My competitor's sneaky link building technique
-
Hi,
I can't figure out how my competitor seems to fit four invisible nav menus into her home page. If you view her page source and type "/about" for example, it shows five examples of the text linking to her "about" page. But four of them can't be located on the web page (they are hidden). How does she do this? She basically has four duplicate links that are counted for SEO but can't be seen on the webpage.
address: http:// camilla peffer.com. au/
Any ideas?
-
As I understand it, Google only counts a link the first time it encounters it on a page, so if she's linking to the About page 5x from the same page, then only the first one counts and the other four are ignored. So I'm not sure I see the point in hiding those four other links unless it was somehow accidental or she's getting some really bad advice somewhere.
-
Yeah, I just figured it out as you replied. Thanks for the follow up.
-
adding the nav in to separate div and hid it accordingly... this is simple any developer will be able to do that!
But again, my recommendation is not to try this at all!!
-
Thanks for the answers EGOL and Moosa.
Moosa, out of interest, how is she doing it? I will take your advice and not worry about it. But how can she have four nav menus that aren't displayed on the website?
-
How is she hiding this is an easy part but if I would be at her place I won’t do that and this is because Google don’t like displaying different page to user and a different version to search engine bot. To me this is kind of gray hat.
If she is ranking at the moment she might not rank for a longer period of time and you will see a drop soon (may be in the next update).
I will highly recommend displaying the same version of the page to users as well as to search engine bots this way you become more transparent and you will see Google will lift up your rankings…soon!
Let’s wait and hope the Google to do justice a little sooner J.
Hope this helps!
-
Nah... I bet a month's pay that isn't it.
-
Argh.. I know, but that it is the reason she is no.1 in Google... double my links with half the page size. It's such an unfair advantage..
-
I can't figure out how my competitor seems to fit four invisible nav menus into her home page.
Putting invisible stuff into your pages is not a good idea. Google is well known for slappin' people down if they have stuff in their code that is not shown to visitors.
So, time spent trying to figure out "how your competitor is doing this" is better spent just chucklin' about it and getting straight back to the work of making a good website.
I rarely look at my competitors' code. I might do that for about ten seconds per year. I don't have enough time to make all of the content that I need. Its best to spend time on that.
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
-
Competitor ranks high, but how?
On our campaign, I have three local competitors which I like to keep an eye on. Two have been around for years but the other is pretty new. According to Moz, he has a Domain Authority of 1, has no backlinks and ranks lower on every keyword I keep track of. How then is he getting ahead of us for certain search terms? Can Moz not give any more information?
Competitive Research | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Why Won't Google Update My Title?
I have waited plenty of time. Google has cached several pages with the updated title placed in the <title>tags.<br /><br />However search results, continue to show otherwise.<br /><br />I read the following (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en)</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.</em></p> <p>The reason I want to change my title, is because there seems to be a relevancy issue (as pointed out my other community members here.) Google is having trouble recognizing understanding what our site is about.<br /><br />So instead of a title that reads, "Felix And Fingers: Dueling Pianos" (as Google continues to use) I prefer "Dueling Pianos - Felix And Fingers"<em> </em> I don't believe Google is recognizing us correctly as a dueling piano company.<em><br /></em>Google doesn't seem to like that. Any idea why or how I might go about getting this updated?</p></title>
Competitive Research | | osaka730 -
Competitors ranking in top three with worse SEO
Ok I am at a loss. Our client is trying to rank for keywords like "dental assistant programs utah", but they are still on the bottom of page 1/top of page 2. The guys in the top 3 have terrible SEO. No links, newer domains, etc. I looked into it extensively and learned about the "honeymoon period" people talk about but we are long past that. I've looked through webmaster tools to see if there are any issues, and I can't find a thing. Anyone have an idea of what we could be doing wrong that is making us be put down so far on the page? Before I got here the SEO guys were doing older tactics which I think was starting to hurt them with penguin and what not so I tried my best to delete the crap content and clean everything up on the website. thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it.
Competitive Research | | boyackp0 -
In my competitive campigans have less ranking and points according to your analysis, how can i form external links or large links ???
in my competitive campigans have less ranking and points according to your analysis, how can i form external links or large links ???
Competitive Research | | bullionguru0 -
Internal linking structure
Hello, Is there a way to see the most anchor text of a sites internal linking structure, that is not mine. For example how many times a competitor used the anchor text "door" on their site. Not external links though, just the internal ones. Thank you, Ada
Competitive Research | | digitalops0 -
Why do you think this site can't reach a better ranking?
Hello, My name is Pablo Lagos. We have a hosting company in Chile since 2006. All the time we have been ranked in the first page for the keyword "hosting" in google.cl. Some years ago, we used to be on the first 3 results. Since the last year our site went down to 7 and higher places no matter we do. When I run the link analysis, we have the highest punctuation in all items. I would really appreciate your comments. The site is in spanish: www.ilihost.cl Thanks.
Competitive Research | | pabloandres0 -
Should I link to this site or is it too spammy?
Hi all, I've been asked if I want to exchange links with http://www.myteetimesonline.com/ and I'm tempted but fearful that its link profile looks spammy. What do you guys think? I'm basically starting from scratch with my own site http://www.golfgear4you.com and have a Page Rank 0 and Domain authority 32. The guys that want to link to me are Page Rank 3 but Domain authority 35. Their content would be of interest to my site's users and vice versa but my biggest concern is their link profile looks awful because the sites that link to them don't appear to be very relevant. I've done a lot of reading on this and have found the resources on this site to be a goldmine. The generally message is avoid easy links to spammy sites because they could hurt credibility. I just want to check I've actually learnt something and my instincts about this site are correct. i.e leave it alone!! Thanks, Andy
Competitive Research | | getzen560 -
50,000 Links From The Same Website
Hey Mozers, I was conducting competitive research for a client of mine and I discovered one of their competitors has over 50,000 backlinks! After removing my heart from my stomach I realized that 99.9% of the links came from a single website that doesn't have nearly that many pages. Has anyone experienced this in the past? And if so what exactly is going on? C
Competitive Research | | calindaniel0