How a lower domain website can outrank a higher domain website

A great concern for website owners, developers, and administrators, together with online marketing experts, is to be able to answer the question, and determine, how a certain website can outrank another website.

Through the years, and in their effort to identify and apply effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that can help a website achieve a better place in search engine results for a specific query and/or keyword, these online professionals have realized that factors, such as PageRank, of a website can help it rank better than other websites.

However, in addition to PageRank and how big and established a website may be, there are alternative factors that can have a strong impact on SEO ranking of a website.

The SEO effect of enabling comments on a website

The process of publishing content online doesn’t stop when a website owner, administrator, or user clicks the “Publish” or “Post” button.

Allowing website users and visitors to post comments after an initial post or article is published is a great, free, and effective way to produce fresh content with very little, if any, effort required from a website owner.

Comments can have a catalytic effect and improve the SEO ranking of a website.

When it comes to a specific search engine query or keyword, comments can actually cause a website to rank above more established, bigger, and more frequently updated websites.

The SEO effect of social sharing

Another way that the users, visitors, and readers of a website can affect its SEO is through the social sharing features that are provided to them.

In addition to improving a website’s incoming traffic potential by channeling more visitors directly to it through various social media platforms, making social media sharing buttons available on a website can also increase indirect traffic to it by improving its SEO profile.

In fact, the level of social media activity and engagement that refers to a website is considered to be a factor that can affect the search engine ranking of that website.

Therefore, when social media users massively share a website’s content and make it viral, this means that they are actively interested in that content, and value it highly.

On the other hand, when social social media users don’t like or fail to discover content on other, yet more established websites, these websites will never enjoy the positive SEO effect of having their content shared on social media platforms.

The SEO effect of on-site engagement

If the same article or post is published on two different websites, it is possible for that article or post to rank differently on search engines, with ranking not always being dependent on factors such as website domain authority.

This would cause an article being posted on a website with a lower domain authority to rank higher in search engine results than the same article being posted on another website with a higher domain authority.

If the website with the lower domain authority enjoys a higher level on-site user engagement in relation to that post, search engines such as Google could place it higher in search engine results referring to that article

The SEO effect of natural, organic external backlinks to a website

The number of external backlinks to a website as a ranking factor has been downgraded by search engines like Google over the years, due to the wide spread of so-called “link farming” practices in the past.

However, when website readers and users build natural, organic external links to a website because they like and value its content or for reference reasons, these links can have a positive effect on the website’s SEO profile.

Therefore, external backlinks to a website that are not controlled and/or placed by a website owner or administrator can help that website outrank another website, even if the latter has identical content.

The SEO effect of internal backlinking and website structure

On top of external backlinks, the amount and quality of internal backlinks and an optimized website structure, which are factors that are directly controlled by a website owner or administrator, can make a real difference, when it comes to one or more websites outranking each other.

Sources and further reading:

SEO and Social Media: How Search Boosts Social Efforts

Can small websites with low domain authority outrank large sites?

How Do You Outrank Bigger Sites for High Competition Keywords?

How can I outrank a website whose brand is named specifically after a product / service (and mine is not!)?

The Right Way to Increase Domain Authority (5 Steps, 4 Truths, 3 Tips)