Yet another SEO thread!
Discussion
I'm trying to work out how a particular site seems to be ranking well, but can't for the life of me see how.
If you google for "dog food price comparison", there should be a site called *og*ood*rice .co .uk near or at the top. However, the site doesn't appear to have a huge number of quality backlinks, doesn't have an active blog or social media presence, and isn't even a particularly high-quality site in terms of my understanding of what Google is looking for.
Basically, I want my site to beat it, but despite having better content, more regular updates and a better (IMO) site, I'm nowhere near it.
Can anyone see how they are getting such good rankings?
If you google for "dog food price comparison", there should be a site called *og*ood*rice .co .uk near or at the top. However, the site doesn't appear to have a huge number of quality backlinks, doesn't have an active blog or social media presence, and isn't even a particularly high-quality site in terms of my understanding of what Google is looking for.
Basically, I want my site to beat it, but despite having better content, more regular updates and a better (IMO) site, I'm nowhere near it.
Can anyone see how they are getting such good rankings?
Google, like the God it is, moves in mysterious ways having done some very strange things since the middle of last year. I can't fathom out why websites or pages that are considerably worse than ours for relevancy and in every obvious SEO respect rank higher.
They do same to favour large brands at present which IMHO limits the emergence and growth of new businesses.
I have a love/hate relationship with Google.
However, that doesn't help the OP much.
They do same to favour large brands at present which IMHO limits the emergence and growth of new businesses.
I have a love/hate relationship with Google.
However, that doesn't help the OP much.
Purity14 said:
What is the age of the domain?
What is the age of yours?
Plus the fact that the domain contains three out of the four keywords!
I think it's about 6 months older than mine - which is just under a year old now.What is the age of yours?
Plus the fact that the domain contains three out of the four keywords!
miniman said:
Are you confident that there are significant volumes of search for that specific phrase? In other words, is there a significant audience looking specifically for a dog food price comparison site, vs, for example, "cheap dog food", "dog food deals" etc?
Not a massive volume for that one term, but when you add up all the "cheap xyz dog food" searches then it does add up - and that site ranks well for those terms too.
If 'dog food price comparison' is the phrase you're looking at, then that page you've suggested is pretty perfect for that phrase.
They've got the exact phrase about 10 times (good keyword density) along with 3 of the 4 words in the actual domain. That means it's pretty much sewn up as far as google's current algorithms seem to work.
They have a few backlinks from what look like relevant sites, which is all you need. The days of spamming backlinks all over the place are gone.
They've got the exact phrase about 10 times (good keyword density) along with 3 of the 4 words in the actual domain. That means it's pretty much sewn up as far as google's current algorithms seem to work.
They have a few backlinks from what look like relevant sites, which is all you need. The days of spamming backlinks all over the place are gone.
OllyMo said:
If 'dog food price comparison' is the phrase you're looking at, then that page you've suggested is pretty perfect for that phrase.
They've got the exact phrase about 10 times (good keyword density) along with 3 of the 4 words in the actual domain. That means it's pretty much sewn up as far as google's current algorithms seem to work.
They have a few backlinks from what look like relevant sites, which is all you need. The days of spamming backlinks all over the place are gone.
That's a good point - although some of the other pages that rank well for particular phrases only have it appearing 2 or 3 times on the page but they still rank well.They've got the exact phrase about 10 times (good keyword density) along with 3 of the 4 words in the actual domain. That means it's pretty much sewn up as far as google's current algorithms seem to work.
They have a few backlinks from what look like relevant sites, which is all you need. The days of spamming backlinks all over the place are gone.
Gemaeden said:
New here. Your site doesn't seem to have as many brand options as your rival. For instance I see no reference to ACANA. Google likes sites that may be seen as authorities. By listing more brands you should increase your chances of improving your ranking.
That's true at the moment (more are being added), although I do have more listings per brand so have a similar number of pages overall, and more (unique) content on each page, which is what Google is trying to encourage as far as I can tell.
BigJonMcQuimm said:
What tool did you use to get this info?
The first image looks like www.semrush.comOllyMo said:
BigJonMcQuimm said:
What tool did you use to get this info?
The first image looks like www.semrush.comhttp://www.semrush.com/info/boeing.com
and
http://www.webpagetest.org/
and for google speed test
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insi...
cluckcluck said:
looking good, especially as organic and not paid for
ok performance, but could be improved:
Interesting stuff - thanks. That site is definitely doing well in the results, but I still have no idea how.ok performance, but could be improved:
It doesn't even do that well in Google's performance tests - mine is much better, so clearly site speed isn't a key ranking factor!
So I guess I should take some comfort from the fact that even though I'm not getting the traffic, I still have 5 "A" scores for performance
cluckcluck said:
hiya, yer
http://www.semrush.com/info/boeing.com
and
http://www.webpagetest.org/
and for google speed test
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insi...
I tried for my website www.cookbakesmile.com and it said no results?http://www.semrush.com/info/boeing.com
and
http://www.webpagetest.org/
and for google speed test
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insi...
I am very keen to improve my rating and am clueless!
Many thanks
The Moose said:
One thing Google do is if you regularly go to a website, it'll throw up that site as it thinks you want to go there again.
Clear all your cache/cookies and then try again.
Or go to aol.co.uk to see more non-personalised results, as it's google search listings under a different logo.Clear all your cache/cookies and then try again.
Dick Dastardly said:
Or go to aol.co.uk to see more non-personalised results, as it's google search listings under a different logo.
Nice tip 
I tried this, and get the same results - the rival site is ranking on page 1, and even position 1 for a lot of terms - far, far better than my site is doing.
It's even ranking well for terms that it has nothing to do with - for example "cat food price comparison" - the other site is at the top of page 2, while my site is on page 19 or something, but the other site doesn't have any content related to cats at all, while mine is 50% cat-related
So either they are incredibly lucky, or are doing something dodgy - but I just can't see what.
I wouldn't claim to be any sort of SEO expert but I hope you will allow me some observations?
1. Your competitors site is very focused, he's dog food and only dog food. Whereas yours is food, insurance and accessories. Maybe separate websites for each subject and with links to each other might be better?
2. Anywhere in the meta tags for titles where the website name appears he has the .co.uk extension on it, yours does not. No idea if that matters. Same in the copyright notices.
3. While you have Facebook, twitter and a blog he only appears to have Facebook BUT he also appears to have an RSS feed although I'm not sure what it's doing, possibly serving the banner.
4. He's got an email address capture in the form of aweber, although you have the code for mailchimp in your code, unless I'm blind there isn't any capture on your front end?
5. He is using Wordpress for his site with these two plugins:
https://www.w3-edge.com/products/w3-total-cache
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Not sure what your site is written in but you might like to look at using similar? As they both 'seem' to be SEO tools.
6. In the title you use words that aren't in your URL namely you say "price comparison" but then the website is called "pet money", is it worth making them the same?
1. Your competitors site is very focused, he's dog food and only dog food. Whereas yours is food, insurance and accessories. Maybe separate websites for each subject and with links to each other might be better?
2. Anywhere in the meta tags for titles where the website name appears he has the .co.uk extension on it, yours does not. No idea if that matters. Same in the copyright notices.
3. While you have Facebook, twitter and a blog he only appears to have Facebook BUT he also appears to have an RSS feed although I'm not sure what it's doing, possibly serving the banner.
4. He's got an email address capture in the form of aweber, although you have the code for mailchimp in your code, unless I'm blind there isn't any capture on your front end?
5. He is using Wordpress for his site with these two plugins:
https://www.w3-edge.com/products/w3-total-cache
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Not sure what your site is written in but you might like to look at using similar? As they both 'seem' to be SEO tools.
6. In the title you use words that aren't in your URL namely you say "price comparison" but then the website is called "pet money", is it worth making them the same?
951TSE said:
I wouldn't claim to be any sort of SEO expert but I hope you will allow me some observations?
1. Your competitors site is very focused, he's dog food and only dog food. Whereas yours is food, insurance and accessories. Maybe separate websites for each subject and with links to each other might be better?
2. Anywhere in the meta tags for titles where the website name appears he has the .co.uk extension on it, yours does not. No idea if that matters. Same in the copyright notices.
3. While you have Facebook, twitter and a blog he only appears to have Facebook BUT he also appears to have an RSS feed although I'm not sure what it's doing, possibly serving the banner.
4. He's got an email address capture in the form of aweber, although you have the code for mailchimp in your code, unless I'm blind there isn't any capture on your front end?
5. He is using Wordpress for his site with these two plugins:
https://www.w3-edge.com/products/w3-total-cache
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Not sure what your site is written in but you might like to look at using similar? As they both 'seem' to be SEO tools.
6. In the title you use words that aren't in your URL namely you say "price comparison" but then the website is called "pet money", is it worth making them the same?
Thanks for taking a look. I'll reply to your points below rather than quoting each one.1. Your competitors site is very focused, he's dog food and only dog food. Whereas yours is food, insurance and accessories. Maybe separate websites for each subject and with links to each other might be better?
2. Anywhere in the meta tags for titles where the website name appears he has the .co.uk extension on it, yours does not. No idea if that matters. Same in the copyright notices.
3. While you have Facebook, twitter and a blog he only appears to have Facebook BUT he also appears to have an RSS feed although I'm not sure what it's doing, possibly serving the banner.
4. He's got an email address capture in the form of aweber, although you have the code for mailchimp in your code, unless I'm blind there isn't any capture on your front end?
5. He is using Wordpress for his site with these two plugins:
https://www.w3-edge.com/products/w3-total-cache
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Not sure what your site is written in but you might like to look at using similar? As they both 'seem' to be SEO tools.
6. In the title you use words that aren't in your URL namely you say "price comparison" but then the website is called "pet money", is it worth making them the same?
1. From my understanding of what the great Google wants, one "authority" site is better than several niche sites, so I'm not sure that would make much difference. I don't know, but to me it seems odd that if you had site A with 600 pages about topic xyz, and site B with 600 pages about the same topic plus another 600 pages about a related topic abc that Google would rank A higher than B?
2. Not sure if this matters - other sites I've looked at all seem to do this differently, but with title length getting shorter, getting rid of those extra characters does make a small difference in the useful description you can enter as the title.
4. I do have a mailchimp email pop-up appear after 30 seconds, so I guess you weren't on a page long enough to see it? Not sure that would make much difference in the eyes of Google though? I personally don't like these forms if they pop up as soon as you visit a site, so I've set the delay to be quite long on purpose.
5. Mine is written entirely by myself (although I do use Wordpress for the blog), so I've tried to do manually what the Wordpress SEO plugin does, plus I use caching on my server rather than an additional plugin. All SEO and performance tests I've done rate my site higher than his as well, so I don't think it's a technical issue.
6. That may make a difference, although from what I've read, keywords in domain names don't make as much difference as they used to. I don't really want to rebrand my whole site though as it isn't just price comparison, and I can't believe that this is the only reason my site isn't ranking well.
In fact, since the end of August, my site seems to have been penalised in some way as I've lost about 80% of my search traffic, while the other site still sits on page 1 for a lot of search terms... Annoying!
ehasler said:
In fact, since the end of August, my site seems to have been penalised in some way as I've lost about 80% of my search traffic, while the other site still sits on page 1 for a lot of search terms... Annoying!
This sounds like your main problem. If your site has been penalised, for all the effort it takes to recover, you might as well start a new site on a new domain.Webber3 said:
This sounds like your main problem. If your site has been penalised, for all the effort it takes to recover, you might as well start a new site on a new domain.
That's easier said than done though - the branding of the site, social media, links I have built up - that would all need to be done again from scratch.And I currently have no idea what caused the drop in traffic - there are no manual actions from Google in my webmaster account, and I've not been doing anything knowingly dodgy to cause a penalty so who's to say that my traffic won't return to previous levels in a few weeks when they do their next update? Or that I wouldn't have the same issue again in a few months if I did move to a new domain.
It's pretty frustrating when Google keep saying how they want sites to produce good, original content on a regular basis - yet still favour sites that do the opposite.
I know your frustration. I've had good clean sites outranked by thin sites, keyword stuffed sites and spammy sites. Not that the site you mention is any of those. Filing spam reports does nothing. The Google webmaster forums used to be full of people moaning about crappy sites outranking them. They never got anywhere with it.
You do need to try to ascertain if this is site related. It could be that your top search phrase just dropped a few places. To a point where it gets no clicks. Page 2 perhaps. Look at webmaster tools and pinpoint which Search Queries dropped (select the 'with change' option). If all your rankings dropped at the same time then it may well be site related.
If it is site related, I know it's a ball ache moving to a new domain, but I once spent 6 months trying to recover a site and got nowhere. Google will never give you any feedback, so you're working in the blind with no guarantee you'll ever fix it. If you move your content to a new domain and are squeaky clean with your SEO, you could see results a lot sooner.
You do need to try to ascertain if this is site related. It could be that your top search phrase just dropped a few places. To a point where it gets no clicks. Page 2 perhaps. Look at webmaster tools and pinpoint which Search Queries dropped (select the 'with change' option). If all your rankings dropped at the same time then it may well be site related.
If it is site related, I know it's a ball ache moving to a new domain, but I once spent 6 months trying to recover a site and got nowhere. Google will never give you any feedback, so you're working in the blind with no guarantee you'll ever fix it. If you move your content to a new domain and are squeaky clean with your SEO, you could see results a lot sooner.
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