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I think nobody can really tells me what's wrong and why a page that has several non optimzed seo issues rank better than a page with better seo optimization (onpage and backlink).

It is no good to know the tools are often wrong. I've been using about 5 tools to compare the results and they moslty shows the same.

But if we can't rely on the seo tools as well as on the seo fundamentals (as I showed comparing the 2 websites, better seo does not reflect on ranking) we are left with an trial and error situation...

tks for the advices.

First thank you all for your comments.

Regarding page speed, how did you get that? I mean. I run a speed test at least once a day an at least for me the results showed are not like that. On pingdom tools I get 85/100.. On webpageteat I get A rating for all and on gtmetrix I'm getting 82% score. Usually load time is around 1,5s... My results are better than the competitor I have pointed  using webpage test, page speed insight, gtmetrix and pingdom ...

so I'm confused about this 30 s ...

Anyway im not trying to get any short cut... and it is a not a 5 min setup...

I'll check usability as you pointed as well but putting website 1x1 my website do better on: backlinks, page authority, h1, alt image (90% of images do have them), url structure is user friendly, content, meta/title tags, mobile friendly, speed and on any seo tool available, including moz, semrush, cognitiveseo, seoquake... Are all these tools wrong ?

It makes sense and we can't inspect that to compare. But are this so much a ranking factor more than backlinks, content, friendly url, mobile friendly, social media presence, h1, canonical, DA, PA, website age....

Regarding speed:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.qgairsoft.com.br/S1VhjII1 x https://gtmetrix.com/reports/lojaairsoft.com.br/JeiT3Q8j

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150726_XM_RB4/ x http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150726_0C_RE1/

I agree and I'm working on that.

The problem is that it is even with all these issues my target website is still better than the other website on all those aspects I have pointed. At least all seo tool that I run to compare both websites, my target one do better, regarding alt image, links, titles, and so on. E.g., on a semrush audit scoring 70 x 46 ... for sorting issue we are using rel=canonical... for layered navigation results we are using NOINDEX, FOLLOW to avoid duplicate content.

There is also the backlink issue. This is said to be a major ranking factor but the competitor has no backlinks... See my point?

I'm not sure this is the case. These keywords have a lot of competion. On the adword it will show a low competition as these keywords are not allowed to be adwords promoted so there is no one making adds.

We have several seo principles that are supposed to work, like onpage and backlinks, but this competitor website doesnt follow any of this and rank better in a large range of keywords.

So that leads us to ask: Are backlinks that important? What about on page optimization?

I have listed several topics that are supposed to make you rank higher that are simply not reflection in the results on real life.....

tks, btw.

Hi

I've been studying about seo for quite a good time. I have learned about linking building, on page optimization, and so on but I in the real word all these fundamentals seems not be followed but google's algorithm and here is an example.

On google.com.br (brazilian google) I'm trying to rank for the main keyword "airsoft" and its variation for the website www.qgairsoft.com.br. But the the top 1 os SERP is:

http://lojaairsoft.com.br/index.php

But this website doesn't follow almost any seo advice:

1. It has almost no backlinks at all

2. It has no good content (both on pages and doesn't have a blog)

3. url's are not user friendly

4. It doesn't have a mobile website

5. It has almost no presence on social media, with almost no interaction

6. It doesn't have H1

7. I doesnt have any "canonical" set

8. It has a lower DA

9. It has a lower PA

10. Moz metrics are lower

11. It is not as old as my target website...

12. .. I think you got the point.

And dispite all that the website do better than my website and also better then other websites with theoretically better 'seo'.

What is wrong? What I am missing? Does all these principals really matter for ranking?

But what is better? user experiance (offering easiest way to find products on menu) or less links (users will have to throught 2 page levels to find the products) ?

Menu > category 2 > product

Menu > category 1 > category 2 > product

Thanks for the coments. I've checked the links you sent me. I have made noindex the pages you said, like cart, checkout, login...

My question is related to too many links on a page. Can I reduce it nofollowing links that appear more than once?

My website is an ecommerce and we have on homepage about 470 links !

1. We have a top bar with my account, login, faq, home, contact us and link to a content page.

2 . Then we have multistore selection

3. Then we have the departament menu, with several parants + child category links

4. Then we have a banner

5. Then we have a list of the recently sold and new products.

6. then we have an image grid with the most important cms/content pages (like faq, about us, etc)

7. then we have footer, with all info pages, contact us, about us, my account etc.

There are some links that are repeted 2, 3 times. For a user it is easier to find the informations but I'm not sure how search bots (google) deal with that.

So I was thinking on how can I have around 150 links to be followed. To remove the links from the page is not possible. What about to add nofollow to repeted links and some child category, as the spider will crawl the father and will access child on the next page?

Is this a good strategy?

Thank you all for the replies. So it seems the best option is to go with:

www.mybrand.com as main website for Airsoft and

www.mybrand.com/paintball/

.../store3 .../store4

thanks