Ecommerce seo - competitors are using spammy links to rank HELP
-
After setting up SEO Moz and whilst waiting for it to crawl my site i have checked out my competitors who are ranking for the keywords i am going after.
It appears from what i can see in OSE that they are ranking with back links from spammy looking sites and lots of exact match anchor text.
I have tried to match a few links with what they have currently without getting myself into anything too spammy but i really don't want to follow how they have done it exactly.
The niche i am in is pretty boring but the rewards are great but i am finding creating content and distributing it correctly difficult which is why i need some help.
My site is roughly 9 months old and the product descriptions are hand written trying to give as much info as possible with a hint of personality so no cookie cutter back of the box descriptions.
i have matched a few of the links from competitors which weren't too spammy and as relevant as i could get to my niche, i have also created articles for some article directories - all of which isn't really getting me very far and i am running out of ideas on how to create new content & the types of new content to help me get back links naturally.
If any of you friendly guys could offer me some assistance in setting up a basic seo campaign which would help me target my keywords i would be very much in your debt
-
Pleasure, glad I could help!
-
hi Marcus, more gold! i couldn't ask for more!
you have been an inspiration today and you & people like you, are the reason why seomoz is such a great place.
-
Hey Gareth
In an ideal world, you would build great content and the links would come tumbling in but the reality is that you sometimes have to work at this a little.
There are some great guides on here that cover the process in more detail (check out the noobs guide to link building) but in essence, you identify targets and network with those targets to
Ultimately, the trick here is to make your content better, way better than anything else out there and that makes the job a whole lot easier.
Okay, another quick example based around:
History of The Toilet
- Create your page, add an infographic, research it, make it better than anything else currently out there including the wikipedia page.
- Then, find all other 'History of the Toilet' pages online.
- Find out who links to them with OSE etc
- Find out who has shared that page
This provides your list of prospects to link to your new piece.
You then have to network with these folks and ultimately request a link and this again is very much a case of you will get out what you put in. If you just bang an email over then you will get nowhere. If you follow them socially, get chatting, set the scene, move to email and then introduce the idea you will do a lot better.
You have to tackle this from a 'what is in it for them' perspective. If you can make their article or resources page better via linking to your article then it is a no brainer.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
Thank you for the inspiration there to get the ball rolling, i should probably have mentioned i had a blog (which i do) and have been using this to create some content which isn't being found.
I have covered the history of a toilet (here) but never thought of turning it into an info graphic - i think its time to get the old Photoshop out and give it a whirl although my skills are just as legendary as my SEO skills
the link to point-blank seo is something i have been following and working through along with the twitter profile links he also posts on another part of his website - he has some great stuff and i find myself reading more than doing!
that brings me to another question i would like an answer to, since the majority of the content i am posting is to my blog how do i get those people who do eventually like my content to link to the website or will the links to the blog and then link to ecommerce site from within the post be just as good? - that sounds convoluted but i lack the terminology to make a coherent sentence
anyway
thank you again marcus your help is very much appreciated
-
Ha, well, I can see the content brainstorming for this one would be tricky. This is something the SEO industry seems to forget that lots of industries are just not that interesting. Still, there is always an angle and there is always a way to build links.
Here is a 2 minute brainstorming for content ideas (obviously, with content used to build or inspire links).
- The History of Toilets -
- The History of Public Restrooms
- History of the Word Toilet
- Different Types of Toilets
Sounds boring? Well, take a quick look at the wikipedia entry for Toilets and it actually, like anything when you dig in, has some quite interesting history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet
All of those ideas would lend themselves to a really good quality blog post and an infographic. Think of Toilets through the ages as an infographic, easy to put together and would be quite amusing / interesting.
There are about 30 infographic directories you can get a link from so there is a starter and if you can create really truly
You could also identify link targets, that is, sites or articles that are talking about X to do with toilets and answer questions that they pose and contact the site owners.
Really, there is no shortage of ideas here for a content driven approach, you just may have to create general purpose content for scaling link building and then some more boring but functional long tail content as part of your funnels to drive traffic to your product pages.
You could also take a look at this guide to link building strategies:
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
Spend an hour a day working through those and you will soon start to accumulate some basic links.
In brief, there is always a way to do this without going after the weak, spammy links and you should always aim not to copy your opponents weak and vulnerable link profile else you will be playing catch up for years to come. Instead, try to build something that can't be simply copied by doing some competitor research and is based on some good, creative, hard work.
Hope that helps get your brain turning!
Marcus
-
hi Marcus,
Thank you for the quick reply hopefully the info here will help
my url
competitors (these show up the most)
Keywords (small selection of main keywords -long tail variations left off)
washroom related product type names i.e hand soap dispensers etc
Industry -
public/office wash rooms products i.e. automatic soap dispensers, hand dryers, toilet paper dispensers etc (anything you find in a restroom)
The competition has been around for a long time compared to my website so i know this is a major factor and something i cannot replicate.
i cannot think of any more information off the top of my head which will be relevant
many thanks
-
Hey Gareth
Can you add a few other details to the post?
- URL
- Competitors
- Keywords
- Industry
- etc
There are many ways to drive traffic to your site that will also help your long game SEO as well and it may be that you need to work around the edges depending on how well established the competition is.
One point, if your competitors are doing poor quality or spammy link building, don't see that as an obstacle, try to see it as an opportunity. Google is going to do all it can to devalue those links and the sites will suffer. If you can dig in, get some high quality links, build some best of class content, brutally target the long tail etc then you can start to put a dent in this.
Drop in some more details and I am sure the good folks around here will help out as much as we can.
Marcus
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 our competitor has bigger DA?
I just compare our website www.simpletranslation.com with one of our competitor www.straker.com.au and their DA is much better than ours even we have more external backlinks. Can somebody explain me why? We worked really hard on new content on our blog and did few guest posts and instead of see some results on increasing of our DA our DA went down in last 2 months and I have no idea why.
Competitive Research | | Lukas-ST0 -
How better can we compare with a competitor ?
We were ranking 1st to 5th spot for the keyword, "PSD to Joomla Template" for this page, http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ for last 2 years! But since last 6 months, we are getting like 0 traffic to this page and absolutely no leads. We just tried to compare with a ranking competitor who has been on top for last 7-8 months already, www.joomla6teen.com/Convert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html I just compared it with my page, http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.joomla6teen.com%2FConvert-PSD-to-Joomla-Template.html&comparisons[0]=http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ I see our page wins in PAGE METRICS , but falls in SUB DOMAIN AND ROOT DOMAIN Metrics . Whats that ? How do we know, what all things we need to improve at ?
Competitive Research | | monali1230 -
Creating Free Website Accounts (Weebly, Wix, Wordpress.com, etc) for Linking Purposes?
Greetings Mozzers, I came a cross several sites and when looking at their link profile I found they had several links from these free services to gain links. Obviously duplicate content is bad, but if all the content on each one was completely unique, would these links be of quality? Let's say, 1 link per site that is external to your site. I know it's a tricky topic but just wanted thoughts, would the above be a potentially beneficial method for gaining a simple quality link. Your advice and information is much appreciated!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Continuous drop in Rankings on Google.uk
I have a Website who was ranked top 6 for most competitive keywords on Google.co.uk but suddenly dropped to page 2 after 21st January 2013 and later back to top 10 position and now dropped to pages 2 to 5, for most terms. I initially thought it was the transition rank causing this fluctuations. The strange thing is, i haven't done anything wrong in terms of back linking efforts. My site is content rich and offers real value to users also, the website PR increased from 3 to 4 recently, my site seomoz rank, PA, DA and Moz trust is higher than top ranked websites above mine. Please any suggestions?? Kindly help.....
Competitive Research | | ayo10 -
How to combat competitor buying who is buying links and winning.
I have a competitor who is buying links in the Featured Advertiser Links section of Washington Post online. His backlink profile is a very low # of referring domains. (38ish) with a good bit being repeats of Wahington Post. My question, is their strategy within Google guidelines, and what can I do to combat it? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | bozzie3110 -
Help link building
Í am looking for a good company to help me on high cuality link building . Please can someone give any recommendations of good seo companies
Competitive Research | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Trying to rank against keyword in domain
I am trying to rank for let's say the keyword "their site" , my competitor has theirsite.com, with next to no seo but are ranking #1 , my site lets say is mysite.com/their-site my site is about the same age and has a PR of 4,their site has a PR of 0 and 2 backlinks, how difficult will it be to get to number 1, am at spot # 5 in google now. Thanks David
Competitive Research | | David750 -
Help with website
Hello, I've been trying to get our website on 1st place (or at least 1st page to start) on several keywords, on google in all English speaking countries. In most of them I managed, but in USA I'm on 5th page. By Domain Analysis we are better than competition. Keywords are glass nail files, crystals nail files (some long tail keywords are ok, we are somewhere on top). Website: http://www.czech-glass-nail-files.com/ We worked on code, design (notice issues is just recent, because of server migration), on-page, blog. Can someone help me out with an advise? The goal is to be #1. We definitely doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what. Thank you.
Competitive Research | | divan0