I think competitors are trying to remove my links! Have you ever seen this?
-
Here is the email my sales rep received today (what can we do to combat this?):
From: Jaqueline carol [mailto:jaqueline-carol@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 12:57 AM
To:
Subject: I NEED your help - PLEASEHi,
Due to the latest GoogIe update we are working on cleaning up the links to our website . There fore we would like to kindly ask you to remove our link from your page.
link details:
URL:
We believe that it would help both sides to rank up higher in Google and not get penalized during the future Google updates.
Please remove my link at the earliest and notify me about the same.Thank you for your cooperation.
Best Regards,
Jaquelinecarol
-
Wow - I have received an email like that recently, and was surprised that the person emailing me would want to take his link down - but now it all makes sense. It was a competitor all along!
Talk about Negative/black-hat tactics!
-
The true method of "Negative SEO". Shady.
-
WOW! That's sheisty.
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
-
Inbound Linking
Hello, I manage a company that owns a bunch of schools (20) websites. They would like to create on each website a page which shows their schools in all the locations. Will this be ok as far as white hat practices and inbound linking?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brightvessel0 -
Do I lose link juice if I have a https site and someone links to me using http instead?
We have recently launched a https site which is getting some organic links some of which are using https and some are using http. Am I losing link juice on the ones linked using http even though I am redirecting or does Google view them the same way? As most people still use http naturally will it look strange to google if I contact anyone who has given us a link and ask them to change to https?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lisa-Devins0 -
Competitor link profile shocking - yet still out ranking!
Howdy fellow Mozzer's,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes
I have been doing some background seo checking on a competitor in my small "insurance niche" to try and see why they have recently shot up the listings and are now consistently out ranking us.
We have quality content on our site and have always taken an approach of trying to be whiter than white when it comes to developing out SEO plans. The site in question has recently moved ahead of us (along with some aggregators e.g. confused.com) possibly due to shifting patterns from possible algorithm changes favouring brand or could it be a case that Google has dropped a ball when it comes to checking back links as the competitors site is 99% linked to link farms, link submission sites, directories and lots of other spammy/poor quality sites. We do not feel they are doing anything from a content stand to justify their sudden propulsion up the ranks. I am reluctant to pursue dodgy tactics to help get out site back in position as I feel it could then contribute and hurt us down the line. Does anyone know how I can combat against their poor QUANTITY over QUALITY banklink profile that is surely helping them at the minute? At a bit of a loss so any help would be greatly appreciated. aRTu4cT0 -
Should I Disavow Links if there is No Manual Action
Hello, I just recently took on a client that had hired a very black hat seo and used their service for roughly two years. He outsourced link building and the link profile is full of spun articles and blog commenting on chinese websites etc… The anchor texts/pages used for all this spamming no longer rank, but there is no penalty in Webmaster tools manual actions. I was thinking about disavowing some of the obviously spammy backlinks that exist but would that be raising a red flag that could lead to a manual action and even more negative movement? Have you ever heard of anything like the situation i'm dealing with where its obvious the pages have been hit but there is no manual action? What do you all think/suggest? And Should I disavow some terrible links and potentially open a can of worms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Prime850 -
Site-wide links: Nofollow or eliminate altogether?
As a web developer, it's not uncommon for me to place a link in the footer of a website to give myself credit for the web design/development. I recently decided to go back and nofollow all these site-wide footer links, to avoid potentially looking spammy. I wanted to know if I should remove these links altogether, and just give myself text credit without a link at all? I would like for a potential client who is interested in my work to still be able to get to my site if they like my work - but I want to keep my link profile squeaky clean. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brad.s.knutson0 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0 -
Turn grey myself or rat on black hat competitors?
When being trashed by a less than white competitor what do you find most effective: lie down with your feet in the air considering a career in gardening? turn grey yourself? rat on them to Google? Phil
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Phil_1