Weak sites ranking high

[TacoCat]

Hey BuSo,

I've been in the trenches and doing my homework. I've been doing market research for a while right now and I've come across some weird sites. Maybe you can make some sense out of it.

A site, that has DA and PA 16 is ranking high for some high level keywords.

Now, MOZ says that it doesn't have other links except 301 redirects from a previous domain. Looks like the site was based on that one before. Ever page is redirected to the corresponding page on the current site.

But the previous domain isn't a strong one either, it has the same DA and PA of 16. It has some better links, but not much.

Now the question is:

Is there something shady going on? Like maybe a hidden PBN that I can't find with tools or did I just found a SEO paradise where you can rank with little effort?

If any other detail is required let me know.

 

[Island]

DA is bullshit. One of my money sites has a DA of 17 and its ranking top 5 for a fairly competitive home services niche in Toronto. DA takes forever to update, and it doesn't show any of the links I've built in the last 6 months.

 

[c4yrslf12]

It has some better links, but not much.

How do you know it's just one domain being redirected? How do you know all the links have indexed? How does the content stand against the competition? How's the social? The referrals? What's the DA of the competition? What's the relevancy of the links versus the authority?

SO many questions.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I agree that DA is the slowest to update metric ever, which is a feature to some degree for scrapers. Even if manipulated you at least know those pages have longevity.

The first thing I'd consider is if there's a PBN that's blocking link crawlers. You could find them with some Google search operator magic like the link: operator.

I'd also check to see how hard they are going at social. Social is incredible for rankings despite what Google and Nay-Sayers spout off.

Also, it may be an on-page type of thing. There's still a lot of secrets, just like anchor text, on finding the sweet spots that catapult you to the top... (hint: what was once killed is resurrected once the psychological and propaganda campaign is victorious.)

Combine the on-page stuff with a powerful link profile (hidden or not) and it's curtains for everyone else.

 

[CCarter]

what's was once killed is resurrected once the psychological and propaganda campaign is victorious.

Something is stirring beneath the waves; something dead and cannot be killed and will restore balance to the world of Men. In the dark, the dead are dancing. Under the sea, the crows are white as snow. Under the sea it snows up, and the rain is dry as bone. What is dead may never die but rises again, harder, stronger...

 

[Ryuzaki]

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

 

[lion1978]

MOZ says that it doesn't have other links except 301 redirects from a previous domain.

sounds a bit like someone is doing a double 301 essentially they spam a domain till it gets a penalty/deindexes, then they 301 that domain to the "old" domain of the website which now 301's to the new "weak" domain, you get the "power/bennefit" of spam without the risk of a penalty, basically it's an exploit of a logical flaw in the question of weather someone is guilty by association or not.

of course lot's of other things could be a play as well, but this is one where even a newbie can play along.

 

[Goldorak]

Have you tried other crawlers like ahref, majestic, openlinkprofiler?
I bet you he's got some PBNs that are not necessarily powerful but highly highly relevant.

 

[ddasilva]

Yea, DA doesn't really mean shit. The best way to analyze a backlink profile is with your eyes. Both the quantity and quality of links. I've seen sites with average DA rank highly for competitive terms, while sites with high DA struggle to land on page 1. I can't even remember the last time I checked one of my own site's DA.

How is the site quality? I believe Google has gotten better at determining the quality of a page and a domain, and has been rewarding sites accordingly. A stealth PBN is also a possibility. Maybe check to see if they're active on tier 2 as well.

 

[TacoCat]

How do you know it's just one domain being redirected? How do you know all the links have indexed? How does the content stand against the competition? How's the social? The referrals? What's the DA of the competition? What's the relevancy of the links versus the authority?

SO many questions.

Well, the research is based on MOZ site explorer, maybe there are more domains pointing to that site which I can't see. I don't know if all the links have been indexed.

The content compared to others is pretty the same, the top 10 resuls go from 500 words to 1500 words. This site has 1000 words and it looks simmilar to other sites.

No social.

What do you mean by referrals?

The DA of competition is from 17 to 88, I would say it is 50% strong authority and 50% weak sites.

Well the links that I can see are only from that redirected domain, so it looks really relevant.

Another note, this is basically an Affiliate website.

I agree that DA is the slowest to update metric ever, which is a feature to some degree for scrapers. Even if manipulated you at least know those pages have longevity.

The first thing I'd consider is if there's a PBN that's blocking link crawlers. You could find them with some Google search operator magic like the link: operator.

I'd also check to see how hard they are going at social. Social is incredible for rankings despite what Google and Nay-Sayers spout off.

Also, it may be an on-page type of thing. There's still a lot of secrets, just like anchor text, on finding the sweet spots that catapult you to the top... (hint: what was once killed is resurrected once the psychological and propaganda campaign is victorious.)

Combine the on-page stuff with a powerful link profile (hidden or not) and it's curtains for everyone else.

Link: operator returned 0 results.

No social signals, they have a Facebook account that has nothing on it, one post posted on January.

I'm no expert on On-Page SEO, but it looks like there is a lot of internal linking going on.

sounds a bit like someone is doing a double 301 essentially they spam a domain till it gets a penalty/deindexes, then they 301 that domain to the "old" domain of the website which now 301's to the new "weak" domain, you get the "power/bennefit" of spam without the risk of a penalty, basically it's an exploit of a logical flaw in the question of weather someone is guilty by association or not.

of course lot's of other things could be a play as well, but this is one where even a newbie can play along.

The previous domain doesn't look too spammed.

Yea, DA doesn't really mean shit. The best way to analyze a backlink profile is with your eyes. Both the quantity and quality of links. I've seen sites with average DA rank highly for competitive terms, while sites with high DA struggle to land on page 1. I can't even remember the last time I checked one of my own site's DA.

How is the site quality? I believe Google has gotten better at determining the quality of a page and a domain, and has been rewarding sites accordingly. A stealth PBN is also a possibility. Maybe check to see if they're active on tier 2 as well.

The site is basically an Affiliate site, the content quality looks fairly OK. It looks like they have a strong internal linking game.

Another detail is that the site is just 7 months old.

 

[ddasilva]

It's probably impossible to determine exactly how they're ranking so well without actually seeing their URL and looking under the hood. You can PM me if you want.

 

[TacoCat]

It's probably impossible to determine exactly how they're ranking so well without actually seeing their URL and looking under the hood. You can PM me if you want.

Sure, I PM'd you, let us know what you think.

 

[ddasilva]

TacoCat, PMed me the URL and I was able to dig a little.

To be honest, I don't think they're doing anything blackhat or unusual, in terms of off-page SEO. At one point, it did look like they went through a rebrand and 301'd the old domain to the new domain, and transferred all the content over to the new domain (with a new and improved site design). The links pointing to the old domain don't look to be any more impressive than the links pointing to the new domain.

Both the old domain as well as the new domain have just over 100 referring domains, and nothing that would blow your mind or make you say "wow, how did he get THAT link". So I can see how you could take a look at their rankings, then look at their backlinks, and then wonder WTF is going on. There's a handful of decent links, but nothing crazy.

In my opinion, I think their rankings are driven by mostly on-page stuff. They have over 300 unique articles on site, covering almost every topic you can think of within this niche. Their content is well written, and doesn't look to be outsourced to some 2 center per word writer.

Mostly all of their pages are intelligently interlinked, and with over 300 pages of content, that's a lot of opportunity to spread that link love around. Some pages have as many as 20 internal links to other pages, all using different and natural anchor text when doing so.

If you search for their brand name, Google displays Site Links, which is a sign of authority.

If I had to guess, I would imagine their user site metrics are very good. Well written content + many internal links will lead to low bounce rates, high time on site, and increased # of pages viewed per visitor.

It's possible they could be using a stealth PBN as well, but if I was a betting man, I would put my money on on-page SEO and site quality as the driving factor behind his rankings.

 

[TacoCat]

TacoCat, PMed me the URL and I was able to dig a little.

To be honest, I don't think they're doing anything blackhat or unusual, in terms of off-page SEO. At one point, it did look like they went through a rebrand and 301'd the old domain to the new domain, and transferred all the content over to the new domain (with a new and improved site design). The links pointing to the old domain don't look to be any more impressive than the links pointing to the new domain.

Both the old domain as well as the new domain have just over 100 referring domains, and nothing that would blow your mind or make you say "wow, how did he get THAT link". So I can see how you could take a look at their rankings, then look at their backlinks, and then wonder WTF is going on. There's a handful of decent links, but nothing crazy.

In my opinion, I think their rankings are driven by mostly on-page stuff. They have over 300 unique articles on site, covering almost every topic you can think of within this niche. Their content is well written, and doesn't look to be outsourced to some 2 center per word writer.

Mostly all of their pages are intelligently interlinked, and with over 300 pages of content, that's a lot of opportunity to spread that link love around. Some pages have as many as 20 internal links to other pages, all using different and natural anchor text when doing so.

If you search for their brand name, Google displays Site Links, which is a sign of authority.

If I had to guess, I would imagine their user site metrics are very good. Well written content + many internal links will lead to low bounce rates, high time on site, and increased # of pages viewed per visitor.

It's possible they could be using a stealth PBN as well, but if I was a betting man, I would put my money on on-page SEO and site quality as the driving factor behind his rankings.

Thanks for your input.

Can I ask you what tools did you use, because moz doesn't show me that the new domain has over 100 referring domains.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

Can I ask you what tools did you use, because moz doesn't show me that the new domain has over 100 referring domains.

If you want link data don't even bother using Moz, their index is absolutely tiny compared to the professional tools in the niche. Moz is a swiss army knife, if you need a little bit of everything done 'ok' then it's fine. If you need a hunting knife try AHREFS and Majestic.

 

[ddasilva]

Thanks for your input.

Can I ask you what tools did you use, because moz doesn't show me that the new domain has over 100 referring domains.

I was using Ahrefs to analyze link profile. And now that you mentioned that, I went ahead and took a second look. I didn't see this previously, but Ahrefs was counting all the links to the old domain as referring domains to the new domain (didn't realize that Ahrefs still counted every link that was passing through a 301). So actually, there's more like 30 links to the new domain, and around 100 links to the old domain.

The original site was started in 2013, so there's probably a bit of age/trust flowing through the 301 redirect as well as the ~100 links. That coupled with good content and solid on-page SEO did the trick.