Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
-
FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you?We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd.
So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab.
There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings)Their links are made up of:
- Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links
- Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc)
- Profile page links
- Low quality Press Release sites
- Classified ad sites
- Bookmarking sites
- Article Marketing sites
Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include:
- t-shirts
- sports news
- online marketing
- anti aging
- law
- christian guitars
- computers
- juke boxes
Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places.
So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them.
As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them!
So what steps would you take next?
-
Just an update.
Our site eventually returned to the 1st position for our main keyword.
The competitors site seems to have levelled out in position 9
There are other long tail terms we'd like to rank for that these are still dominating which I think is still a little crazy based on their link profile. I'd have expected them to have been hit a lot harder by Google?Thanks to all who contributed to this post so far, I will continue to watch and update this post should things change drastically.
-
Hi Adam,
I am really lucky and thankful that I am the owner here and don't have a board of directors.
If I was an employee and had a board of directors, I would tell them to imagine that we are driving on the highway and this guy is speeding. I would then tell them what might happen if we start speeding too... we could get a fine, we might have an accident, we might get there two minutes sooner.
If we speed with our domain we might get a ban, that would drop our revenue by $XXX,XXX per month, no traffic from Google, we could be down with that penalty indefinitely, if we speed, get above this guy for a couple of keywords that might increase our revenue by $xx,xxx per month.
So, based upon that analysis, I would not do anything about it. I would keep working on our website to make it better. THAT IS HOW I WOULD INCREASE OUR REVENUE. You will always be passed by occasional speeders, I don't think that we should chase every one of them. STAY FOCUSED ON OUR MISSION.
Then I would ask the board of directors, "What do you think we should do about it? Just let me know."
Getting philosophical here... If I had a board of directors who, in a situation like this, pointed at me like I am a kid in a school yard and saying "what are you going to do about it?"... I would have to respond by educating them first. If they responded well to education then I would be satisfied. But, if they persisted in the "what are you going to do about it" attitude then I would realize that I am working in a situation that does not suit me well.
-
Hi Egol, I understand why you responded with this.
However what if you have a board of directors asking you, why you have been over taken, what you're going to do about it and how long will it take?P.S. mine has been that they shouldn't be there for too long as they have used poor seo practice that Google "should" penalise them for. But I have to be honest, I am concerned that if they are still there in 3-6 months time, I'll look stupid.
-
Hey Adam,
This is not a surprising story. I am evident of such hundreds of cases. Have a look at case study where a company using same tactics ranking spot 2 for "SEO Services" in Google Australia: updatedseo.info/what-a-shame-penguin-2/
Still I strongly believe
- Your competitor is not going to stick for long. He will be washed out in next update which I am sensing very shortly
But I get surprised sometimes
- It is easy to build such links and get ranked for 2 or 3 months. Get hit and build another website and get ranked for next few months as well. Is it not hurting to companies that are doing right things from years and get outranked by such websites?
-
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you?
I pay zero attention to it. I keep working on my site.
-
My feeling is to wait them out if you can, and let the algorithm do its thing. If the competition's link profile is the way you describe it, then how long will the site last at the top of rankings? Not long, I would think. Time and time again, we see ranking spikes from low-quality links followed by monumental crashes. I even remember reading a study about this -- how algorithmic penalties are often preceded by impressive spikes in rankings.
In spite of the fact that we know these legacy forms of link building are dead, people are still doing them with gusto -- particularly offshore SEO practitioners, who are happy to make short-term money on short-term results. My guess is that your competitor knows little about SEO, read something about how important it is to have lots of links, and went out and hired the absolute cheapest SEO'er they could find, without having a clue about the business. I would imagine he has a big smile on his face right now, and he's telling people, "it's so easy to rank #1 on Google! All you have to do is pay someone a little bit of money to build a lot of links!"
I'm highly doubtful, however, that he'll remain in that spot.
-
I would wait, whilst sites like that may shoot up the the top of Google they tend to shoot down just as quickly. If you are really flustered you can report them to Google - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en
Make sure you are doing it all right (white hat) and you will out last them.
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
-
Canonicalize vs Link Juice
I recently wrote (but have not published) a very comprehensive original article for my new website (which has pretty much no domain authority). I've been talking to the publisher of a very high Domain Authority site and they are interested in publishing it. The article will include 2-3 follow backlinks to my website. My question is should I: Repost the article in my own site and then request a "rel=canonical" from the high authority site Not re-post the article on my own site and just collect the link juice from the high authority site Which would be better for my overall SEO? Assume in case 1) that the high authority site would add a rel=canonical if I asked for it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wlingke20 -
Competitor ranking well with duplicate content—what are my options?
A competitor is ranking #1 and #3 for a search term (see attached) by publishing two separate sites with the same content. They've modified the title of the page, and serve it in a different design, but are using their branded domain and a keyword-rich domain to gain multiple rankings. This has been going on for years, and I've always told myself that Google would eventually catch it with an algorithm update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Does anyone know of other options? It doesn't seem like this falls under any of the categories that Google lists on their web spam report page—is there any other way to get bring this up with the powers that be, or is it something that I just have to live with and hope that Google figures out some day? Any advice would help. Thanks! how_to_become_a_home_inspector_-_Google_Search_2015-01-15_18-45-06.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inxilpro0 -
Companies creating spammy links to charge money to delete them?
Hi all, Yesterday I was checking out ahrefs.com and realizing that one of our main competitors was getting new spammy links to its website from junk directories, rusian forums, porn sites etc. I found it to be weird but I thought that maybe they hired a black hat company without knowing it. Today I began finding the same type of spammy links pointing to our site. I'm completely sure we did not create them.I was checking out some of the new directory links and their listings consist of new pages including only our company's website and absolutely no descriptions. I did a little more research and find out that many of those new directories/listings belong to the same company ( seems to be located in Argentina, but I'm not sure). I also remembered paying that company long time ago to delete two links to our website that were included in their directories. I have to tell you, I'm completely out of my mind and I really don't know what to do. The two possibilities I can think about are: 1- A competitor has hired somebody to point spam to our site, to our other competitor, and may be some other competitors in the industry.(because as I tell you before our main competitor in the area is getting new spammy links too) 2- These black hat companies that own directories and other junk websites are pointing spam to us to get paid to remove links. Whether is #1 or #2 is getting out of control and I really don't know how to manage it (except from disvowing links as soon as I find them). I would appreciate suggestions/advise. Thanks. Ana
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anagentile0 -
Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage. A few ideas that were mentioned: HURT:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines. HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose. So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.2 -
Is competitive analysis only for high level links now
Hello, Is finding backlinks through competitive analysis only for high quality links these days. It seems commonly thought that link building is dead. If the site with a link section in my industry has a DA below 35 should I leave it alone? Or what's safe and future (update) proof these days? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Secondary Domain Outranking Master Website
IEEE is a large professional association dedicated to serving engineers. The IEEE Web Presence is made up of flagship sites like IEEE.org, IEEEXplore, and IEEE Spectrum, mid-tier sites like Computer.org, and smaller sites like those dedicated to specific conferences. It is unclear exactly when this started - but searches in Google for [ieee] currently return ieeeusa.org before ieee.org. This is troublesome, as users are typically looking for IEEE.org with such a general query. ieeeusa.org is a site that has a much narrower focus - it is dedicated to public policy. IEEE.org is one of the strongest domains - I am thinking that this is a glitch of some sort. I am removing a stale sitemap that is referenced in robots.txt (though again, I'm not seeing any issues with other pages - its just two queries that are trouble: [ieee] and [about ieee]. And its noticeable in analytics 🙂 http://ieee.d.pr/hMg0/YhklCw7Z What do you think? 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegrif3290 -
Seo back linking proposal review
Hi guys, below is a proposal i received from someone on freelancer.com for some seo building. Is this really all it takes? Obviously done overtime but basically is this it aside from the usual basics onsite keywords, urls, artciles, content etc. This is a the proposal for $250 (some are cheaper but almost the same details as below). This is one of the top seo people on freelancers.com and they all have good reviews. Is this basically it? Shell out $100 bucks or more a month to someone who will just post stuff all over the internet. It just seems all very simple, what is $100 bucks a month to stay at #1. Is there any real questions i should ask to make sure i am not just throwing my money away? I would like to recommend the following services for attaining better search results for the website. 1)Press Release Submissions
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | topclass
2)Social bookmarking submissions
3)Drip Feed Article Links - 100 Article submissions everyday for 25 days
4)Article directory submissions
5)Link directory submissions
6)Blog Post Submissions(All Blogs have PR1 to PR6)
7)Wiki Page Submissions(.EDU and .GOV Sites Included) PR of the directories, social bookmarking websites, Blogs, wiki pages and Article directories are from PR0 to PR8.
Most of them are in the range of PR1 to PR4. If you are interested in the above services then these are the details about those services. 1)Press release Submissions - We will write 3 press release and submit them to 25 press release websites.
Submitting press release gets the news to Google news, Yahoo news etc..
Please note we even submit to Paid press release websites like PRBuzz, SBWire, pressdoc etc.. 2)Social Bookmarking submissions - I will also submit your website to 150 social bookmarking websites.
Here are the example of social bookmarking websites.
www.digg.com
www.furl.net
After we finish submitting to social bookmarking websites we will then create rss feeds with approved link URL's and ping them so that links get indexed. 3)Drip Feed Article submissions - We will be writing one article.
Everyday we will submitting the article to 100 different websites.
We will be submitting for 25 days.
100 submissions x 25 days = 2500 submissions.
In each article submissions we can use 2 links to the website. 4)Article directory submissions - We will write 5 articles.
Each article will be around 500 words.
Then we will submit them to 300 different article directories. That means 5 articles x 300 article directories = 1500 article submissions.
In each article we can use 2 links to the website.
1500 x 2 Links.
I have experience in submitting articles to article directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 1000 articles to article directories.
I will also create separate accounts with article directories wherever possible. 5)Link directory submissions - I have a list of 1300 directories.
I will submit your website to these directories.
I have experience in submitting to link directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 2500 websites.
All the submission work is done manually.
All these directories provide one way links. 6)Blog Post Submissions(700 PR1 to PR6 Blogs) - We will write 1 article.
we spin and post to 700 PR1 to PR5 blogs.
We can spin the article, title of article and links
You will be given a confirmation when complete, and a code to search backlinks in the search engines.
They are hosted on 650 different C Class IPs! 7)Wiki Page Submissions - Get 200+ wiki site contextual backlinks (3 per posted article) from a range of PR 0 to 8 wiki sites including over 30 US .EDU and US .GOV sites.
I will also ping Them.0 -
Advice on links after Penguin hit
Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls. Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links? In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count. We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again. Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop? As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile? If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xtopher660