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.
-
Thank you for helping me find them.
<a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">target</a><a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">='_blank' href="http://www.weitzlux.com/mesothelioma_438.html" rel="nofollow">Mesothelioma</a>, <a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">target</a><a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">='_blank' href="http://www.weitzlux.com/asbestos/attorney_433.html" rel="nofollow">Asbestos Attorney</a>, <a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">target</a><a <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">='_blank' href="http://www.weitzlux.com/orthoevra/patch_7852.html" rel="nofollow">Ortho Evra</a>
When I view the source they have "nofollow", which should remove their value for ranking a website and make these links OK with Google.
Would not bother me if my competitors were doing this. In fact, it would reveal to me that they think they are makin' munny.
-
Craig, thanks. Not really a fan of reporting either, just a little frustrated.
Egol, yes the links are in source code.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/postpoliticstv.html
-
When I go to the WP and find a page with a box of links labeled "Featured Advertiser Links" and I then view the source code of the page I do not see those links in the code.
Is that what you see when you do this?
-
Well many newspaper and magazines online have to sell advertising to make money because a lot of them hold a fair bit of power it is a link that could be worthwhile.
Personally if i was you id worry less about what links others are getting, and concentrate more on getting your own links, and if they are up to any unethical link building then it will only be a matter of time before that catches up on them.
I know its frustrating when someone is buying their way above you in the rankings, but that's life and in most niches people will do what it takes to get there.
There are various techniques which can be called link building, i would say the one you are suggesting falls into the " grey area " where it is considered to be bad practise however works a treat.
I wouldnt consider the washington post to be a link farm, not for now anyhow. And i know locally online newspapers in my area who offer articles on their websites for a fee/donation or whatever you want to call it.
Im not a fan of reporting things like that, whats for them wont go past them.
-
Thanks for response Craig, It is just links under the category Featured Advertiser Links. So it is a bit different than a traditional advertisement with a link. There are a number of links to different pages/products on their website.
Could/should they be reported?
-
Buying links is not something that you should do, however if he paid for an advert in the Washington Post to advertise his business, which so happens to also link to his website then so be it.
Buying links on link farms and similar sites will eventually harm a website. Ive saw this done and can work for a while, however i dont use this approach and would advise against it.
To combat it, you make sure you keep putting good content on your website, and work even harder at getting good quality relevant links to this content in order to rank well.
Quality over quantity always wins.
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
-
I can see competitors ranking for certain long-tail keywords but cannot find them on web pages. What am I missing?
Hi there. I'm pretty new to SEO and I've been doing a fair bit of training but there is one aspect I have yet to grasp. When I carry out keyword research, I get all these results and I understand the metrics. What I'm not getting is, when a competitor is ranking highly for say "where can I buy fresh turkeys", I assume that that phrase must appear somewhere on the page, but it doesn't. I realise I'm just not thinking about this in the right way. Can anyone offer clarification, please? Kind regards, Bruce
Competitive Research | | BruceBarbour0 -
Via this intermediate link?
I'm doing some work on an ecommerce site for an electronics distributor and I've been seeing these "Via this intermediate link" notations from GWT under our "Links To Your Site" section. I understand how and why these notations would normally be displayed, however, these links are mainly coming from our direct competitors. Fearing that we might be a victim of a negative SEO attack, I looked into the situation and noticed that all of the links are from PDF's (technical data sheets) provided by the manufacturer that both we and our competitors use on our product detail pages. This still seems odd to me because, we download these pdf's and host them on our own site on our own servers under a completely different name (as I'm assuming our competitors do as well), yet, there still seems to be a connection between our sites through these PDF's. I've included a screenshot of some examples. Since we have thousands of SKU's on our site - with technical PDF's for nearly all of them - we're seeing a lot of links from competitors sites. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, I'm just trying to understand the situation more clearly. Has anyone had any similar experiences or some information from Google that might explain what I'm seeing here? fpWvB5T
Competitive Research | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
Shortened URL showing as linking page
I'm using Open Site Explorer to look at backlinks and referring pages to my site. I'm seeing 3 links coming from http://j.mp/XXXXXX (not actual link) which is a bitly shortened URL. It shows as a 301 redirect, and I'm trying to figure out if there is any way to find where that link is originating from? When I try to search for the exact j.mp url in google it brings up one result which is the page the link redirects to. Any Ideas? Thanks a lot.
Competitive Research | | CJ50 -
Alternatives To Link Detective
Hi, A while back I used link detective to scan through our OSE reports. However, it seems that the site is no longer maintained and the system no longer seems to work, ie I upload the CSV file and then when i check back it leads to a blank screen. I wonder if anyone knows of a similar software as its functionality was very useful. Thanks
Competitive Research | | bobanna1 -
What To Focus On SEO / Link Building for this campaign to rank again..
Hi All; I recently joined Moz and I am really starting to learn a lot here. I am still finding it difficult to figure out what to focus on the most to improve my rankings (although I do have some page 1 ranks) I have one strong competitor who has a SOLID spot in the top 5 of google for the past few years for the keyword I would like to be ranked for again. (as they have always been a competitor of mine either 1 spot above or 1 spot below). then i fell off google in January and finally made it back to page 1. But their links are thousands higher than mine. What parts of my SEO Link Building should I focus on the MOST to improve my ranking to move up a few spots? Followed links vs No Followed Links Followed Linking Root Domains vs NoFollowed Linking Root Domain Any help would so greatly be appreciated; also please explain why you would focus on that part of my campaign so I can better understand as well. Thanks again
Competitive Research | | Circa
(there are 3 images total) t4klvWZ,I9R9BsC,fbDoF3L#20 -
Ive been busy link building for about 3 months and my seomoz account says i have no links?
Wondering why none of my links are showing in my dashboard altho many were accepted 3 months ago? many Thanks, Zoe.
Competitive Research | | zozzer0 -
Link Landscape Definition
Will someone give me a good definition of "Link Landscape", or a great article on it.
Competitive Research | | Trupanion0 -
Would buying the domain 'howtoget-a-girlfriend.com' help organically
for the exact search 'how to get a girlfriend' in google? How-to-get-a-girlfriend.com and howtogetagirlfriend.com are taken, so I just wanted to see if this was close enough to help google.
Competitive Research | | insitegoogle1