Competitors black-hat link building?
-
Hi Mozzers,
<a>http://www.alivenetwork.com/ </a>is a close competitor of ours. They're ranking far better than us even though many of our search metrics are the same...except one! links!
To give you an idea, we've got a fairly large backlink profile for the industry with quality links.
34,981 links from 276 Root Domains = about 127 links/domain.Alive Network has 1,692,256 links from 705 root domains = about 2400 links/domain.
Surely that looks a bit black-hat right there? Is it just a matter of time until they're penalised? Perhaps they're just a bunch of domain-wide links? Thoughts would be appreciated.
-
You've made some great points here David!
I agree there is no way they built those links last month, that's for sure! And by no means did I mean to imply that waiting around for Google is only course of action. Just figured I'd share the link. It certainly can't hurt!
I like the point you made about risk tolerance. Risk vs Reward is all around us in business. I just feel that it could become a slippery slope in regards to following what we know is not best practices regarding website optimization.
Cheers!!
-
You may be waiting quite a while if you think Google will take care of this on its own. I guarantee they didn't build all those links in the last month, and what just came out 1 month ago? A Penguin refresh. And if they're still outranking you, it probably didn't hurt them.
Why don't you try the same tactics they're using? Obviously you should be more discreet about it, but it's clearly working for them and could work for you as well. Don't get stuck in that false mindset of white hat vs. black hat, there is no such thing. There are only levels of risk tolerance, just like in a million other aspects of business. Decide how much risk you're willing to take then build links appropriately.
-
If it is like that, google will catch them and drop them far away from the ranking.
I recommend you to do this:
Google your most important keywords.
Grab all the top 10 pages in the ranking.
Check the balance of the traffic using semrush.com, if you can see any big drop from traffic could be they have been penalised. In this case avoid them. If they have normal balance, go to https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ and check their backlinks.
Download your csv report.
Now choose the most important ones (with DA &PA) and try to replicate them.
Remind has to look natural, so you must go slowly.This way you dont have to wait the results of the first site.
Good luck.
-
OSE is telling me there are 1,200 links that are almost exclusively directory submissions. I imagine we'll see them drop out fairly soon?
-
Hmm... I feel like this scenario is all too familiar.
Have you tried reporting their site to Google? If not, I'd recommend doing so. This "may" prompt a manual review of their site and get them out of your way!
Best of luck on this!!
#TEAMNOSPAM
-
They have grown a lot since October. Can be seen from the growth curve. It seems that some tactics are wearing, if they have cheated we will see in a few months. Otherwise you could use opensiteexplorer.org to copy their strategy and replicate their backlinks.
-
Except that the bad links may have been disavowed in their GWMT.
-
They look like a bunch of directory links really...I'd be extremely surprised if it was possible for them to naturally build these links, they're a small-medium company.
Let's just wait and see to watch them drop out of the rankings then!
-
Hi
Have you analysed their link profile to see if it is indeed suspicious looking websites linking to it? Open site explorer is perfect for this.
If it is links which Google would consider bad it will only be a matter of time before they are caught. No one can beat the algorithms!
Regards
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
-
We are moving to HTTPS and wanted to know if our link building efforts were in vain or will the link juice pass to HTTPS?
We are switching to HTTPS and want to make sure the links we've gotten in the past will still transfer since they are pointing to HTTP? I'd hate to go back through and ask people to please add an s to the link.
Link Building | | bryant25560 -
Anchor text and internal link building very fast
Hey guys, I just posted an article about "Customer Success". After that, I searched in my blog all the articles that contains that keyword and then linked to this new article I want to rank. Is this a bad thing to do, linking all these articles (12) in a row? Also, is it a bad thing to use "Customer Success" as the anchor text for all the articles linking to this new article? I looked for this topic but couldn´t find any. Thanks
Link Building | | amirfariabr0 -
Track the links of your competitors?
What are the best tools to find the links gained on (monthly basis) by your competitors?
Link Building | | wellnesswooz0 -
Building links to reviews: Movies, Restaurants, etc
My site has lots of reviews: Movies, TV, Music, Restaurants, etc. I'm looking for sites that take critic reviews and link back to the critic's site. We're already on Metacritic.com and Rottentomatoes.com, which seems to be the two biggies for movies & tv. But I'm sure there are more out there. Also, I'd love to find sites for restaurant reviews (specifically in the Boston area). Are there any lists out there of sites like these? I'm NOT looking for UGC sites that allow user reviews. I'm looking for sites that accept professional critic reviews, preferably via some sort of automated feed. Thanks Mozzers!
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
Link Building Methods
Hi, If i hire a SEO company, what kind of links they will build for me. If anyone own a seo company can you let me know.My question is if i create a new website, what kind of link building techniques should i use other than, articles, press releases, social bookmarking, directories. As i am competiting with very tough competition. I have analyzed my competitors and they bought sitewides which are paid ones. Without paid ones i think it is is very hard for me to get into the competition. Can someone discuss more link building methods also. Awaiting for your responce. Regards.
Link Building | | Dex32320 -
How many nofollow links should we build to have a natural link profile
Hi guys, As with many link builders we have been building lots of dofollow links for our site, so many that mainly our incoming links are dofollow. Some pages have 99.5% dofollow external links which I know is not very natural. In your experience in terms of percentage how much should you have in terms of nofollow external links in your link profile. I noticed SEOMoz has about 12-13% nofollow external links, shall I go with this figure? Thanks guys. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
Link Building Strategy - Please Give Feedback
Hi, I"m moving forward with link building for nlpca(dot)com and here's my plan I know my industry, keywords, and this site very well so I'll start by: Analyze Top content for top 10 competitors and see where the links are currently going. I'm assuming a competitor is someone similar to me and not sites like wikipedia in this case Make a spreadsheet for all of the worthwhile links that I find by using OSE and the top 10 competitors, places where if we're good enough we can get a link on that page. See what they're linking to Use (1) and (2) to discover what stelllar targeted content to build Use infographics, a blog, and articles to build targeted content to request a link from the people in (2) building out facebook, twitter, and Google +1 for the site is coming too. Your thoughts? I'm completely open to improvements via feedback.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
What are some of your best tips, strategies or resources for link building?
I currently work for a contract manufacturing company so when I think about building links it seems as if it's going to be a daunting task. Mainly because any kind of content that you can come up with is rather dry. When I go about searching for links I usually run into a lot of directories that charge anywhere between $25-$50 for a listing. I've had a hard time convincing marketing that we should start a blog which may be a good way to build some links if we come up with quality posts but those posts may be few and far inbetween. Does anybody have any recommendations for building links for this type of company or subject matter? Also, and I'm sure we have all heard this. When I mentioned the fact that we should be building some quality links to the site marketing first asked why and then commented "Well that shouldn't take you too long". Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
Link Building | | TRICORSystems0