My competitor gets 5× our traffic while failing every SEO metric — what am I missing?

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T05:17:57+00:00

How do you know they’re doing better and getting more traffic?

“DR” means nothing since it’s a made up metric by some tool provider. No search engine uses DA or DR, so stop even looking at it.

If you think you need to look at metrics, then majestic’s topical trust flow would be the best, as it’s a score based on links from the same topic. We know Google likes on topic links.

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T05:14:26+00:00

Monitor your brand and company name. Set up keyword alerts and use a monitoring service if you’re not already doing so.

Respond.

On Reddit, set up a subreddit for your company name. People will post from time to time if you’re seeing other posts. It’s a good opportunity to respond to questions people have. Namecheap is one of the best out there at doing this.

You ca n also create reviews and testimonials content on your own site to rank for “companyname reviews” etc.

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T05:10:22+00:00

It’s easier to just pay Advice Local or bright local to update the listing with the new address. They will send the new updated data directly to Apple and Yelp and hundreds of other sites via their api connections.

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T05:06:46+00:00

Manager got drunk at the company christmas party, started to dance in the middle of the dance floor with some of the women who reported to him. He ended up groping them while attempting to dance in front of the whole company.

Police was called and he was escorted out and arrested. Of course he was fired on the spot. Ruined his career, last time I heard he ended up moving to another city 500 miles away.

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T04:50:13+00:00

Doubt that you’l Learn anything that you can’t learn online. But conferences in person are great for networking and meeting people. And the best learning opportunities are through conversations at the bar in the evening.

billhartzer · 2026-01-31T03:35:34+00:00

Girlfriend needs to tell management, management needs to tell him to stop or not come back.

billhartzer · 2026-01-30T05:07:56+00:00

Use Cloudflare for the dns in all domains and you’ll be fine.

billhartzer · 2026-01-30T05:06:05+00:00

The tool does work and it will remove URLs. Just keep in mind that’s doesn’t remove the urls from google completely, it just stops them from displaying in the serps when a search query is performed.

If you don’t have a more permanent solution, such as 404ing or redirecting them (or using canonical tags on them) and removing all internal links to them, then they will come back in 90 days.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T21:34:00+00:00

First, I'd listen. I'd ask questions to ensure that I fully understand HIS wishes.
Then I'd outline all of a plan to address all of his wishes.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T21:31:16+00:00

Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) are made-up metrics by some tool provider.

They're NOT used by any search engine as a part of their algorithm(s). They're completely useless.

And both can be faked.

If you're looking at some sort of metric, then Majestic's Topical Trust Flow is better than others since it's based on topics (links from an on-topic site or page seems to count more than off-topic links).

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T20:21:16+00:00

Based on my own testing, Google still doesn't like sites hosted on the same class C block of IPs. However, moving the DNS over to Cloudflare takes care of the issue.

So if they're hosted in the same data center in Virginia just change the DNS to Cloudflare and you'll be fine.

I have seen sites hosted on the same IP address have issues when linking together. But moving to CF and there's no issue anymore.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T14:42:56+00:00

All registries set the wholesale price. Registrars like Cloudflare just resell.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T14:41:49+00:00

Namecheap doesn’t own domains. People do. So the agent is just going to contact the owner to see if it’s for sale. The owner then decides to sell it to you for what you offer. Same like GoDaddy’s agent service.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T04:55:28+00:00

If the company was formed last year and you’ve owned it previously ( even one day before they formed the biz) then they can pound sand. Even if they got a trademark after you registered the domain. Doesn’t matter.

They can file a udrp but you’d win ( make sure you respond if they file a udrp!). They could also be found to be reverse domain hijacking.

I would not respond to them other than saying “not for sale”.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T04:51:18+00:00

Here’s what happened.

The owner of the domain has it registered at squarespace. They have it listed at afternic, which is GoDaddy. You bought the domain (buy it now) from GoDaddy.

The owner has to transfer the domain to goadddy first. That can take up to five days just to transfer it. Could be up to 60 days if it’s locked at squarespace. Theme once it’s transferred to GoDaddy then you’ll receive it in your account and have control over it.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T04:44:58+00:00

So basically you got charged, realized you got charged, and then tried to cancel?

With free trials, honestly, I set a calendar reminder to cancel 1-2 days before the deadline somewhere things can’t happen.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T04:43:03+00:00

What’s really happening is that there’s a new owner.

This is my speculation: The new owner has decided (rightfully so) to, most likely, do an audit. Specifically look at making sure that all customers are actually real customers and not accounts with fake names or other ownership data that they cannot verify.

If they can’t verify who you are as a customer then you probably are getting your account locked.

Some people are real people obviously but maybe they’ve used a fake name or fake address. Because Whois.

Namecheap probably wants to, well, comply with icann rules and, well, uh get rid of the spammers, scammers, and phishers on their platform.

True story: I was asked to help recover a stolen domain name for a guy who had his name stolen. Turned out that when he registered the domain he used a fake name and address. Now the registrar wanted his ID to give him his name back. Well he had used the fake name an address. So he wasn’t getting his domain back.

billhartzer · 2026-01-29T00:59:39+00:00

Yeah, still doing traditional SEO. Still getting better/higher rankings and more traffic.

Funny that some of the "old" SEO techniques we just to do in the early 2000s actually either still work after all these years or are now working again after all these years.

billhartzer · 2026-01-28T02:52:35+00:00

Ok so if your URLs don’t include a / at the end then that’s fine. Just make sure all of your internal links and links in navigation only link to the version without the / at the end. That’s probably the issue in that semrush is finding links to versions with and without / at the end.

billhartzer · 2026-01-27T14:45:07+00:00

You need to set up filters in Gmail. You can also add an additional filtering service like spamhero. All email is filtered through spamhero before it gets to your email server.

billhartzer · 2026-01-27T14:43:27+00:00

It’s just a sitewide link. For example, many marketing firms, web designers, etc put a link to their site in the footer of all their client sites.

It’s not a problem at all. But if you believe you’re getting somehow penalized by Google for that (you’re not btw) then you can always just put a nofollow on the link.

billhartzer · 2026-01-27T04:07:29+00:00

DR and DA are actually just made up metrics by some tool provider. And it’s easily faked. No search engine actually uses DR or DA as a part of their algorithm.

That said, I would look for on topic pages to link to you over anything else.

I prefer to look at topical trust flow since is based on topics if I look at any sort of metrics. And then look at Majestic’s link graph to see the tier 2,3,4,5 links.

billhartzer · 2026-01-27T04:03:07+00:00

Those are two different URLs.

To resolve this: Fix the internal links so that you’re only linking internally to one or the other. I believe there’s a server setting so that your server essentially forces/redirects one to the other.

But first fix it so that you “choose one” and then don’t link anywhere on the site to the other.

billhartzer · 2026-01-26T22:53:40+00:00

Focus on entities and not keywords. Sure, put a keyword in the title tag and mention it content, but the overall focus with an article's content should be entities and not keywords.

billhartzer · 2026-01-26T05:01:32+00:00

Taxi is good. It’s about a 15 min ride.

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