How to do large scale linkbuilding in a quick and safe way?

[CreativeCT]

Since 2 / 3 years I have been doing work a client of mine. I have been building a good reputation and also a lot of top 10 / top 5 positions for mayor keywords. Starting about 4 to 12 weeks ago the positions have been dropped some due to (very) new competitors. My questionnaire is this: The client had everything better, also when I use the SEOmoz analyses. The only difference now is; the new competitors have made massive links in very short time, that making 2 things: more links than my client and also beating my clients positions. These domains exist since 3 to 9 months. What I am trying to figger out is; 1. How do they make 250.000 links in this time? (safe and so quick) 2. How does only this effect the SERPs so much? 3. If they continue this, Will they keep climbing up or get à penalty? Love to hear some advice. Thanks,

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Some resources to help formulate a competitive backlink analysis.

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/competitive-link-analysis-tips-whiteboard-friday
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-inside-look-at-competitors-backlinks-with-open-site-explorer

If you find that your competitor is building spam links, you may find that they drop back down in the SERPs fairly quickly.

On the other hand, you may find in your competitive analysis that they're actually brilliant marketers who have found an intelligent link building strategy that you're not using. This is where you have to put your detective hat on and ask "exactly how did they get this link?"

If it's a good link, then you might want to replicate the strategy.

[crimzen]

I agree with everyone here -- going through a similar situation with a client where a few competitors outrank because of domain and page authority...mostly from low quality links.  My goal is to build up my client's link bait with good content, capture the good links his competitors have and let the rest work itself out over time.

Best thing you can do is show the client and explain in detail why it is happening.

[VistageSEO]

You might see their short term gains, but they'll come back down to earth. I had something similar happen...competitor using pretty cheap, spammy methods built a lot of exact anchor text links....got them up short term, but about 2 months later, they plummeted.

Remain focused on your quality long term strategy and don't let this derail you. Sounds like they'll just run themselves into the ground.

[stevefidelity]

In the very off chance that they are actually all quality links, or specifically, 'naturally-occurring' links, it's happening because of great content that they're putting out there. Then you want to be examining examining what type of content they're producing and then you're going to want to invest some resources into high quality content development. You should want to do that in any case.

[TakeshiYoung]

Again, look at your competitor's backlinks in OSE.  Filter it down to external links that are followed.  It should list them in order of MozRank.  Go through the list, and for each link see if it is spam or a good link that you could also acquire.  If the former, ignore it, if the latter work on acquiring the link.

[CreativeCT]

Thanks for the quick responses so far. This is mostly just confirming my suspicions. I will definitely file à spam report, even If it is not filed as spam by Google this has a chance of resolving the situation in an easy way. Takeshi, I am not sure where they got them all but i found several that are just worthless and only contributing to the link count (not qualities). However, what If the website HAS all quality links; What would you guys do to get these massive links? Thanks again

[stevefidelity]

In most, if not all industries, I would say: new site + less than 1 year + 250k+ links ≠ 'safe'.

I wouldn't sweat it too much.

I'd probably check out their link profile in OSE so you can see for yourself the types of links they're acquiring. If the client isn't that SEO-savvy, try to show them what they're doing and how they're doing it. Hopefully that can calm the client down a little bit if they're worried why they're not occupying the same spots as they were in teh SEPRs.

Don't be tempted to attempt to mirror the competitors' strategies!

[TakeshiYoung]

When you put your competitor into Open Site Explorer, where are they getting their links from?  It could be the case that they are using some large scale spam tactics, which will tend to get their site penalized over time (though not always).  It could also be the case that they just got sitewide links from really large sites, so all the links they are getting are from a handful of domains.

[BenFox]

1. They cheat using automated methods of link building.

2. It's a loophole in Google's algorithm.

3. If it's as bad as you say then I would imagine they will be penalized for it however you can always give them a little help by filing a spam report