How did this little site rank #2?
-
Keyword: "adoption agency"
Site: http://www.opendooradoption.org
These guys are ranked #2 for this very competitive term in all US regions. They're beating Bethany (and my company) who are orders of magnitude larger in both company size and link profile. Their domain authority is 40, and they have less than 200 links pointing to them with "adoption agency" in the anchor according to OSE. Their on-site is pretty much nonexistent.
Does anyone have any theories as to how they accomplished this?
-
Good point donford. I first noticed this maybe a week ago... knowing that rankings can shuffle like you described I bit my tongue and waited a bit. For some reason today it popped back into head and I did a search in several regions and found them still ranking.
Maybe I'm asking this too soon? I'm not sure how long the google shuffle lasts.
Honestly I don't mind that they rank #2, I just want to know their secret
-
Ryan out of curiosity did this just happen, or have they maintained this position for awhile (weeks+)?
As you may already know, Google randomly ranks or serves sites which have no business being in the top pages. This is more of a Google test on how people perceive a site, and typically only last a couple days.
We recently had a new site come out of the blue ranking #1 for a keyword we have dominated for many years, within 3 days they were gone out of the top 50.
I personally would only be alarmed if this positioned had been maintained for extended periods of time.
Hope that helps
-
heheh yeah I wasn't impressed when I clicked through to the site either. I guess the 13k pages may have something to do with it, although amazingly many of them just 404 like this page http://www.opendooradoption.org/china_girl.htm (and wth were they going to have on that page anyway??). My site only has 2k+ indexed in comparison, but I don't feel good about churning out crap content, so that'll have to stay the same for now.
-
Thanks for the reply Phil! I may give that a try.
-
good lord that site is the worst site i've seen in a long time! It was all pieced together, the directory structure is all over the place. It looks like a couple of sites were combined to make one site which may be helping it reach critical mass.
This first URL is the same as the second one and both are indexed:
http://www.opendooradoption.org/Content/Default/13/207/0/pregnancy-gps/pregnancy-gps.html
http://www.pregnancygps.org/Content/Default/13/207/0/pregnancy-gps/pregnancy-gps.html
It's a complete disaster but for some reason Google is giving it a pass.
Two things going for it:
a) the homepage is PR4
b) they have 13,500 pages indexed in Google.
-
This is very interesting.
This might be showing the power of their title tag and URL. They have "adoption agency" in the title tag and "adoption" in the URL. Bethany.org doesn't have either. Still a bit baffling though.
If you're up for a test, try changing your title tag to start off with "adoption agency". Of course, only do this if it's right for your business.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website is doing on google ranking
Hello, I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website (flyhy.co) is doing on google ranking and I have no clue why even though I have been doing my homework regarding SEO. Just a bit of background, I have created a new website about 6 months ago for the paragliding community, the primary goal is to provide a platform for people to publish their ads (osclass), but also to provide some interesting reviews and tools to help paragliders chose their wing. We have been putting a lot of effort to provide a nice user experience and tio build the tools mentioned above. Our main channel to connect with the community is Facebook, and we have been quite active there. I have looked at many SEO articles and I made sure the website provides a good UX, the URLs are SEO friendly, good meta data, etc. Also have been using the google search console and analytics to monitor all of this. But here is the thing, all these does not seem to change anything in our ranking for important keywords such as "paraglider for sale", "paragliding equipment", etc. We seem to only rank (looking at Google’s keyword tool) for very specific wing model names that people have mentioned in their ads. I have ran out of ideas on how to improve our SEO !!!!!! I know the website is only 6 months old, but by now we should get some results. As an example, I will mention one our main website competitors: www.paraglidingequipment.org. OK the URL is pretty obvious and this website ranks in page #1 for "paragliding equipment" (but also for "paraglider for sale" and other paragliding related key phrases). OK there is the URL (paraglidingequipment.org), but I thought nowadays google bots are smarter than just that. The website is 1 year old (so not really much older than us, and was ranking high anyway even 6 months ago). The website looks like it was clearly made by one person and then quickly just left it running, so no content has been added (except for people putting their ads), there is almost no activity on the Facebook account. I have run some test such as "pagespeed insights" and we both rank the same. On "seositecheckup.com", we are clearly better with more 10 points. Is there anyone out there who can tell me what is going on? Have I missed a very important aspect of SEO? Is our website somehow compromising the robots crawling (although I can see about 80 pages have been already indexed in google search console)? I know content is king, but in paraglidingequipment.org the only content I see are ads, and we have ads and other interesting (ie reviews and tools) for paragliders. To conclude, I am basically completely clueless of what to do to rank at least on the first couple of pages of google for the key phrases above. I need help. Hichem. PS: in Moz bar our score is non existing (PA=1,DA=10), on paraglidingequipment.org (PA=23,DA=15). So it looks that essentially we are not apparent on the web! PSS: We have also tried to build some backlinks on few important paragliding community websites.
Competitive Research | | hichemboudali0 -
Many SEO tools donot allow me to check my site with https?
Hello All, Many seo tools I am using in that few tools do not allow me to test my site with https but it force me to check with http and then give report. So my query is do these tools give accurate report with http same like https? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | wright3350 -
Why are they ranking?
Hi I've been looking at domains which rank well for a particular search term - plastic storage boxes to try and see why they rank. http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage ranks particularly well. From what I can see, they have about 6 backlinks, 28 DA, and 11 PA - which isn't that high compared to others ranking on the first page. I can't work out why they rank so highly, they also rank for over 100 other storage terms for this page. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Competitive Research | | BeckyKey0 -
How does my competitor website jump from a natural ranking of 10 to 1 in a matter of days?
OK this has really got me baffled, and I really hope the MOZ community can give me the answers I am seeking.... My statements and queries below are my own opinions and thoughts. I am not an experienced SEOer and I am learning all the time, so if I have written something incorrectly, please feel free to correct me 🙂 I have been told that natural rankings take time, and I have read with the recent algorithm changes from Google, that purchased links do not have an effect like they used to. I have also read somewhere that google has clamped down on bogus article writing (MOZ please clarify) But what I am seeking some clarification on is, how does my competitors website, that has had a natural rank of #1 in the past, suddenly drop off; for a lengthy period of time, then suddenly re-appear at #10 on page #1, then some three/four days later, hit #1? I have read that natural rankings are purely natural. I.e. a domain owner cannot pay google to boost their natural ranking. But is this really true? Why is it when I speak to a close colleague of mine in the same industry, he mentions that his maps listing has dropped off, and after making a couple of phone calls to his SEO guys in India, maybe a day or two later, magically his maps re-appear? I really am starting to question is a "natural ranking" really "natural?" I have heard that some of these SEO agencies do have some tools that dramatically effect the natural ranking of a domain. What are these tools?
Competitive Research | | Giorgio680 -
What's causing this site to rank better than another?
As I work on getting a grasp for what causes sites to rank better than others, I'm a bit stumped with two of our competitors. When you search Google for "essay editing" you get these results: 1. Ivyeyesediting.com 2. papercheck.com 3. gradesaver.com 4. scribendi.com 5. essayedge.com When you put these in OSE, it seems crazy that Ivyeyes is anywhere near the top. For example, essayedge creams these guys on EVERY single category. As a new SEO here, what am I missing. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Not only that, it's pretty discouraging seeing essayedge so far down the SERPS with what appears to be some really great numbers. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Competitive Research | | Kibin0 -
Why do keyword competition rankings differ between Google and SeoMoz?
I am a novice at keyword ranking etc. so I appreciate your patience! I checked a longtail keyword - how do i get out of this relationship - in Google AdWords and it came back 'low competition.' When I entered it in SeoMoz it came back as 'very competitive.' Any thoughts? I appreciate your help.
Competitive Research | | UncleTodd0 -
My site is ranked in the top 5 for my keywords, but howcome I'm low in an organic search results for my key words?
Are the other factors such as page rank, Alexa rating and mozRank used to determine where I will show up in search results, over Goggle's key word rank for my key words?
Competitive Research | | allstatetransmission0 -
Is There Video Instruction on How To Use SEOMoz and Open Site Explorer?
Hi I have just signed up to use this software and would like to know how to use it properly. Is there a video tutorial on how to get the most out of the tools? I want to get the competition's backlinks but for some reason it's not openiing the page. I also want to know how the backlinks are assessed to find the real quality ones that I can link to. How are the backlinks assesed and what standards are used to asses backlink quality? Thank you Sunil.
Competitive Research | | sunilmuse0