Blog farm?
-
One of our clients has recently been approached by a competitor regarding a Link building service and SEO and as part of this they have supplied example sites that they "contact" to post articles that contain a link or links back to our client site. When we researched these sites we found that the sites did in fact have a good Domain Authority but the content was extremley dubious and the links were often forced into the articles in unnatural context. We also found that the Author page of these sites often had a similar URLs but the display names were changed. On the face of it these article sites look like a good idea and to an untrained eye they could appear good value. In fact they could be passing good value and may in fact work. I have found around 150 sites that i think share simialr traits but i gave up and I am sure there are many more.
My opinion is that this looks like a large farm of blogs that are utilising similar templates and author set up. I am just looking for any experience/thoughts on how to look at this. My feeling is that i dont want to be in anyway recommending this as a service yet my client may think that this is good value. Any experiences shared would be great.
thanks in advance for any comments.
-
Yep, they are not patient.
They need to consider that they are arriving at the battle 5, 10, 15 or 20 years late. Existing websites have been working all of that time and Google will not push them aside in favor of a noob who has invested very little in comparison.
If they want to see results they need to invest enough to become competitive. It's no different than me deciding that I am going to challenge Anthony Joshua and expect to step into the ring with him after three months of work.
-
Yeah...I agree. It is sad that people feel the need to contribute in this manner. It really doesnt help anyone in the long term. Good quality content (and the reputation to go with it) is always the way forward but can often be a longer game and people are not very patient.
-
If all it takes is for you to "submit an article" to get something published then those sites are going to fill up with crap in a hurry. After they fill up with crap their links will become poison and you will have an unnatural links problem.
We have sites with a lot of content and people are constantly writing to "get an article published". At first we received so much absolute crap that a lot of time was wasted. It didn't slow down until we started requiring an resume that clearly shows significant education and/or experience related to the submitted content, links to previously published content, and a face slapping bullet point that we don't accept linkbuilder content.
Now we don't get a lot of content offers but what is offered is mostly from educated and experienced people who simply want to get a message out and obtaining a link to their website is not a consideration. Still a few linkbuilder types will try to fake or argue or weasel their way in. These are much easier to reject than the ones that we get from certified crackpots who submit high quality authorship that is too far on the fringe of our topics.
-
Thanks for your response. I suppose this is a common issue. It is much easier to sell a magical quick fix instead of long term vision. Unfortunatley uneducated people desire that short term, minimal effort apporach and dont care until they find out it doesnt work or makes things worse. This is especially true when sold to them by an uneducated sales person (usually following a script)
-
Hi there
The best advice I can give here is if it doesn't feel natural or right, then it's more than likely not. Advise your client the best you can and arm yourself with as much information about the sites / the possible repercussions of taking this route as possible. At the end of the day, your job is to guide your client as best as you can and let them make an educated decision.
Last note, based on experience, Google hates link farms / link schemes. If these pages / sites have the scent of that, I'd steer clear.
Hope this helps, good luck!
P
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
-
Good alternative to guest blogging
Hi, After many years of on-page I've just started in the world of link building and I'm currently working on an e-commerce website. I've noticed that most blogs devoted to this sector that are worth their salt will only accept guest blog requests for payment. So here's the question, is there any way to circumvent this? Is there any other way to achieve the same results I would with guest blogging without having to pay for it? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | AaronGro0 -
The better my blog gets, the lower my rankings!
My blog was hit by Google Panda on July 21. My rankings dropped dramatically overnight. Nothing I do is helping. In fact, the day my guest post was published on one of the biggest blogs in my niche (DA over 70) my Google impressions dropped to an all time low and then got worse. (250 impressions and 12 clicks) You can see the first drop and the second drop in these screenshots and yes Google Webmasters and Google Analytics match. http://tinypic.com/r/2dvtvlj/5 http://tinypic.com/r/4u83t4/5 I am getting more fans, subscribers, traffic etc but my Google traffic just gets worse. I would really like to get some organic traffic! But I have no idea why this is happening. I checked manual actions and there is nothing. I cleaned up crawl errors and duplicate content. I get several backlinks a week within my niche from high authority sites. I just don't get it and I am very discouraged. What should I do?
Link Building | | 2bloggers0 -
What are the best guest blog sites around?
Im not talking outreach software or anything like that but more along the same lines of myblogguest. Id like to know which ones you have actually used and your opinion, there are tons of them out there but most are spammy cr+p
Link Building | | therealmarkhall0 -
How to make a Blog for SEO?
I just create blog then review my product in my post with put the keyword and link back to my product. So if you have more detail please tell me and strategy. I would like to see case study. Sometime I read some blog I just know but I can not implement that for successful.
Link Building | | taradmkt0 -
Blog Commenting - Useful?
How useful are you finding blog commenting to be regarding link building? I was having a discussion with someone about this today, and I thought some input from the Moz community may be helpful. How helpful do you find blog commenting to be in link building? Do you have any evidence of effectiveness/ineffectiveness? Is it something you still currently do (for link building)? Any input is appreciated. Thanks guys!
Link Building | | DeliaAssociates0 -
I started my hungarian Seo blog :-)
http://www.seoblogger.hu/ Give me advice please 🙂 How many articles should I write each week? How many link should I build / month? What can I do to make better position in Google? I just have started my hungarian seo blog and seems very positive. Thanks, Misi
Link Building | | Netkreativ0 -
Techniques for Finding Blogs that Accept Guest Blog Posts
I'm running into an issue where we are having difficulty finding blogs that accept guest blog posts after doing this on 300 or so blogs. We usually Google "guest post" related keywords with "blog" or take blogs off of lists of sites that accept guest blog posts. What techniques do you recommend? Do any of you use myblogguest.com with any success?
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw1 -
Free link on a Paid Link Blog
Hi there, I have been doing some outreaching, and managed to have a blog post accepted on a authority blog. They included links to my website, and I was very pleased with the placement. However, having browsed through the site, I was worried to see that they openly admit they allow 'reviews' of websites, with backlinks included, for $50 per review. I am worried I might be penalised without actually doing anything wrong. I did not pay for my link, but the link has been placed on a site which openly admits they accept payment for links. Should I be worried? Should I ask them to take it down? To date I have been told countless times by bloggers I am outreaching that if I pay $10, $50, $100 etc I can write a blog post. I have never accepted because of the risk of penalization. Now, unwittingly, I am linked to from a paid link site with a blog post that would look like I have paid for it because of the placement and style of back link. What do you think? Thanks,
Link Building | | giveacar0