7 replies to this topic

[fromtherooftops]

we had a sudden dip in search rankings in the beginning of March, then it yo-yoed back until yesterday, when it suddenly dropped like a rock again. We have a competitor that is much more well known than us, and has a much greater number of backlinks. Although we are a highly optimized and following the SEO rules to the best of our ability (our competitor doesn't seem to be doing anything extraordinary regarding SEO).

It doesn't appear that this competitor ever falls victim to search algorithms. My best guess is that the backlinks are the reason. Is there anything else I could be missing? It should be said that neither of us has any unique articles, just product descriptions. We both have a PR of 4.

So... How normal is this?

[ABK]

First of all did you make any changes on your website like URL-rewrite, changing content, updates etc. ? Sometimes when you make some major changes first your website drops and then climbs up again in SE's.
If you didn't do anything like this than maybe your competitor is moving faster than you do, meaning he is building backlinks much faster.
Or maybe it's just an algorithm update and you should be back up soon.

My advice is to keep a close eye at your competitors, monitoring their keywords, IBL's using specific tools.

[Randy]

Is the other site older than yours too FTRT?

My first guess would be a combination of backlinks and age. But really, doing more (sometimes really tiny) things right than everybody else can sometimes have the same effect.

[Jill]

Although we are a highly optimized

This isn't always a good thing.

[fromtherooftops]

This isn't always a good thing.

I should rephrase that by saying that I do not believe we are over-optimized. I could be wrong, I'm going to look at that too...

[fromtherooftops]

Is the other site older than yours too FTRT?

My first guess would be a combination of backlinks and age. But really, doing more (sometimes really tiny) things right than everybody else can sometimes have the same effect.

Yes, a good 3 years older. Good point.

[adiante]

There you have it. Its 3 years older. That could be a big contributing factor in keeping it up there. But age can definitely be beaten by good links. So keep working on getting some more good links for your site.

[OldWelshGuy]

The trust factor for domains is becoming a bigger and bigger part IMO.

Try to focus as much (or more) on the quality of your backlinks than the quantity