If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?
-
I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new). I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices. The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc.
If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings? I would never know about it until it was too late. If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site?
Maybe I am missing something here.
Thanks for your input.
-
In short, don't worry about competitors hitting you with bad links unless you are using questionable link-building practices and bad content.
-
I think you should be less worried about competitors actually trying to sabotage you if that does happen and I’ m not saying I know your situation or pretend to it is a very serious matter. However unfortunately for all of us it is true Google is penalizing people for using anchor text that is the same as a keyword or keyword phrase. It frankly does not look natural and Google has a way of now discovering it here is a article that is brief but explains a lot http://www.search-placement.com/new-google-algorithm-update I think I speak for most of us when I say “hopefully just a phase and Google will grow out of it”
The way your site has been affected which I imagine is negatively by your post would be very hard for a competitor to do in less you allowed them to have your passwords things like that where they could really sabotage your work. I am not trying to scare you however if you do believe somebody is out to get you should maybe look into a password generator and make extremely hard passwords to break. That said I myself have competitors in many fields including this one but believe most people are good and will not do something as juvenile and illegal as try to hurt the competitors website frankly I would try to make mine better if I were in that position not waste my time hurting people. However look at your analytics I hope you have Google installed at least maybe you can catch a thief. I wish you all the best and I hope this it is not Google’s attempt to make us pay per a click. Just one thing you brought up white hat SEO’s say Google will penalize you for bad linking, buying social bookmarks and paying for links. All that is true they will penalize you for that if they know you are doing it you might want to look at the amount of links you are building make it look natural go for quality before quantity if you in the past have had links built by people who even did what was considered the best practice at the time put keywords in the anchor text you may be being punished by Google for that. The way who looks at this is any manipulation of their system is bad and a posh bowl offense and a possible offense. If Google had its way people would write their own content links would only appear naturally and no one would be able to optimize their off page SEO. I do not agree with googles ideas of what we should have to do but unfortunately they make the rules. check your website for links that look out of place. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you are not really dealing with somebody stupid enough to try and hurt your site as I imagine you use this for business and that would be a crime to harm your Business.
Sincerely,
Thomas
PS I want to go on record as agreeing with the other gentlemen that have answered your question.
-
Google has recently pushed out some advice in regards to this they have the following statement:
"Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449
-
Yeah, I heard Matt Cutts talking about this and his answer was "Google will discount those links and not count them" (or something similar to that affect) along with paid links.
I would also check out this post, this directly addresses your concern. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/lets-kill-the-%E2%80%9Cbad-inbound-links-can-get-your-site-penalized%E2%80%9D-myth/32426/
It would also depend on your current back link profile, if you have a bunch of poor quality / border line junk links and one of your competitors point a bunch or really bad links at you I can "imagine" (I don't know for sure, I have not tested this) you are going to take a hit in rankings.
Bottom line is, build good quality links and you should be golden
-
Thanks. This is how I hoped the internet would work.
I am not advocating any link spamming or unethical practices (I already learned my lesson once from Google and they don't ever forgive) but if I understand this correctly, there is really no penalty from say, buying 1000 backlinks. The only bad thing is that what little bit of value you might get would be short lived once big G catches on and is probably a waste of time and money in the long run. Is that about right?
-
You are thinking right. What would stop all the major brands to go out there and buy the "spammiest" links networks pointing to their competition. How does the competition prove they did not do it.
I think Google dealt with this years ago with the Miserable failure change.... here. They basically altered their algorithm to not give "too much" advantage of links/anchor text from all over the web. In a sense, they created the ability for their algorithm to discount the value of links, not penalize the website being linked to. Does that make sense ? I think what's happening now is not any different...they can and will continue to identify link spam, de-index link networks and manipulative techniques using pattern identification. But if not all, most cases, discount the value of those links...and not directly or not 100% penalize the site being linked to, because then technically a group of people/websites could run a mass campaign and kill any online business. That's not how the Internet is supposed to work...
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
-
Link building for a 'boring' eCommerce site
Hey all, I'm in need of some serious inspiration and I'm hoping one of you generous people can help. We're looking to do a spot of link building for an eCommerce site which I would describe (without putting it down too much) as 'boring'. This isn't our fault per se as the site sells printer cartridges and there's only a certain amount of excitement such a product can create. As a result natural linkbuilding is quite tricky, especially when it comes to creating links to anything other than our homepage. For the past couple of years we have focused on creating good content and indeed have a thriving database of hundreds of helpful articles and videos on the site. These are generating decent traffic (and rank #1 for many different help related search terms) but the problem with these articles is that they don’t convert in to sales at all well. I’m also conscious that it will ultimately end in us developing a link profile which would classify us as a printer repair resource rather than cartridge sales website. I have read numerous guides on Moz but they all tend to focus on products which are a little sexier than those that we sell. Getting someone to share and link to a truly unique product would be incredibly easy compared with asking someone to engage, share and link to the latest Epson cartridge. I started writing articles on some decent quality business blogs however the links given don’t look particularly natural and the link would always be to our homepage. We have the staff and the time but we built a whole host of rubbish links back before Penguin and I want to ensure that we are going to head in the right direction before embarking on something new. If you had a site which was really dull how would you devise a link building strategy that was relevant and, most importantly, natural? Thanks for your help. Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate1 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Should I work on links to a specific page or site in general?
Hi Guys, I'm trying to have my page rank better for "sell my car Houston". I'm about to start working on getting links to our site and my question is should I work on getting links to that specific page or would it be OK to just get links to the home page (same seo effect)? Specific page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com/pages/sell-my-car-in-houston-tx Home page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com Thanks! -Nash
Link Building | | nkabbara0 -
Do I get any link juice from a PHP header redirect from another site?
For example would: www.site-A.com/click-tracking.php?site=www.site-B.com contain any link juice? Would a 301 redirect be the simple solution?
Link Building | | David_Viciedo0 -
Can these unnatural links from a site that was hacked hurt me?
After reading the article http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 I decided to do some investigating to see if I to have suffered from link penalties. After using site explorer I found a ton of over optimized unnatural links from jnjbtw.com and other pharmacy sites. See screen shot: My site is a website about kayak fishing we clearly have nothing to do with pharmacy, doctors or drugs. I know similar questions have been asked before about spam sites linking to you and if they affect you or not but this is about how overly optimized the links that are going to my site are. Would this flag penguin to add a penalty to my website? Any idea how jnjbtw.com has all these links to my site were they hacked?
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
How do sites have so many 'total links'?
I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each. The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195. Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me. Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'. I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON. Am I missing something here? How do sites generate so many links? This seems nuts to me. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | TBiz0 -
What are the best back links for a review site?
This is specifically for reviews for web hosting or VOIP services. Very technical. Where should I look for sites to get backlinks from?
Link Building | | Aqua0 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0