousand bought - anchor text optimizied - low quality links can easily be enough to get someone ranking for terms even though the rest of their SEO is abysmal.

[ilyaelbert]

I'm not sure what the money keywords in your industry are, but the guy doesn't have any link anchor text to speak of in the OSE profile, and his few backlinks are not high quality so its doubtful he is ranking for anything. Also, he's nowhere to be found on SEMrush.

Most likely what's happening is you've clicked on his site so many times, google has personalized your search and pushed his site to the top of the results for YOU ONLY. Try logging in with a different browser or running the seomoz keyword difficulty tool for the keyword that you think he ranks highly and see if he shows up.

[CahabaWeb]

It seems like when I run into this same scenario, I'm dealing with a mature URL that has simply positioned itself in a market and been able to hold. It's not that they are technically doing things "right", but apparently are not doing enough wrong to affect the gravity of their age and backlinks.

I think the original registration on that domain was 2003. Are there any other sites ranking around some of your key phrases that are less than 1-2 yrs registered? Age could be a factor.

[FrankWickers]

Good catch.  Or you could try adding &pws=0 to the end of the URL string for your search, and that should eliminate the personalized results from being delivered to you.

[StalkerB]

I dunno if a mod will stop by but I imagine there will be a lot of requests to 'out' other sites (not saying I've found anything dodgy); are there any guidelines on reporting competitors dodgy tactics as I know mostly seoMoz and other big sites usually avoid public outings and would there be any liability should the site complain?

Just thinking aloud.

[reegs]

I decided to edit the question since Barry raises a good point.  I only wanted to bring something to the light and didn't intend on "calling" anyone out- my apoligies if it came off like that.  I only wanted to explain that I've done some due dilligence on this website and have found very little reason for this website to be ranking for high traffic keywords (yes personalized search is off..).  In his backlink profile there are around 8 local directories listed, and then about 1200 forum spammed post with some weird anchor text not at all related to our niche ("cheap viagra" "cheap auto insurance").  His website isn't alone, it's listed among 30-50 other websites on each post.  These forums are often in foreign languages so that just seemed really odd.  Majestic SEO shows these links started aroun 2008 and continued through 2009.

[ilyaelbert]

unrelated anchor text in places with lots of oubound links = NO rankings........so there's something else ranking him that OSE missed??? The only factor OSE doesn't count is domain age.

Also, tell us the seomoz keyword difficulty of the keywords this guy is ranking for that are the 'money' keywords.

[reegs]

I don't really appreciate the condescending talk but it's 59% and 55%.  Understand, I'm not an SEO by trade and its really a small part of my daily duties.

[ilyaelbert]

I didn't mean it like that......but honestly i'm stumped......

[Getz.pro]

I disagree with removing the links. How can we do any DD for you?

[Getz.pro]

Several things play here. They could have great anchor text, more followed links from stronger sites, or better on-age (although you discredit this) . Without seeing the actual site, it is hard to say what is going on.

[AlanMosley]

You are not the only one that is frsustated with this, please post url i can only guess without it.