Hello all; Recently I just had a competitor leapfrog us for some keywords in Google and I'm still trying to figure out why. From what I can tell his only backlinks are with a few directories and some rented FP links. The competing domain is less than 6 months old and currently enjoys a PageRank of 4. According to Yahoo Site Explorer they have just under 50 backlinks, most of them from paid directories like this: wowdirectory.com alivedirectory.com goguides.org Beaconpost.com gimpsy.org site-sift.com elib.org *.dir.yahoo.com Our site is close to 3 years old, also PR4 and has over 1000 backlinks which have developed mostly naturally in that time, though we're not in any directories (other than yahoo and dmoz). While this sounds like a "waah how did this guy get a higher ranking" post it isn't really. My real question is, can aggressive use of paid directories have this effect? My competition tracking shows that these guys were basically nowhere until late January. As far as I knew paid directory links "weight" were being depreciated by Google; is this still the case?
I think Google takes the reputation of the directory into account. There are sites that exist only to sell links. Google knows that. Then there are sites that maintain directories and require a fee for quick review for inclusion. You may want to know that, many sites that offer paid dierctory inclusion also offer free inclusion. But it is a strategy to tell people that if you pay, we shall review your site and include fast. If you dont pay, then it will take long. Your competitor may not have intentionally bought backlinks but bought "quick review for inclusion" and in the process has earned a high quality backlink.
Sounds like they got someone to do some link building for them and maybe even optimize there site better. Directory links are just as powerful as any other kind of link out there, as long as it is in the right category with the right anchor text.
i agree to CraiglistGuy, if you pay for the links the directory would respond for inclusion of your links, if not , and you just get it for free, it would take to long for inclusion.
Try to observe their nature of adding fresh content. Google heavily weighs fresh content. Might be also about what Craigslistguy said. It will help if you list all the factors that can affect your site's status in SERPs together with the competitors data and compare. Even if this task is tedious, this analysis may be the answer about your problem. My two cents worth... ArdRigh
Maybe their site was older and more trusted but didn't have many links. They went out and bought a few links and that pushed them above you.
Thanks for the responses guys. I've been doing some research. First of all, their site is definitely not older; I keep a careful eye on the competition and this site didn't exist until the last few months of last year, even parked. They didn't start their directory/link campaign in earnest until late december/early January. As for content freshness I doubt it. This group is kind of known for starting sites and then making some money from them and then essentially leaving them in place without investment, seeing as its easier to start another one than it is to grow an existing one. They've got at least 200 sites that I know of. On our side we generally add between 10-100 new products a day, which results in lots of changes. On page optimization is nothing special, there's even some screwups (js/css as in-page text, multiple nested tables). I think I'll do my stuff and have to wait a couple weeks to see what happens.
In the mean time, why not mirror what they have done. Take a look at the links that they have gotten, and see if you can get the same links in. If you have your 1,000, plus the 50 that they got, you'll leapfrog them. There's no reason why you couldn't get these same links, right? M