What Would You Do in This Situation?
-
In doing competitive research, I've found a lot of competitors to my clients that take part in link exchanges. When using open site explorer, I'm see a ton of competitors that get links from blogs that are supposed to be niche blogs (like blogs about lotions, shoes etc...), but the articles are about random things like "best family dentistry" with keyword matching links in the content. When I find these link exchanges (I call them link exchanges, because it looks like these fake niche blogs are juicing a handful of the same websites), is there any appropriate steps to take, or should I just ignore them, and move on?
-
Thanks for the responses everyone! I will look away and stay focused on helping my clients.
-
Agree with the previous comments, and I know from personal experience how 'tempting' it can be especially when your competitors are using these to rank higher than you...
...but know that some day (probably not too far away) they'll be scrambling because the links are devalued and you will rise higher (and most importantly stay there)
-
Avoid them because eventually they will be penalized. Though it is frustrating to see a site elevated for unnatural reasons.
-
Avoid them like the plague. Concentrate on building some good linkable assets on your own site and go for niche sites yourself. Keep it clean and you will be the one with the longevity.
-Andy
-
Ignore them and move on, look at it this way. If your competitors get a penalty for all being in that link exchange they may all go down then your will laughing as you may become the top guy for that term. So it may pay off down the line to find better results if you feel the blogs are spammy etc.
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
-
Why Moz is showing Spam Score at my New Domain?
Hi folks I just registered a new domains boring magazine but I forgot to check the spam score. Recently, I checked and it showing spam score of 46% without any backlinks. You can check the domain age is 30 Days only till now. Need your recommendations on how can I reduce it and on which basis Moz showing it as spams? sp.PNG
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ImranZahidAli0 -
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
The Importance of Bold Keywords in SEO?
Hi all, Recently I came cross an RV lifestyle blog named RVing Trends. The website features high-quality contents about handy RV camping tips & guides, and in-depth RV product reviews. They seem to spend a lot of effort on the content quality. I've followed this website for a few months and can see they've been producing 3,000-5,000 word length contents regularly. One thing I notice is that they emphasize the main keyword as bold in almost the posts. You can check 1 sample here about RV mattress reviews. Just want to ask for your opinions about the efficiency of this technique and is the keyword density still important for blog content to rank well in Google. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TungNM1930 -
Inbound links to internal search with pharma spam anchor text. Negative seo attack
Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Do home page carry more seo benefit than other pages?
hi, i would like to include my kws in the URL and they are under 50 characters. is there anything in the algo that tells engines to give more importance to homepage?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | alan-shultis0 -
Is this considered duplicate content?
Hi Guys, We have a blog for our e-commerce store. We have a full-time in-house writer producing content. As part of our process, we do content briefs, and as part of the brief we analyze competing pieces of content existing on the web. Most of the time, the sources are large publications (i.e HGTV, elledecor, apartmenttherapy, Housebeautiful, NY Times, etc.). The analysis is basically a summary/breakdown of the article, and is sometimes 2-3 paragraphs long for longer pieces of content. The competing content analysis is used to create an outline of our article, and incorporates most important details/facts from competing pieces, but not all. Most of our articles run 1500-3000 words. Here are the questions: NOTE: the summaries are written by us, and not copied/pasted from other websites. Would it be considered duplicate content, or bad SEO practice, if we list sources/links we used at the bottom of our blog post, with the summary from our content brief? Could this be beneficial as far as SEO? If we do this, should be nofollow the links, or use regular dofollow links? For example: For your convenience, here are some articles we found helpful, along with brief summaries: <summary>I want to use as much of the content that we have spent time on. TIA</summary>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kekepeche1 -
I redesigned a clients website and there is a pretty massive drop in traffic - despite my efforts to significantly improve SEO.
Hi there, I redesigned a clients website that was very old fashioned and was not responsive. I implemented 301 redirects, kept the content pretty similar, website linking structure very similar - the only things i changed was making the website responsive, improved title tags, added a bit more information, improved the footer and h1 tags etc.. however although clicks are fairly similar search impressions have dropped about 60% on average over the past week. The old site had some keywords linking to pages with no new content so i removed those as seemed like black hat seo tricks and also there was a huge list of "locations we deliver to" on the homepage followed by around 500 citys/towns I removed this. Could this be the cause for the drop? as i assumed those would do more harm than good? Fairly new with SEO as you can probably tell. Looking for advice on what may be the cause and what steps I should take now. Thanks for reading! duGeW
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binkez321 -
Link Building vs. Straight Earning Links Discussion
Hello, I'd like to start a discussion on link building outreach techniques vs. just building a good website with good 10X content. I don't like to receive unsolicited emails in my inbox, so why should the people in my industry? Also, I've seen plenty of evidence of 10X content soaring without link building outreach. But link building isn't dead of course, so can you tell me your personal experiences either way and the ethics of what you do? I especially want to hear if you've had luck with just building good websites and being successful based on the content itself, but an open discussion of either side is welcome. Leaning towards just building good websites and letting the Google algo do it's thing. Would love to hear your experiences either way. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW3