Competitor Using Same Keywords ALL URLs

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

I have a competitor that ranks well for "blue widgets" and "green foobars"

It's an commerce site, and I just realized in his URL structure, that ALL of his 60 category level pages have a /widgets/ in the URL (whether the page is related to widgets or not), and all of the 350 product-level pages have /foobar/ in the URL, whether they are related to foobars or not.

Now, widgets and foobars are not an actual part of the directory structure of the site - there are no folders with the names widgets or foobars on the site with files in them. It is just a "trick" they used to insert it into the URL. Instead of using "category" or "CTGY" in category-level URLs, they use the word "widgets" and instead of using product or PROD in the product-level URLs, they use foobars.

So my question is, do you think this is a significant reason why they rank so well for the terms "blue widgets" and "green foobars"?

[tedster]

In the recent past I would have said "no" - but right now I'm not sure anymore.

[Planet13]

In the recent past I would have said "no" - but right now I'm not sure anymore.

Thanks for the honest response, tedster.

Judging from your response, is it fair to say that google's SERPs just don't seem to make much sense nowadays?

[kellyman]

There is a lot going on with Google that we either don't fully understand yet, or there are issues where things are not working quiet as they should

I have been targeting a keyword for ages and my site is going backward, another keyword I have never targeted and only appears on my homepage once (not in titles and not in descriptions) is position 2 for a 55 million search term, go figure.

I would personally keep doing the good things your doing to your site until either you get confirmation as these are the new ranking signals or Google fixes whatever is not quite working right.

[Planet13]

Thank you, Kellyman.

I would also mention that this site not only ranks well for "blue widgets" and "green foobars" but also a lot of terms that are associated with it. Not synonyms, but other items that a person might also be interested in finding.

[EvilSaint]

I agree with kellyman...you should keep doing your own SEO and building your site structure as best as you can...

You could always use the reporting tool to tell Google that they're doing something they shouldn't be doing with your competitor's website as the example ;)

From your post it seems that Google gives more weighting/importance to the URL parameter within the algorithm than they care to let on...

[Planet13]

From your post it seems that Google gives more weighting/importance to the URL parameter within the algorithm than they care to let on...

Well, that's what it would SEEM like to me, since the content of the site doesn't have those keywords appear all that often.

And the home page? Not really all that well optimized. Yes, the title element for the home page is:

"blue widgets, green foobars, [another product and another keyword at store name]"

But there is no other content on the home page. Just a big graphic, and then links to their category-level pages and their customer support pages.

Checked the alt tags on the home page, and there is no mention of the key words in any of the alt text.

So the only place the keywords appear is in the title element on the home page. And then they appear in the URLs of all the links.

And there are a LOT of links because they use "slide out" menus, which reveal links to all the subcategories when you hover over them.

Their blog is on a hosted platform, so it is not even on their own domain.