New domain ranking higher. Looks like spam backlinks.

[freebetinfo]

A new site has appeared in our industry, and has taken the number 1 spot that we had for some time (years), in addition to some other great rankings above us for good keywords.

The site to my eyes is no better than ours, but what it does have is lots of links from different root domains.

However these root domains are spam, as far as I can see. You know the type, nonsensical blog comments, even links in nonsensical content on other sites. You couldn't make any sense out of the text if you tried.

I think this is the reason this site is ranked above ours now. His domain and pages have higher mozTrust and mozRank already, despite it being a brand new site.

I realise the importance of incoming links, especially from different, good quality individual domains, but my question is, do we join him by getting spammy links everywhere?

[freebetinfo]

Thanks for your help Alan!

[AlanMosley]

with duplicate content, rather then beiong penanlized, it is more lilkly that you will just not get credit for both. But witch one will get the credit www or non www. To make sure of this you need to 301

you have links in your site pointing to images that use both www and non www. so search engines will follow them as if the are going to a new site. only being images may not be so harmfull. but lets say some one links to you, but use non www, then your www rankings will not benifit. futhermore the SE' will then crawl the rest of the site and then you now have a problem site wide.

buy the way even useing uppercase and lower case is seem as 2 different urls.

I see you 301 is in place, but you need to find all the refs to the non www and fix them

[freebetinfo]

Ah, ok thanks Alan. I've added that into the htaccess now.

Do you think that will make much difference? You say they rank as different sites, but I've never seen them both (www and non-www) in the same list? Presumably then that would be because they are somehow being penalised for duplication...

[AlanMosley]

Yes thats one factor, but SE's see www and non www as different sites. Your rank is split between the 2. if you 301 one to the other then you merge any rank they have into the one domain.

[freebetinfo]

Thanks for your advice Alan. I don't actually want to copy them as I have always believed doing the "correct" thing will work in the long term.

I've always thought to myself "if Google were watching me right now, would they approve of doing this" and if the answer were no, then it's not a good thing to do.

Regards the www, why is this an important issue? Is it regards "duplicate" content?

[AlanMosley]

I once was temped to get cheap links, and yes it worked for a time. i have about 200 links each for about 4 sites, over a few months they all dispapeared.

I did notice that your site is accessable via www and non www.

If you fix that with a 301 you may get the boost you need.

[freebetinfo]

It's in Google. It's annoying because it's clearly nonsense linking.

The reason I asked is because I know they "might" discount the links, but I've no idea if they will, or how long it will take. In the meantime we're stuck with losing revenue and having no idea whether to fight fire with fire.

I'd love to be able to go out and get decent one-way links from other sites, but in this industry and with what we do, that's just, well it's not possible to be honest...

[AlanMosley]

In google or bing?

I assume google, they will eventualy discount the links, Maybe