Competitor seo

[MikeShreeve]

This might be a really obvious question but... If building bad links (spam links) negatively impacts and even sometimes draws penalties, what is there to prevent others from building links like to my site to try and strip me of my rankings (like from my competitors)? I ran a quick link analysis and noticed a bunch of spam links pointing to my site the other day. I haven't been affected yet but it was only like two days ago that I saw those. Just curious. Is hostile seo going to be an emerging trend? If so it will be a really easy job. Just go to fiverr and buy 20 bucks worth of links...

[Copstead]

Based on the industry or competition and the value of top rankings, I would be worried that a site could implement bad link building for competitor sites along with their normal good link building practice for their website.  The goal is to get to the top spot.

[Dr-Pete]

I think the reason that it doesn't happen more often isn't so much that it can't work, but that:

(1) Doing it right takes a lot of time, money, and skill. If you don't want to leave a trail, it takes even more. Usually, the money is better spent elsewhere.

(2) It usually doesn't work. So, you're betting a lot on a small chance.

(3) Whether or not it works long-term, building links to your competitor will almost always give them a short-term ranking boost. So, it's not just time and money - it's likely to backfire.

Here's an analogy I just made up - let's say I don't like you, and I want to get you into trouble (for example - I don't actually dislike you ). I craft a plan to stuff your pockets full of counterfeit bills at the airport. IF TSA checks your pockets and IF they notice the money is counterfeit (two big ifs), you could go to jail. In the 99% likely chance they don't notice, though, I just gave my sworn enemy a few-hundred bucks. That's basically (3).

[MikeShreeve]

Very helpful info thanks! Not to delve into the dark side of the force, but if it was possible to knock somebody off for even a few days or weeks there are some companies that could really suffer. It sounds, however, like you are talking about reason #356473 for why building "good" links are so important. (not that we needed any more) Thanks, Mike

[MRCSearch]

If I had more than just a few datapoints, I'd offer them up. To really prove something like this though you'd almost need to do a controlled study. And because there'd be some seriously qualitative judgments made, data alone couldn't prove the point.

[MikeShreeve]

Very interesting. This would be a very interesting post to read if someone was able to get some decent data. Only thing is, who is gonna give up rankings for some data?

[Dr-Pete]

It's really tough to prove, but I've seen 2 cases in the past few months where I'm pretty sure this tactic did work for a while. As other commenters have said, it's rare and Google generally won't penalize you for a few spammy links or an obvious attack, but it's not impossible.

I think it depends a lot on your base profile and authority, too. If you've got a solid set of links and decent trust, it's very tough for a competitor to just hit you with a few bad links and cause problems. If you're borderline and have been pushing the limits, a big influx of spammy links could push you over the edge. I've had SEOs actually suggest this tactic to me.

Typically, these efforts are half-assed, for lack of a better word. It's good to monitor and be aware of the problem, but you'll often find these are low-quality links that just get devalued, and the competitor stops building them after a couple of days. In that case, you're 98%+ likely to be fine. If you see a concerted effort, though, over a period of time, you may want to dig deeper.

[JonathanSmith]

I've noticed that practice with one of my clients however although their was a very brief glitch in their rankings it soon returned to normal. I'd have to agree with Brent that they would need to create a huge number of links that swamp your links to really make any long term difference, and if they are prepared to do that they would be better off spending the time focusing on building quality links for their own site / client.

[Copstead]

It would have to be a significant amount of bad links coming in.  And this would have to be an ongoing practice from the competition to do something like this.

[Group16]

Well... if you build more junk links than quality links to your competitor they will eventually lose rank and there is not much they can do about that. It's really not that hard to game Google after all.

[seomasterbrasil]

Hello Michael,

Once I watched Rand talking about this, that maybe spam is not the worst thing that happens.

People sending bad links to you doesn't get your site in bad sheets!

Why? Because Google threats them giving a low value, like a nofollow link.

Exactly for this kind of anti-ethical things.

In fact, the competitor could be making for you a low value link building!

So you should concern about building good links, to make it right.

Check this really good Whiteboard Friday!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/im-being-outranked-by-a-spammer-whiteboard-friday

Hope it helped!

=]

[MRCSearch]

I believe the practice of pointing negative backlinks to a site has been in use for quite some time now. The prevalence has remained somewhat low, however, due to the relative difficulty of obtaining the quantity of links required to sufficiently negatively impact rank of a competitor. I've seen this practice used as a form of ORM to decrease rank of negative press.

As it gets easier to game this system, I'd anticipate Google making an algorithmic change to consider the sudden building of low-quality or spam-identified links. I'd expect that they'd be ignored rather than used to determine rank or quality.  How this would effect IP neighborhood metrics, however, I don't know.

While I can't substantiate anything meaningful with the data I've seen thusfar, I will go as far as to say I'm pretty sure Google already takes this into account on some level, negating any negative passed. Almost like automatically assigning a nofollow. It's just gut though.

[DavidKonigsberg]

Generally speaking if you have some sapm links it will not hurt you, google may just discount them. The only time it will hurt you in my opinion  is if that is the main tactic you are using and its in alot of links and your not doing quality work  as well.