Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
-
Hi,
I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days?
According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL.
You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain.
So what are we supposed to do here?
-
Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...)
-
Do what they do?
Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
-
-
I agree. It is very hard to find a good writer. If we can't beat them with our content, then it's all fair anyway. At least you understand why you are outranked by them.
Thanks for your answers.
-
Good luck to you.
I think that it is very difficult to find an author who can write highly competitive content - no matter how much you pay them.
If you look at what is already on the web, ranking on the first two pages of google - that is what you need to beat. If the content can not beat that then I don't think that the "publish and forget it" method will work well.
-
Thanks for the answer again.
And it's great to hear it works in long term. Something to stay positive...
We have a very decent team of writers and we do try to pay them higher than the industry average, as I am a writer myself and I try to make them happy and give them what they deserve. (instead of investing in (or purchasing) low quality links).
best,
-
We have got 1500 words + 15-20 high definition images + videos
Oh... thanks for adding that. It sounds like you deserve to be winning.
The articles that you are producing sound a lot like mine. They usually start out deep in the SERPs but over time they slowly climb the rankings. A year later, maybe two, they are at or near the top of google for their target keywords.
It is really slow progress, but instead of spending time/money on low quality links, I allow things to happen naturally and spend my time on another article.
-
No sir. Not like that
Sorry I forgot to -specifically- mention about our visuals but I was trying to compare the amount of unique text on the page.
We have got 1500 words + 15-20 high definition images + videos
anyway, thanks for the answer
-
hmmm...... you have fifteen hundred words...
They have two hundred words and six nice images and a video?
Imagine the contrast in the first impressions of a visitor...
Six juicy images and a video vs a block or black and white text.
I think just about anybody anywhere would rather watch a video and look at six nice images.
If I was you I would be buying a digital camera.
To be honest, I have the same frustrations as you do. I can't say if their satellite blogs are making an impact. But I think that you can make a better first impression if the visitors to your page see a big nice image above the fold and maybe more of them below. A digital camera will help a lot and if you don't have the topics needed you can license some really nice images from istockphoto for not a lot of money. I usually spend quite a bit of money getting props for images, paying someone for custom graphics. When I add them to an article the visitor stays a lot longer and I assume that it really helps with social sharing.
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
-
Why would a newly created site, have ranked ahead of our site for keyword that we are optimized for?
This newly created site has a DA of 1 and PA of 1, no backlinks, no optimized urls, the keyword they ranked better than us on was listed a total of 6 times on the homepage. Our PA is 29 and DA is 18 for the page that ranks for this keyword. They really copied a few elements of our site but made sure to change a few things, but also list at the bottom of their site 5 keywords that are crucial to our niche industry but they're all linking to the same page. Any ideas? It's an SEO guy running the site, we've watched them toy with adwords trying to be number 1, but not liking the price, so they are here and there with it. Mainly I don't see why they'd rank better for this keyword, we our site have prolly 500% more content that's both of quality and relevance to our customers, in the form of Pdfs, infographics, help sections, and video. Very baffled here, any advice would rock!
Competitive Research | | Deacyde1 -
Keyword strategy for wordpress category base blog in competitive industry
Hi friends, We have a client in the movie review blog industry, which we are aware is highly competitive, but we have tons of content (over 10,000 unique posts) and a good team of reviewers for fresh content. I was wondering about any input on keyword variations for our SEO Title of our wordpress main categories, like "Movie Reviews". I was thinking a modification to "Latest Movie Reviews", but the competition is only slightly less, and still seems questionable for attaining eventual rankings. "Best Movie Reviews" is slightly higher than "Latest Movie Reviews" but the competition still seems tough. What would be a good long term strategy with these category pages, any suggestions?
Competitive Research | | JustinMurray0 -
Moz Rank /Moz Trust Tips and Tricks
I've been working on the following website (www.pleasantparkkennels.com) for about 2 years now for SEO and been able to place the site for many keywords. At times some competitors seem to come into the mix and 'just get lucky' in their rankings regardless of all the work I've done ... it seems they've implemented no SEO strategies whatsoever and yet them sometimes rank better. Upon comparing link metrics with these competitors, I seem to be doing well in most criteria but Moz Rank and Moz Trust always seems to be a category I fall short in.
Competitive Research | | MainstreamMktg
Does anyone have any resources / tips and tricks / checklists that I might be able review to assess my website for to see how I make it better. I'm running out of ideas 🙂 Thank you!0 -
Why competitors rank with no content & filters
We're investing a lot in on-page content and creating categories/sub categories to target relevant keywords. Although it seems competitors with high domain authorities are clearly dominating in the SERPs and the pages have NO content. They are literally filters that create landing pages. For example when you search "Kaydian Beds", Debenhams rank below the manufacturer with just a filtered page, this page has not been optimised with content to target the keywords, only the META title changes depending on the chosen filter. Link: http://www.debenhams.com/furniture/beds/kaydian Our link: https://kontenta.co.uk/brands/kaydian-beds.html This is very frustrating as quality content should beat pages with little or no content, we will spend some time and get some inbound links to the page to try boost the rankings but does anyone have any similar experiences with anything like this?
Competitive Research | | Jseddon921 -
Why does this site atlantapestcontrol.com rank so high?
I have been doing competitive research on the keyword phrase "atlanta pest control" this website atlantapestcontrol.com is #1. Why? The number 2 website makes some sense for its rank, but this one does not.
Competitive Research | | SammyL300660 -
Determining why an established competitor's rankings have bombed - What's the best way to go about it?
I arrived at work this morning to find my weekly SEOmoz ranking report for a main competitor waiting in my inbox. 90% of the their rankings have tanked in the last day or so by an average of 3 pages - most down from page 1 or 2 where they had been sitting pretty for ages. I'm not in a state of (total) euphoria about this because a) you should be humble enough not to gloat at your enemy's demise, and b) I need to find out what they did wrong so that I don't make the same mistake, too. **What is your first suggested port of call to determine where my (vanquished) foe has gone wrong? How much can I find out? ** I do know one thing - with OSE I can see they've used dodgy blogging services but this, to my mind, would have been jumped upon by Google last year. No? Thanks guys
Competitive Research | | Martin_S0 -
Question about Keywords & Ranking
I hope this isn't too basic of a question, but I am confused about something. If you use the Keyword Research tool and type in "Stained Concrete Flooring", the 3rd result (stainedconcrete.org) has the lowest numbers of any of the sites in the top 8-10... Is it because they have a large amount of traffic? or is there some other factor that I am missing?
Competitive Research | | Timvroom0 -
How can my site not ranked on easy keyword while it currently ranked 1 on difficult keyword??
The site in question is http://ikt.co.id The site is perfectly optimized (or even over optimized) for keyword "Bikin Website Murah" (in Indonesia it means "develop an affordable website") currently if you search on both google.co.id AND google.com, it ranked on #10 (on google.co.id) and it ranked on #7 (on google.com), and both term only return 1.3 million results I have A LOT OF pages that started with 'bikin website' , or 'website murah' ... there are a lot of them, and i have had a lot of backlinks on those pages too (have been manually building a lot of links, starting from creating a tutorial article and blog submission and many other way) .. the site has been perfectly optimized for that keyword For example we have http://ikt.co.id/blog-category/bikin-website-murah-promo-terbaru.html (for newest promotion) http://ikt.co.id/blog/bikin-website-seo-murah-discount-40-sampai-31-juli-2011.html (for discount 40% promo that lasted untill 31 juli 2011) AND YET, if you search on google.co.id for keyword "2000 likes facebook" , our lone page that i created when our facebook likes reached that amount, RANKED #1!! , and please let me tell you this term return 400 million results++ (on google.com this keyword ranked #19, on 500 million results++). And let me tell you it take that SINGLE page (which has absolutely 0 backlinks) 2 days to ranked #1 .... and her brother if you searched "1000 likes facebook" also show similar result (though not better then the sister) How ?!? and Why ?!? , i dont understand this at all.... my domain does not contain any keyword, they uses the same engine and yet that lone pages which have absolutely no backlink ranked so well on a very competitive keyword, while my Target Keyword ranked poorly.... And what is even more bizzare? "Bikin website murah" might not rank good, but "bikin website" ranked better x_x ... arghh i dont get it... why my site ranked poorly on easy keywords and ranked high on difficult keywords :(( .... Why I am not smiling because those easy keyword is actually my primary keywords 😞
Competitive Research | | IKT0