How bad pages outranking good pages?

Hey folks! I've been building links for my money page for so long and I personally check multiple parameters and ensure utmost relevancy of the backlinks. Recently a competitor page has outranked my page even though I have better optimized on-page and backlink profile. How is this even happening? How to check what method the competitor has followed to outrank my page?

Why are you assuming that your link profile & on-page are better?
What exactly are the differences that made you state that?

For links, it's either #1 he got a better overall links profile for the website & more/better specific links to the page,
Or/and #2 he's using hidden PBN links that you're not aware of,

For the website on-page, are you referring to content? silo? internal linking? topical authority?
Many people would assume that better quality content would get them a better ranking, and that could be true up to a point,
It's all about how relevant, original, correct, and how it is in terms of matching the user's search intent, satisfying the users & its impact in terms of UX,
You need the least decent quality of content & UI that would keep the users on the website, possibly making them navigate to other pages, etc...

You can run both your site and the competitor's site through tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify any technical SEO issues that might be affecting rankings.

Maybe he is using hidden PBNs to support to its page.

Also, did you check how many supporting pages it has which are interlinking with its main page?

Or they have topical authority in your niche that's why they are ranking better.

Lavender_Strings said:

Hey folks! I've been building links for my money page for so long and I personally check multiple parameters and ensure utmost relevancy of the backlinks. Recently a competitor page has outranked my page even though I have better optimized on-page and backlink profile. How is this even happening? How to check what method the competitor has followed to outrank my page?

Click to expand...

Search engine algorithms take into account more than just backlinks and on-page optimization. Check to see if your competitor's page has more recent content, better user engagement (CTR, dwell time), or higher topical authority. Analyze their anchor texts, backlink profile, and recent changes using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Review algorithm updates on a regular basis as well.

You can check your if your competitors have fewer but more authoritative links and whether they use targeted keywords in their anchor texts

It depends on several factors. Your competitors might have better authority than you, fewer but higher-quality authority links, or stronger EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) than yours.