Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
-
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside?
By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998.
But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe.
Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords.
So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too?
Or is that too simple?
-
Actually, they're pretty easy to copy. Just a bunch of open blog posts and forum profile spam.
-
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
With most competitors this is not possible because: 1) they control the sources of those links, or, 2) those links were awarded on the basis of merit and you probably don't merit.
You rarely win by mimicking a competitor. You win by doing something superior.
-
Yep. Direct message. I'll send you one now.
-
I am unsure what DM is, but based on the context I am guessing Private Message? If so you are welcome to do such.
-
Do you do any guest blogging to obtain links, I have found this to be effective for link building and it has increased my search engine results.
-
Thanks for the advice. I do have to say, all the spammy blog comment links are surrounded by like 200 others spammy links to other sites. Very rarely are they there all by themselves, except for when they've joined a forum to put a link in their profile page.
You willing to DM? Unsure if I want to publicly share URLs.
-
The best practice would be to be aware of your competitor's links and look for opportunities. Look for high quality pages where the competitor earned links.
Most blog commenting is very low value from a SEO perspective. If you are an authoritative member of the community which offers the blog, you are one of the first commenters and you share a quality reply with a link then it can have value IF the link is followed and the page is not stuffed with 100 other links. Most blogs which don't nofollow their links have almost no value as they are filled with spam and links.
You are presuming the site's links are the reason why they are outranking you and it is entirely possible the links are not the reason at all. If you would like more detailed feedback please share your site URL, your competitor's URL and a couple sample keywords where you are being outranked.
-
I know the usuals about creating valuable content. We've done that. That's how we've gotten where we are.
And actually, I can see in open site explorer which of the links are follow vs. nofollow. That's what I'm saying... they're very, very good at this. They've built literally hundreds of back links on random blogs with open commenting and follow links.
This is exactly the question I'm asking: I KNOW this is spammy link building, but I'm in the position of asking, since I can't beat them, why not join them?
-
Widgets.com was a generic example of our site. I didn't mean our site is literally Widgets.com. It was an analogy.
-
When I visit widgets.com the only thing I saw were advertisements... so I thought Content would be your main issue because with only a domain name you're not going to make it to the top of Google search results.
Then I went to your competitors website, but that just gave me an error page... maybe they block European traffic, but I doubt that..
Being a copycat can get you some results... maybe... but commenting on blog posts to get backlinks isn't the best technique to really get quality. If you use open site explorer, try to understand the metrics of a good backlink and only go after those. That's what I recommend, and then go on to build quality links yourselve, and not only on places where your competition is...
-
Hi Brian
This is an easy question to answer; "absolutely not". Please don't copy them, you'll end up regretting it.
How you've described your competitors' links makes them fall into the 'worthless spam' category; their efforts would have been for little gain, especially any long term gain, plus they've risked getting penalised for link spamming.
Links from blog posts are usually nofollow so will hold zero SEO value, there is only a small percentage of decent blogs out there.
To acquire some links that will actually be of benefit to your website, create some unique relevant interesting valuable Content for your visitors and Distribute this well. In turn, you'll likely be rewarded with some great natural links. Infographics with a text link built in can really help.
I hope this has been of some help to you.
Regards
Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get rid of bad backlinks
So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png
Link Building | | landlwoof40 -
A lot of backlinks from outside of niche – bad?
We have received a lot of backlinks over the years by users putting links on their websites to their home pages on our site, eg: our.domain/user1 our.domain/user2 … our.domain/user100000 There are 10’s of thousands of these backlinks, all natural, but many of them come from blogs that are completely outside of our niche. Only a small percentage of our backlinks 1% to 5% could actually be coming from pages related to our niche, the other 95%+ could be users just linking to their home pages. Could this really hurt us..? We have 1000’s of backlinks related to our niche, yet we’ve noticed that some competitors with less than 50 backlinks can outrank us for certain keywords.. Also related, we’ve noticed these user links popping up on a lot of spammy sites, directories, etc. We didn’t create them but we’re disavowing them now to be safe. So this could also be hitting our rankings.
Link Building | | dsumter0 -
Do citations count as backlinks?
Hello, So I may have a simple question- do citations such as yp and manta for an example count as backlinks? So if they do, would this be a natural link so good for seo? or a citation where it may be a backlink, but not very helpful for seo backlink profile? Thank you to all
Link Building | | Berner0 -
Backlinks embedded in posts or backlinks in sidebar?
What's better? A backlink to my site, embedded into a blog post/article? Or a hardlink in the sidebar? The problem with links embedded inside articles, is that when the blog linking to me, gets updated, the articles disappear from first page and I lose the link from home page. How do you deal with this? I also read this: "The best link you can get is from a site ranking #1 for the keyword you want to rank for. It would be great to have the #1 site for a desired keyword linking me even if they are a PR 0 site." Is this right? Thx in advance.
Link Building | | BloggerGuy0 -
Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?
Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?
Link Building | | Static_Shift3 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0 -
How good is a backlink that's in the footer
Hello, The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them. It would be right next to the copyright. Our site is nlpca (dot) com The partner site is nlpu (dot) com The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP" How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term. I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0