Why is my competitor kicking my ass.. I have 10x more links than them!

My site is onepiecehq.com. Everything about it is better except for the PR, which won't go up no matter what I do.

The site in question is watchop.com ( their old domain is watch-onepiece.com ) . I have a lot more linkbacks and every day we must get about 200 link backs naturally from people talking about us. However, they rank much higher. It's not only this site but 7 other sites just like that are kicking my ass.

Am I missing something here? What am I NOT doing right here?

More linkbacks, more seo, more articles, more content, older domain age... what am I lacking.

 

Frustrating, isn't it? I'm in a similar situation as you. One of my sites has a ton of backlinks (and quality ones - not garbagey free directories and blog comment links) and this one guy has the shittiest website on earth - looks like it hasn't been updated since 1995, and is ranking at the top of Google p1. He has about 30 backlinks, and they're all from his own websites' headers.

Keep in mind, there's something like 200 metrics being used by Google that determine how pages are ranked. Knowing which ones, in this case, might be impossible.

It could be that he has one really strong backlink, or something to that effect - it's really hard to determine. Is your competitor on DMOZ or Yahoo Directory? I don't believe in that crap, but sometimes I think weird things like this tend to happen.

 

I'm listed in dmoz. It doesn't seem he is though.

By the way, I ask this not just for my own site, but there's another friend's site I know of that is in an exact same position. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

 

Site age has big factors these days. check that out who has the older site?

 

there are loads of reasons why they may be higher ranked than you!

1. they have quality high pr backlinks that are relevent to the content it is linked too!
2. there onsite optimisation is better
3. older domain name

you can have 20000 pr0 - 2 backlinks and the guy could only have 100 pr6 backlinks and he will be better ranked

If your site is poor on how it is optimised and his is optimised well that is another plus to him.

 

My domain's 2 years older than theirs.

 

What about the relevance of the links that you've got, are they from relevant niche sites?
Are the inbound links from high PR sites?
Are the inbound links spread over many domains, or all from just a handful?

And the on page SEO... do you have enough content covering the niche, have you used a natural variation of synonyms, is you page loading faster.. etc etc, there are millions of reasons.

Dont look for one golden rule and then target it... try to beat them for everyting that you can

 

My site's a yes to all of that. We have thousands of pages indexed by Google. Some simple, some vast, they cover nearly every aspect of my keyword. I also have about 270,000 inbound links for various sites. Not all from the same site. Most of the links were built naturally. I'm responsible for maybe 200 of them. Google is always crawling my site. It just doesn't want to rank me.

 

@ Flamerid,

I just checked your site, it's loading extremely slow (it didn't even open first couple of times and google consider this for ranking). You better contact your hosting, your site is down now

 

Hum, the first site of your competitor watchop.com has no real valuable backlinks, they are all unranked...maybe your competitor has a paid SEO plugin, I have head about them that get sites to #1 spot, maybe he is using one?

 

Mainly, you have to take care of two relevancy and domain age, it may be that your competitors are building links on relevent sites having very old domain.

Their on-page optimization would be perfect!

It may be that your site is put in sandbox or caught in spamming related to this kind of stuff.

 

it is not only about quantity of links, you should also weight in QUALITY of links ... (theme neibourhood, highr PR ... )

 

watchop.com is their new domain you would have to access watch-onepiece.com, that's their old domain that's pointing to their new one. I'm thinking downtime might be the cause too.

 

you also need to factor in stuff like users time on site and bounce rate.. does you competitor have those annoying screen covering pop ups that you do?

They make me wanna leave your site..

he also has all his content links on full view on his front page which will make it easier for users to find the content they are looking for.. and naturally drill down a page or two before leaving..

If your visitors aren't finding what they want within a minute or so of arriving.. be sure they will leave and look for the site they will find it more instantly.. tis the human nature dont you know? ha

 

I noticed that your website is slow ..

Anyway, I checked , and it seems that your website has a great traffic .. so don't just concentrate in this competition .. try to build mre traffic using other methods ..

For example, add a blog, and hire someone that can create link baits for your website (some quizzes, interesting facts, future prediction .. about One Piece .. ), then use social bookmarking and social networking to make the link baits popular (try to get your link in the homepage of Digg etc etc) .. this way you build traffic to your blog and get natural links ..

You can use facebook as well .. it's now the biggest website on earth, so i'm surprised because I don't see any group or page of yours promoted on your homepage ..

you will rank and beat your competitors, but it will take time ... so just be patient; your niche is very competitive ..

 

is there any way if i can't have time to build links for my site but i want to it show on search result

 

Your site is slow and I think this is holding you back. There are a couple of things to look at and implement which should significantly increase your speed and improve your rankings.

websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze ;Use this tool to compare your site to your competitor, BUT more importantly use the report to analyze your site and do everything you can to get the final results (you'll see them at the bottom of the report) all in green.

Next look over this site, net.tutsplus.com/articles/general/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website-and-optimize-your-code/, there are some excellent ideas to help increase site speed, forexample moving your <scripts> </scripts> to just above the </body> tag.

If your using wordpress you need o install this plug-in WordPress SEO Pager, this will link all your pages. Right know if I read an article I have to use the back button on your site can't go to the next page. If your not using wordpress than find a way for users to navigation through your site in a better way by using Breadcrumbs or something.

Lastly, most people never use the Lynx browser (lynx.isc.org/current/) as Google suggests to view your site the same way Google views your site. Had you followed the webmaster guidelines and used this you would also have noticed that you have to use the "Back Button" to use your site.

 

sorry i am to lazy to visit your site but how about the basic on page seo such as the title,meta description,H1 etc.... are they optimized too? there are many little factstors to consider in seo but yes content and links are the main ones.

 

I was just about to say the same thing. Content, quality of backlinks and site optimization.

 

I am shocked to see such an silly mistake on your site, wake up dude and check the basics, and if you cant see it, ask me....no free lunches.

just a hint..error is very small and rectification is to delete 3 letters in a particular file.

Amit Poddar