Owning all of the top 10 positions for one keyword
-
Hello,
I would like to know if it is considered bad by Google to rank every single spot in the top 10 with the same keyword?
All websites conver the same topic which this keyword, but have unique content. Those websites dont link to one another.
To be clear, I am not asking if it is a good idea because it will be harder to rank, find links etc. or because the last positions don't bring enough traffic. I really just would like to know if it against Google guidelines? Any thoughts or sources are greatly appreciated.
-
I agree with Tom and Lynn. It would be technically possible if you make sure there is no connection with the site, (who is, theme, content, different host/ ip range, etc), there would be no way for google to know one person is behind it.
But the amount of work to do that with white hat methods would be incredibly hard ( even with black hat it would be very hard), for a decent keyword worth ranking for..... I don't think its possible these days.
-
I can only go on my experiences I'm afraid, based on what I've seen and what I assume to be the right SEO practices.
I'd put a lot of money on this being the case - but hey, you could always ask Matt yourself!
-
Tom sums it up well.
In most if not all of such cases you should ask yourself if this is a 'normal' situation for a 'normal' search query and I think you will find that the answer is no. If the sites are all owned by the same person then it is certainly borderline if this situation is resulting in searchers finding enough variety in the results for them to say that google is returning the best results. Further to that, for any semi-competitive keyword it would be quite unusual for this situation to be happening so I would ask myself if it is worth the bother maintaining all these sites and tracking their rankings. Chances are that at some point the algo will mix things up and some (all?!) of the sites will move out of the top 10.
So, officially against the guidelines? (assuming no funny stuff) probably not. An un-natural situation that is unlikely to be very stable and/or worth the effort of maintaining it... probably.
-
Hello Tom Hall,
I think I wasn't clear. I didn't mean what you answered to. I meant:
10 domains with unique content on each one. Then linkbuilders get links to those sites to make those the ten to be ranked first on Google.
Basically, I meant what Tom Roberts answered to.
So, Tom, for you this should not be done because there is always a risk. Do you have sources for that opinion? That's what I would think also but I'm looking for more sources. For example, people that have been penalized or official Matt Cutts article or a study on several top 10s by a big name like seomoz or something like that.
Thanks a lot for your answers.
-
Hey there
If you had 10 individual websites with completely unique content that did not link together and each one offered a unique value, it could happen.
The unique value factor is key here - does each website not only have unique content on the matter, but also a new theme, style and way of portraying the message? If they do, I could see it happening.
But even then, I can't imagine Google would be happy if they found out all the sites belonged to one webmaster. It would take a manual review, but even if the WMT information was different, site themes were different, who.is registrar was different, backlink profile was different - basically everything was different, if they suspected it was the same person behind it all they would simply deindex the sites.
Hey, it's their search engine. We have quality guidelines and ideas of what we can or cannot do, but at the end of it there is a manual team who can penalise who they choose. This is a situation where I can imagine they would.
It's worth mentioning that I have seen a top 10 where 10 different websites which fell under one subsidiary trading name ranked for a pretty commercial keyword. So yes, it's possible.
Also worth pointing out is that 9/10 of those sites are now nowhere to be found.
-
Hi there,
This is a blackhat technique known as "Page Stuffing" it's probably not as easy to do these days due to Panda and Penguin, but the technique would involve ranking for one page (say a homepage) for a certain keyword and then duplicating the content so that each page would rank, pushing the competition down by up to 10 ranks so that one website is flooded for a certain search term.
Luckily, crawlers can now determine if a page is duplicated and just won't rank it and Google will penalize the offender.
Hope this helps.
Tom
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
-
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Which one is better?
We are creating a new website and got stuck while deciding the URL structure. Our concern is which url is better in terms of SEO i.e. pune.fabogo.com/spa or fabogo.com/pune/spa and why. Also which one would rank faster if someone searches for spas in pune if both pages are same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
Linking to one of my own sites, from my site
Hi experts, I own a site for castingjobs (Site1) and a site for selling paintings (Site2). In a long time, I've had a link at the bottom of Site1, linking to Site 2. (Basicaly: Partnerlink: Link site 2). Site1 is for me the the only important site, since it's where Im making my monthly revenue. I added the link like 5 years ago or so, to try to boost site 2. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
1. Is it somehow bad for SEO for site 1, since the two sites have nothing to do with each other, they are basically just owned by me.
2. Would it make sense to link from Site 2 to Site 1 indstead?0 -
Content position and topic modelling
Hi, Two questions here, First: Does the position of content have any impact on performance? For example say a page displays a league table (20 rows) so eats up most of the above-fold space. Would that table being top followed by content have a negative impact? Would creating 'some' content before a table help? Second: Does topic modelling actually help relevance signals? So say I sold guitars and the page had the word 'guitar' throughout the content, would including electric, acoustic, strings, amps etc also in the content help the page become more relevant for the term 'guitar'? Or would it just expand the terms the page would be eligible to show for? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk1 -
Merging two existing company sites into one
Hi Moz community, I have recently started a new job for a Fire & Security company in the UK to help with their non existent SEO efforts. Currently they have two separate websites. One of the websites is for their services and the other website is for their eCommerce store selling fire alarm equipment etc. The eCommerce store is higher up in the SERPs and overall has a lot more links. It also uses a better branded domain name. As I have never attempted such a project I have a few questions. The current eCommerce store is hosted and maintained by another web company which uses their bespoke CMS. What I want to do is take the service website and merge it with the ecommerce domain, however the service site runs on wordpress, which I want to continue for its flexibility. The service page wants to be the new homepage with a link on it to go to the store. I just cant get my head around the whole operation so if anyone could give me some advice to point me in the right direction that would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNichol0 -
Keyword cannibalization
I ran the SEOMoz onpage diagnostic, and i got an alert for keyword cannibalization. My taxonomy is: www.mysite.com www.mysite.com/category (category page) www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword (supporting page) Links will be exact match in the primary navigation. www.mysite.com anchor text "category" => www.mysite.com/category www.mysite.com anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword www.mysite.com/category anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword and example would be /IT-support linking with anchor text "IT Support Servers" => /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers I'm not going to have a cannibalization problem, am I?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
High search volume keywords
The problem is that our index is not in serps anymore with the high volume keywords (Pfizer, Roche, johnson & johnson).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele
We still keep these keywords in title, but it brings not much results. We made page www.domain.com/pfizer , added there Pfizer products with unique descriptions.
Product pages started to drive visitors, but not the www.domain.com/pfizer page. If we add a blog to the top of this page and add unique posts about Pfizer company news, would it help?
In this case this page would be unique, refreshed with new info, and have rotating pfizer products. Maybe some other suggestions?0 -
Link with keyword or name of the company
hi sorry I am getting links from a prominent site. I would love to know what are your though. use the name of the company as the anchor text or the Keword? does the new world of SEO like keyword anchor or not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciznerguy0