Competitor site hits no 1 without keywords

[liliplanet]

Hi! This is my first time here. I've got a competitor for the past 12 years and we market towards the same audience: filmmakers in South Africa and Africa.

Suddenly I see in checking SERP that my competitor is No 1 on most keywords, but the strange thing is that different Google results point back to the same page ie to the jobs page.

Not only that, the keywords are not even in the title, url, domain name or actually well-presented on the page. How can that be?

^{removed urls and keywords}

What I'm thinking this is not a case of good SEO on their part, but maybe the Google Publisher Tag code in the source?

Would most appreciate any ideas on how this happened :)

Looking forward to your reply, and thank you.

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 2:42 pm (utc) on Jan 24, 2015]
[edit reason] See the ToS and charter about avoiding specifics. Thanks! [/edit]

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, liliplanet!

the strange thing is that different Google results point back to the same page ie to the jobs page

If I am understanding well, then when you click on their result in SERPs, it takes you to their site, to one page, where there are jobs?

So the URL in SERPs is different to the URL of the page you are landing on when clicked on SERPs result?

Have you checked if there is a redirect being executed? If so, is it permanent (301) or temporary (302)?

Try answering these questions without posting actual URL and keywords.

[liliplanet]

Hi aaakk9999, thank you so much for your reply. Im baffled how my competitor did this.

All keywords ie news keyword1, news keyword2 etc, their website lands very high, almost always no 1. All the above searched keywords lands up on one specific page ../news, but that page is not optimized for those keywords. Keywords are not in the title, domain name or metatag.

The same in google search for jobs in any city lands on ../jobs and then the user directory which covers hundreds of tags, google points to the main ../directory.

Its not the problem that they all land on the same page (well yeah it is a little) ie .../news, ../directory etc, its that google points all keywords to the same page that is not optimized for those keywords.

What I do see that is new in their source is a google publisher javascript code. Somehow, either google is giving the site preference, or a cheat is happening. Whatever it is, is very clever, just dont understand what it could be.

Wish i could give you the site urls :) am most prepared to pay for a service that can figure out this out.

Most appreciated.

[not2easy]

..am most prepared to pay for a service that can figure out this out.

You can get site specific help in the Supporters Forums here: [webmasterworld.com...] but you should know there is a lot of competent help out here in the unpaid area as well, it is just limited to help without site specifics so as to benefit other members facing the same issues.

[liliplanet]

Most appreciated not2easy, i will continue my quest here on this thread :) im checking the fabulous tools available here on webmasterworld, but still no closer as to why my competitor is ranking without optimized pages for keywords.

The only thing that differentiates my site with my competitor is that they have over 300 .edu backlnks (majesticseo) which was probably bought. Wonder if this is the answer, will research ..

[netmeg]

but still no closer as to why my competitor is ranking without optimized pages for keywords.

While they certainly might be doing something shady, it's also way more than just keywords in 2015.

[not2easy]

More than just keywords or backlinks, especially arranged backlinks...
Could it be that they have mastered the art of Rich Text snippets? If done correctly, following the guidelines - they can make a big difference.

[liliplanet]

Im the master of rich text in google webmaster ;) i dont think they even close to it, i love my competition but dont think this is it. It all does not make sense. A little paranoid now,

[aristotle]

If that other site really does have higher rankings than it deserves, then the obvious conclusion is that there is a defect in Google's search algorithm. I prefer to spend my time working on my own sites, and not worry about things I have no control over.

[FranticFish]

For a long long time now, keywords in links pointing to a page has been enough to rank a page even if the term is nowhere in the page. This is an increasingly risky thing to do though these days.

Nowadays you don't need to have the exact phrase/keyword searched for in your page to rank if Google thinks that the page is related to the phrase/keyword.

So that could be the answer.

Things to check:

1) Is a redirect going on - or is/are the page/s that Google lists in its SERP the same url that you end up on when you click from Google?

2) Once you've establish what page Google is listing, can you see Google's cache of the page to see if what Google sees is different from what you see?

3) You mention one link discovery network that you have access to. You could do an anchor text analysis of the links pointing to the pages concerned to see if that's the reason (BUT - be aware that link discovery bots can be blocked so there's no easy way there to know if you're seeing the same sorts of links that Google's seeing).

[roshaoar]

One thing to be aware of is that these 3rd party link discovery tools are limited, even the best. I don't know of any that reliably know even 50% of the links pointing at sites. Nor do they allocate link weight well. Try doing a link analysis on your own site, and compare it to what Google knows in GWT. In my case there's a massive difference. And if these tools are incomplete about your site then it's likely they're incomplete about other sites too when you use them, ie your competitor.

In other words there maybe some really strong keyword links you're not just even aware of, and this is why the site is ranking.

[liliplanet]

Everyone thank you so much for your kind input. I still have not figured out why, but can report that ..

Link on Google is not a redirect
This increase in ranking happened in november
Nothing special about anchor text from referring sites

What is so strange is that so many keywords search results points to the same page.

Ive got a feeling it has something to do with Google publisher tags which is a javascript in their source.

For the moment, just going to concentrate on upping serps on my site :)

Again, thank you so much, awesome community!

[GreyBeard123]

For the moment, just going to concentrate on upping serps on my site

Excellent advice :)