How to do large scale linkbuilding in a quick and safe way?
-
Since 2 / 3 years I have been doing work a client of mine. I have been building a good reputation and also a lot of top 10 / top 5 positions for mayor keywords. Starting about 4 to 12 weeks ago the positions have been dropped some due to (very) new competitors. My questionnaire is this: The client had everything better, also when I use the SEOmoz analyses. The only difference now is; the new competitors have made massive links in very short time, that making 2 things: more links than my client and also beating my clients positions. These domains exist since 3 to 9 months. What I am trying to figger out is; 1. How do they make 250.000 links in this time? (safe and so quick) 2. How does only this effect the SERPs so much? 3. If they continue this, Will they keep climbing up or get à penalty? Love to hear some advice. Thanks,
-
Some resources to help formulate a competitive backlink analysis.
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/competitive-link-analysis-tips-whiteboard-friday
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-inside-look-at-competitors-backlinks-with-open-site-explorer
If you find that your competitor is building spam links, you may find that they drop back down in the SERPs fairly quickly.
On the other hand, you may find in your competitive analysis that they're actually brilliant marketers who have found an intelligent link building strategy that you're not using. This is where you have to put your detective hat on and ask "exactly how did they get this link?"
If it's a good link, then you might want to replicate the strategy.
-
I agree with everyone here -- going through a similar situation with a client where a few competitors outrank because of domain and page authority...mostly from low quality links. My goal is to build up my client's link bait with good content, capture the good links his competitors have and let the rest work itself out over time.
Best thing you can do is show the client and explain in detail why it is happening.
-
You might see their short term gains, but they'll come back down to earth. I had something similar happen...competitor using pretty cheap, spammy methods built a lot of exact anchor text links....got them up short term, but about 2 months later, they plummeted.
Remain focused on your quality long term strategy and don't let this derail you. Sounds like they'll just run themselves into the ground.
-
In the very off chance that they are actually all quality links, or specifically, 'naturally-occurring' links, it's happening because of great content that they're putting out there. Then you want to be examining examining what type of content they're producing and then you're going to want to invest some resources into high quality content development. You should want to do that in any case.
-
Again, look at your competitor's backlinks in OSE. Filter it down to external links that are followed. It should list them in order of MozRank. Go through the list, and for each link see if it is spam or a good link that you could also acquire. If the former, ignore it, if the latter work on acquiring the link.
-
Thanks for the quick responses so far. This is mostly just confirming my suspicions. I will definitely file à spam report, even If it is not filed as spam by Google this has a chance of resolving the situation in an easy way. Takeshi, I am not sure where they got them all but i found several that are just worthless and only contributing to the link count (not qualities). However, what If the website HAS all quality links; What would you guys do to get these massive links? Thanks again
-
In most, if not all industries, I would say: new site + less than 1 year + 250k+ links ≠ 'safe'.
I wouldn't sweat it too much.
I'd probably check out their link profile in OSE so you can see for yourself the types of links they're acquiring. If the client isn't that SEO-savvy, try to show them what they're doing and how they're doing it. Hopefully that can calm the client down a little bit if they're worried why they're not occupying the same spots as they were in teh SEPRs.
Don't be tempted to attempt to mirror the competitors' strategies!
-
When you put your competitor into Open Site Explorer, where are they getting their links from? It could be the case that they are using some large scale spam tactics, which will tend to get their site penalized over time (though not always). It could also be the case that they just got sitewide links from really large sites, so all the links they are getting are from a handful of domains.
-
1. They cheat using automated methods of link building.
2. It's a loophole in Google's algorithm.
3. If it's as bad as you say then I would imagine they will be penalized for it however you can always give them a little help by filing a spam report
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
-
Best Way to Seemlessly Use Moz and Google Analytics
Hi All, I have Moz Pro and I am beginning to explore Moz Analytics. I currently use Google Analytics for pretty much everything and I am almost at expert level at using the GA interface so I'm ready to learn a new tool and have a second source of data! My question is: what's the best way to get the most of Moz Analytics and GA congruently? Off hand I know that Moz's keyword, rank, and link data, including competitive insights, is more comprehensive than GA. But how else can I use Moz and get the most out of the Moz Analytics? Looking to really dive in and discuss how we can make use of both! Thanks - Vee
Moz Pro | | Symmetri0 -
What's the best way to keep track of keyword rankings
Here's the deal. I keep track of my keyword rankings with the help of Rank Tracker from seopowersuite.com for the most part. I ran it on a daily basis and my keyword was not in top 100 for a few months. Moz.com panel shows pretty much the same (not in top 50) for the same months. That said, if I check that keyword ranking in my Google Webmaster Tools (avg. position) it says that its position (ranking?) was on average: 49, 7, 7, 8 (for the last four months). So, I'm not sure how it's even possible? How come Rank Tracker and Moz don't see any rankings and Google gives me sorta decent avg. positions at the same time. I assume that avg. postion means that same as avg. ranking, right? I'm not sure what I'm missing here.
Moz Pro | | VinceWicks0 -
Is there a way to view Facebook book stats for last 30 days instead of a week?
I'm trying to Facebook stats (engagement, exposure, etc) for the last 30 days instead of the last week...when I look at Facebook admin stats I'm only seeing the last week. Does anyone know if there is a tool (or a way to do it within Facebook) to see the stats for a 30 day time slot instead of just a week? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | NoahsDad0 -
What is the logarithmic scale used for domain authority?
I want to quantify how much better a score of 80 is compared to 60. Or 60 compared to 30 etc.... What is the logarithm base? Thanks, Rik
Moz Pro | | garypropellernet0 -
Is there a way to export keywords from SEOMOZ?
Hi, is there a way to export keywords of a campaign in SEOMOZ? The other way around to import including labels? Best
Moz Pro | | ValerieSchmidt0 -
Is there a way you can determine the time SEOMoz crawls your website
I'm a new user to SEOMoz Pro, and having created a number of campaigns I wanted to know if you can set / schedule when SEOMoz crawls your website? Ideally I want to prevent SEOMoz from crawling my site at certain times, but I can't seem to find a way of doing this. Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | Simon_Glanville0 -
How do we use SEOmoz to track Local Searches? Is there a way to set the location from which the campaign tracker is "searching"?
It seems that there is no way to set a parameter for location. In Places, I'm able to define my targeted region. How does SEOmoz mimic that localization? Thank for any help! -- Chris
Moz Pro | | ChrisPalle1 -
Linkbuilding: Unlearning the learned?
Ok, I'm still only on my second day as a SEOMoz Pro member so I've obviously got a whole lot of learning still left to do. However, I still wanted to post up a question here that seems to have occurred time and time again today. The thing is when I've been link building in the past, I've been looking for high PR pages with not many OBL. Having watched a few of the seminars and played around with OpenSiteExplorer though, it seems that I might have got my priorities wrong. OSE for example seems to only look at the strength of the domain and the page within that domain ... and I'm assuming that OBL aren't too important in calculating a page's strength given that a lot of the links I see my competitors have built up are technically stronger despite being on a page with around 12 or 15 other links. So I guess my question is, should I be ignoring PR rankings and numbers of links on a page and throwing my trust totally behind OSE? Are they really no longer that important? Thanks a lot for your help.
Moz Pro | | theshortstack0