Seems off. IDK why this website ranks better.

Hey BHW,

I've been posting a lot of messages recently while following journey threads and learning as things progress.

Currently getting about 300 visitors a month according to GA (not a lot, but this is the first time ever after 3 sites)

Anyway, seems like my promotion of the website on social media caused a competitor to sprout in the niche and I'm wondering why they're ranking.

Ahrefs for competitor results show this:

My website's ahrefs


I have 17 blogs, while this website has 32.

They're targeting 50% high comp high volume keywords which is really strange. I focused on low-comp low volume for the first 10 and then moved to higher volume keywords very recently as Google started crawling my site more often (daily it seems)

Their domain age is only 3 months older than mine. They started posting more recently than me so their links haven't aged either.

What could they be doing better? can someone please share ideas that I can test out?

Really appreciate all the help!

First thing they have more referring domains than you. Also it is possible they are targeting more keywords than you and working for them

Kw count makes sense.

They are targeting more keywords, so Google thinks that they are more knowledgeable about the niche. You can outrank them if you constantly keep posting the content. Moreover, Google doesn't follow Ahrefs metrics as they have their own metrics. The difference between your sites is also not a lot.

alonelywriter said:

First thing they have more referring domains than you. Also it is possible they are targeting more keywords than you and working for them

Click to expand...

Yes that's one. Can you elaborate a little on the targeting more keywords part? It didn't seem like they were really targeting any keywords in the traditional sense. Their articles were like simple stories instead of the SEO focused keyword rich ones so I was really expecting it to not outrank so easily.. No images, nothing on the page and really slow Pagespeed metrics...

It looks like they did everything wrong from the traditional SEO perspective and it only helped them.

HustleTong said:

Kw count makes sense.

Click to expand...

Possible. They do have 2k word articles for the most part. Do you think me increasing the keyword count per article will help? I stil got some time to play around with this site.

Pavan Teja 1 said:

They are targeting more keywords, so Google thinks that they are more knowledgeable about the niche. You can outrank them if you constantly keep posting the content. Moreover, Google doesn't follow Ahrefs metrics as they have their own metrics. The difference between your sites is also not a lot.

Click to expand...

Yes that's what made me wonder if I'm doing something really wrong. They have just a few articles more than mine, and all their metrics are pretty below-average including their speed.

Might as well be that they have better niche coverage. But to tell for sure, have to look at both of the sites, otherwise it's just guesswork.

GrizzlyBeardMan said:

Might as well be that they have better niche coverage. But to tell for sure, have to look at both of the sites, otherwise it's just guesswork.

Click to expand...

Anything in specific you'd look at if you were in my place? Niche coverage is possible since they have enough articles. I'll be publishing 30 in the next few days too so that should cover the number of articles and words.

I'm just going to guess it works.

UndefinedCF said:

Anything in specific you'd look at if you were in my place? Niche coverage is possible since they have enough articles. I'll be publishing 30 in the next few days too so that should cover the number of articles and words.

I'm just going to guess it works.

Click to expand...

Better on page, silos, internal linking, technical issues, better links, choice of keywords to target, index age etc. Would look at a bunch of things before making conclusions unless something stands out.

By the info available and the looks of it, they have more content, more links and are indexed for longer. These can be the reasons.

GrizzlyBeardMan said:

Better on page, silos, internal linking, technical issues, better links, choice of keywords to target, index age etc. Would look at a bunch of things before making conclusions unless something stands out.

By the info available and the looks of it, they have more content, more links and are indexed for longer. These can be the reasons.

Click to expand...

On-page is highly possible. That's still something I lack in. Silos are exact replicas of the ones I have on my site so I know they just copied me and did it better...

More content and more links is something I'm gonna try in the next few weeks and get them to age a bit! Hope things work out fine since I've really put in a ton of time and effort into this website

Just some initial thoughts that came to mind:

1. They could be using PBNs which contribute to their backlink profile but be hidden to Ahrefs. I'm not too experienced with PBNs so I can't tell you how to best detect them, but a good starting point would be to take their top 3 ranking pages and compare how many BLs they have and where they sit in the SERPs. If the pages are consistently outranking other SERP results which have a higher DR and BLs than them, this supports the idea that they could be using hidden PBNs (although this isn't always the case).
   
   
2. You've got a similar number of BLs, but what's your percentage of do-follows and how does this compare to theirs? As no-follows pass on little to no link juice, your BL profile could be several times weaker than theirs if you have a do-follow rate of 40% compared to their 90% etc.
   
   
3. Where are your BLs pointing, and how does this compare to where theirs are pointing? For example, if 100 of your 105 BLs are pointing to your homepage and only 5 to your blog posts, your blog posts themselves aren't that 'authoritative'. On the flip side, if 100 of their BLs are split between their blog posts, then it's likely no wonder their blog posts are outranking yours.
   
   
4. Other people have already mentioned it, but try to increase your number of referring domains. Once you have a BL from a domain, all new BLs from the same domain will have diminishing returns. Since you have less than half the RDs they have, this could be contributing to your problem.

Keep in mind that these are all 'possible' scenarios. Without being able to see the exact BL profiles, no one can say for sure, but hopefully it gives you some ideas of where to look.

Also, to give you a better understanding of whether it's an on-page or off-page issue, consider getting a one week trial to SurferSEO and use the content-optimisation tool to compare your pages with theirs. This should be pretty self-explanatory, but essentially you would just need to run a term through the tool that you know both blog posts are competing for, copy and paste your content in, see what score it gives you, then copy and paste their content in and see what score they get. It's not a fool-proof way of confirming that it's not a content issue, but it's better than guessing if you haven't been able to pin it down yet.

it could be better on-page SEO, try to analyze the competing site and see what they do different than you.
additionally they may have links not showing up on ahrefs (i.e. PBN where ahrefs is blocked).

If you want to PM me your site and their site, I can take a look. Don't post your site here in the comments though if you do want me to though. I have some spare time..

More KW, More RD and hidden Pbn is the answer

Uberuvy said:

Just some initial thoughts that came to mind:

1. They could be using PBNs which contribute to their backlink profile but be hidden to Ahrefs. I'm not too experienced with PBNs so I can't tell you how to best detect them, but a good starting point would be to take their top 3 ranking pages and compare how many BLs they have and where they sit in the SERPs. If the pages are consistently outranking other SERP results which have a higher DR and BLs than them, this supports the idea that they could be using hidden PBNs (although this isn't always the case).
   
   
2. You've got a similar number of BLs, but what's your percentage of do-follows and how does this compare to theirs? As no-follows pass on little to no link juice, your BL profile could be several times weaker than theirs if you have a do-follow rate of 40% compared to their 90% etc.
   
   
3. Where are your BLs pointing, and how does this compare to where theirs are pointing? For example, if 100 of your 105 BLs are pointing to your homepage and only 5 to your blog posts, your blog posts themselves aren't that 'authoritative'. On the flip side, if 100 of their BLs are split between their blog posts, then it's likely no wonder their blog posts are outranking yours.
   
   
4. Other people have already mentioned it, but try to increase your number of referring domains. Once you have a BL from a domain, all new BLs from the same domain will have diminishing returns. Since you have less than half the RDs they have, this could be contributing to your problem.

Keep in mind that these are all 'possible' scenarios. Without being able to see the exact BL profiles, no one can say for sure, but hopefully it gives you some ideas of where to look.

Also, to give you a better understanding of whether it's an on-page or off-page issue, consider getting a one week trial to SurferSEO and use the content-optimisation tool to compare your pages with theirs. This should be pretty self-explanatory, but essentially you would just need to run a term through the tool that you know both blog posts are competing for, copy and paste your content in, see what score it gives you, then copy and paste their content in and see what score they get. It's not a fool-proof way of confirming that it's not a content issue, but it's better than guessing if you haven't been able to pin it down yet.

Click to expand...

Hey thanks a lot of the insights! Yes most of my backlinks point to the homepage, except for a few blogs in the initial stages where I was building backlinks to them.

I couldn't find a PBN even with some really uncommon backlink analysis tools as well. But again, can't say for sure. There's a small possibility that they use PBNs since I've seen them outranking some really high auth well-known domains. I feel though its more of their content for now (or just would assume so for the sake of it)

Thanks for the SurferSEO tip. I'll get the trial and run it through to see if it's the content that's messing up the rankings...

Mr Positive said:

More KW, More RD and hidden Pbn is the answer

Click to expand...

Well I really hope it isn't a hidden PBN lol

Research their content and backlinks closer. Backlink number per se is nothing. It all depends on what kind of links they have. You could throw 1000s of bl within a day..
As others have commented on-page data could help a lot.

I've taken a look at OPs site,

It's weak RD + Onpage SEO + age that I thinks causing this. Specifically weak onpage SEO.

GrizzlyBeardMan said:

Better on page, silos, internal linking, technical issues, better links, choice of keywords to target, index age etc. Would look at a bunch of things before making conclusions unless something stands out.

By the info available and the looks of it, they have more content, more links and are indexed for longer. These can be the reasons.

Click to expand...

Dark Sky said:

I've taken a look at OPs site,

It's weak RD + Onpage SEO + age that I thinks causing this. Specifically weak onpage SEO.

Click to expand...

Thanks to both GrizzlyBeardMan and Dark Sky for helping out personally! I'm going to take the suggestions and get to work right away. Hope things start going better soon

Another one who is getting on the trap of third party metrics

Seems like they are pumping PBN links.

Having the same amount of refering domains doesn't mean anything. Their links might just have more power then yours. Are your links of the same authority as theirs? Does he have more relevancy in his links? I'm a newbie so im just spit ballin. Possible your keyword densities + LSI usage + Intent but there could be also hidden variables. For example... One term I rank #2 on I still can't figure out why its ranking... but I do know that a share I did on pinterest has #$#(&$&# load of shares on it from pinterest. Ahrefs doesnt report pinterest... and some other platforms under report social cues. There could be other reasons why he ranked. Also looked like he recently had 462 backlinks which is far higher then yours and then it droped to the hundreds... his rankings might drop. Google takes time to catch up. Also why did he lose so many back links? was he automating them and then replacing them with better ones? There alot of missing information. For example, if i have one footer link from CNN. and you have 100 links... my site would probably still win.