Questionable backlinks...
-
One of our competitors (who are ranking top spot ) have this trend of building backlinks from websites build for the sole purpose of seo. (see example) When you see the website it's just a submission of articles from different companies trying to rank for a certain keyword most of the time poorly written.
Our competitor seems to be doing this a lot...
What do you guys think, is it just a matter of time before Google cracks down on them or is this technique actually working for them? (even though it's rather grey hat) Or... could it be someone trying to build "poor" backlinks to them in an attempt to push them of the Google throne -
I agree the strategy is ill-conceived. Either it was executed by an incompetent company, or one that is into "churn and burn" tactics. By the time Google catches on, it will have moved on to the next client.
-
I'm not to worried about the timing of the penalty just rather curious about their strategy and even after all Google's attempts to stamp out this style of SEO it looks like many are still practising it. I think it's interesting to see that sometimes these methods can still deliver results although they are probably juggling a ticking time bomb
-
I realise the links might be disavowed but they are very fresh so it looks like recent work. I also think the SEO company put their own details on the first link i supplied... maybe their client doesn't even know this is going on
-
Just a little note to add to the other comments...
Doing backlink analysis on competitors is very tricky nowadays thanks to the disavow tool. For all you know, your competitor has disavowed these links and Google is no longer counting them which would explain why they are still ranking so well.
The example website you supplied is undoubtedly paid for posts and as they are not no-followed, the website is not going to be passing any benefits to those linking from the website.
-
You can gather a list of domains and backlinks to this site that you think are spam and influencing this site's rankings unnaturally and then submit a spam report. This can help to speed up the process.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1
-
You could do a whois lookup for clues that the sites are run by the same SEO company (or at least people trying to cover their tracks.) But what's the point?
As a former editor, I can tell just be reading the articles that they were likely written by the same semi-literate person. I'd even speculate the author is not a native English speaker. That said, it's clear the articles were written by a human in some semblance of English.
So it may take Google longer to spot that articles that it would for spun or computer-generated articles. That said, there are big problems with articles. These include low word counts on very thin sites. The Google algo is good at catching this -- eventually.
I'm guessing you're in the same situation I was. A competitor hired a sleazy SEO company. The SEO company used three techniques:
- links from article directories
- links from once-legit sites it had acquired and corrupted
- links from sites it had created itself
In all, there were more than 100 links from crappy articles. Eventually all but 3 were devalued. But it took almost a year.
As I said below, there is not much you can do beyond focussing on what you can control: your own SEO efforts.
You could submit a spam report to Google. But short of criminal misconduct (my rival hacked my site and here is the police report) Google will almost certainly not take individual, manual action against your competitor. It generally looks for abusive patterns and rolls the information into algo updates.
I understand your frustration. But my tough lough advice is:
Stop fretting about what your rival is doing and get down to work on your site.
-
Thanks for your thoughts on this guys, much appreciated! Here are some other websites used example 1 example 2 example 3 example 4 and there is more...
What are the chances of these websites al being run by the same seo company ?
Some of the articles are so bad i can't believe this stuff is still getting results!
It also looks like majority of the articles are pretty recent or do they just keep changing the dates?And is there a way to make Google catch on to these sites sooner?
-
I agree with the above: it's almost certainly just a matter of time before the smackdown comes.
The wait can be frustrating, though.
Been there, done that, waited it out -- and it took almost a year.
In the meantime, just focus on the nuts and bolts of on-page, while building quality content and backlinks.
What else can you do?
If it's any consultation, the smackdown can be huge and sudden. When it finally comes.
-
Hi Immanuel,
While I can't comment on the site in question and their backlink profile because you haIt ven't shared it, what I can tell you is a bit more information about weekendpost, the site you did share as one of the sites in this company's backlink profile. Looking at a random site with articles built for link building purposes, it is pretty rare that you find a site like this with a PR of 5 in this day and age. Many of these were smacked by Google in the various updates and penalties, with public PR often reduced as a public indication of this site's devaluation. However, the site you shared has a toolbar PR of 5 and a homepage authority of 57, clearly a stronger site than your usual hastily built article spam site.
Looking closer into the history of the site using the Wayback Machine, you can see that this site was once an actual legitimate site and source of weekend news. It started accruing links in 2011, and this is where much of the site's strength comes from. At some point the domain was likely dropped and picked up and converted to an article site for links. Whois further signifies that there was a change in registration of the site with 1 drop.
Do I think Google will eventually catch up with this site and devalue its links if they haven't already? Certainly. But in the short term, links from this site may be boosting up other sites. I don't think this is a good long term solution, but I can see the benefit from links from a strong site (according to metrics at least) like this in the short term.
Mark
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
-
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
Building backlinks in a very niche industry, what to do when squeezed between brick walls?
So I have a site that operates in a very niche industry, reading all I can about building backlink, I've come out of the walls of text with a few tidbits, however they're not very helpful still, since the playing field is so small. Looking at manufacturer's sites, finding broken links or typos even, pointing them out in hopes for backlinks only goes so far. Guest blogging seems to have reached it's climax and is slowly rounding the toilet. They're active in social media, but due to the niche market, a few likes is the best that can happen. So most efforts these days are around creating helpful resources for users related to the products they sell. What other ways would you suggest looking into for building meaningful backlinks with other sites? In these niche markets, it seems very daunting to say the least, while competitors use their own sister sites for some backlinks, this site doesn't have any sister sites. What has been some beneficial backlink tactics you've employed for niche market sites?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Red Square SEO Backlinking Service. Does Anyone Have Any FeedBack On Them?
Ive done quite a bit of research and I'm strongly considering using a back linking service to speed up my rankings. The one I found to be the best is Red Square SEO, do any of you guys have any feedback on them? Heres their website. http://www.redsquareseo.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Voltron0 -
How did I get over 1000 backlinks in less then a month? help?
Hi Guys I'm a newbie and just started my website, im wondering if im reading this correctly, i use a tool called my seo tools and its telling me my website zenory.co.nz has over 1600 backlinks, this is scary since the site is only 5months old and i didn't see this till at least today and i check my sites backlinks on a regular basis. However when I check with moz it says I only have 2? I'm a little confused. Any advice here? Much appreciated Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Spamming Backlinks - doesn't seem to be detrimental enough?
Hi, We have noticed sites such as http://www.rattanfurnitureoutlet.co.uk & http://www.supremerattanfurniture.co.uk/ have huge numbers of what appear to be spam like and invaluable backlinks yet they have both maintained a great ranking for their search terms despite this. We would like to know why, does the good outweigh the bad so to speak?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | birdmarketing0 -
Spam backlinks
Hi there, through Open Site Explorer I've found 5838 links (across 1458 domains) with the anchor text 'new porn' pointing to a site I manage. Someone's been busy! Most (99.5%) appear to be created as Pingbacks with rel="nofollow" on them. As a precaution I submitted a file through the Google Disavow tool which has had the status "You successfully uploaded a disavow links file" for the last month. I'm wondering whether I should be concerned, or whether Google and other search engines will be clever enough to know this site is about electricity and not scantily clad people?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | originenergy0 -
Yet another Negative SEO attack question.
I need help reconciling two points of view on spammy links. On one hand, Google seems to say, "Don't build spammy links to your website - it will hurt your ranking." Of course, we've seen the consequences of this from the Penguin update, of those who built bad links got whacked. From the Penguin update, there was then lots of speculation of Negative SEO attacks. From this, Google is saying, "We're smart enough to detect a negative SEO attack.", i.e: http://youtu.be/HWJUU-g5U_I So, its seems like Google is saying, "Build spammy links to your website in an attempt to game rank, and you'll be penalized; build spammy links to a competitors website, and we'll detect it and not let it hurt them." Well, to me, it doesn't seem like Google can have it both ways, can they? Really, I don't understand why Competitor A doesn't just go to Fiverr and buy a boatload of crappy exact match anchor links to Competitor B in an attempt to hurt Competitor B. Sure, Competitor B can disavow those links, but that still takes time and effort. Furthermore, the analysis needed for an unsophisticated webmaster could be daunting. Your thoughts here? Can Google have their cake and eat it too?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Backlinks According to Google
Good Morning, Google has just recognized some links going to my site. I used a seo toolbar downloaded from firefox that informed me of the Links according to Google. My question is that them links have been there for ages and Google has only just recognized them. Is there a reason for this? Does Google only show links quarterly or half yearly? Thanks SEO_123
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TWPLC_seo0