Why does my competitor rank so well with so many paid/traded links?
-
Greetings everyone!
I've really been enjoying my Moz membership these past few weeks after studying my data and comparing it with my competitors I think it's high time I started asking some questions.
The website I manage has a very good ranking history but over the past year we've seen a slight decline in our SERP positions. I don't think this has anything to do with on-page optimization but rather with our link profile. We have only about 10k links total while they have 175k - our mozranks are nearly identical, but his moztrust is 4.46 and our's is 3.51.
I am guessing, on our end, I need to remove some of these low-quality nofollow links (though I'll be honest I have no idea how we obtained them to begin with) but what I don't understand is how our competitor is ranking so well because when I browse their link profile, it is filled with paid link and traded link directories that don't appear to be penalized for what they are. I was under the impression that this was bad SEO, but now I am thinking I should just play his own game and submit to these sites too.
Looking for any advice or ideas on a better way to compete...
Jennifer
-
Visage, those stats seem to say their site is much larger than yours, based on internal links. Your link count from others is small. If some of those are site-wide, then perhaps the number of domains pointing to you is much smaller
How does your domain count compare to theirs?
-
Thank you so much for the tip Jason!
I will be sure to use the reporting tool more liberally, since you say it actually works! I've tried it a number of times in the past but I've never quite knew if anyone at google ever actually acted on it or just put it there for our peace of mind
-
Thank you for your response!
I think your sentiments echo my mentality on the subject. The last thing I want to do is play our competitor's game because I feel like my website is of a high quality and we've done well so far without using these sorts of link-building practices.
And to clarify, our total links (including internal linking) are 10k, external are only 1.2k (his are 175k total and 4.1k external).
I appreciate the advice on not wasting my time on hunting down to no-follow links. I'll spend it more wisely finding new high-quality links instead!
-
I understand the frustration and in most of the cases it's the way you are painting it but you are also subjective and also with that amount of links it is very hard to fully understand the link profile of your competitors and yours.
What I think it's important to understand, in general, is that the quality matters over quantity. Maybe 80% of your competitor links are not even consider and there is a small set of powerful links in his profile that is actually making the difference but again it's hard to really assess the situation.
You can however go his route and hunt his link but if you do so and get low quality links you might end up in the future in a hard corner and start sessions to remove those - especially with Googles crusade on links. You might get some short or even medium term advantage and get heads on with your competitor but dose it pay on a long run ? I think not.
I would rather go for only a few really powerful links, smart ones, to increase your visibility then going fishing with TNT.
As for you going on a crusade to hunt your low quality no follow links, in my opinion, is a waste of time.
Those links by having the no follow won't affect, positively or negatively your link profile and equity in general. The anchor text of those links are indeed taken in consideration by google to understand better your website, product and brand but you will need to balance very wise (if those anchor text are bad) if it's going to help you hunting them down. ( to be honest I think even if the anchors are bad it dosen't make sense to waste time on them).
Just a thought .. or several
Hope it helps.
-
Hi Jennifer,
I know I might catch some flak for even talking about this, but I have to keep a close watch on our competitors because they are constantly rocketing up in the SERPs from paid/spam links. For some reason it seems to take Google a while to catch them even with the new Penguin update.
I have no problems with using tricks of the trade to get advantageous results in rankings, but it irritates me to get outranked by competitors who are blatantly just buying thousands of junk links.
In each situation I use OSE to get several examples and then use:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport to report them. It seems to take a week or so but each time I've reported I've seen the spammers URL tank about 50 positions.
In many situations however Google will just remove value from the junk links without penalty and you can still lose your position to the competitor if overall they have more good links than you do. Also take into consideration your onsite SEO, content quality and social signals.
Best of luck,
Jason
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
-
Paid Link/Doorway Disavow - disavowing the links between 2 sites in the same company.
Hello, Three of our client's sites are having difficulty because of past doorway/paid link activity, which we're doing the final cleanup on with a disavow. There are links between the sites. Should we disavow all the links between the sites? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Getting Spam Links
Hi There, I am planning to Disavow one spam domain but when check Google cache it shows my client domain name. So if I disavow this spam domain which link Google considered? Please help me. Thanks Satla
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
No cache still a good link for disavow?
Hi Yall, 2 scenarios: 1. I'm on the border line of disavowing some websites that link to me. If the page is N/A (not available) for the cache, does that mean i should disavow them? 2. What if the particular page was really good content and the webmaster just has the worse seo skills in not interlinking his old blogs, hence why the page that's linking to me is N/A for cache, should i still disavow it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Embedded links/badges
Hi there Just picking up on something Rand said in his blog analysing his predictions for 2014. Rand predicted that Google will publicly acknowledge algorithmic updates targeting...embeddable infographics/badges as manipulative linking practices While this hasn't exactly materialised yet, it has got me thinking. We have a fair few partners linking to us through an embedded badge. This was done to build the brand, but the positives here wouldn't be worth being penalised in search. Does anyone have any further evidence of websites penalised for doing this, or any views on whether removing those badges should be a priority for us? Many thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HireSpace0 -
Competitor link profile shocking - yet still out ranking!
Howdy fellow Mozzer's,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes
I have been doing some background seo checking on a competitor in my small "insurance niche" to try and see why they have recently shot up the listings and are now consistently out ranking us.
We have quality content on our site and have always taken an approach of trying to be whiter than white when it comes to developing out SEO plans. The site in question has recently moved ahead of us (along with some aggregators e.g. confused.com) possibly due to shifting patterns from possible algorithm changes favouring brand or could it be a case that Google has dropped a ball when it comes to checking back links as the competitors site is 99% linked to link farms, link submission sites, directories and lots of other spammy/poor quality sites. We do not feel they are doing anything from a content stand to justify their sudden propulsion up the ranks. I am reluctant to pursue dodgy tactics to help get out site back in position as I feel it could then contribute and hurt us down the line. Does anyone know how I can combat against their poor QUANTITY over QUALITY banklink profile that is surely helping them at the minute? At a bit of a loss so any help would be greatly appreciated. aRTu4cT0 -
Link package review and recommendations
Hello there, I recently spoke to a contractor that offered me the following package, and i have to ask, in this post-penguin world, does it make sense to pursue this kind of linking? Or will it be considered spam. They said it's a manual submission process and they will 'do their best' to ensure that it's under a related category, but can't promise anything in regards to that. What should i be requesting in this post-penguin world? How do i get quality backlinks that won't harm me given the current environment? Any help is greatly appreciated, here is the package info: 1. 900 links submissions = 450 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links - The links are built by manually publishing 5 Original Articles (500 words each) on 125 different article sites (each published article will have 2 back-links to your site). We can use up to 10 keywords and 10 different URLs of your site to build the links.70% of our Article Sites have PR 2 to 6, all with different C classes IPs. 2. 300 links submissions = 150 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links – The links are built by manually publishing 4 Reviews for your site from 4 different accounts (we can use up to 4 URLs of your site to link back) on 150 Social Bookmarking sites, 90% of the sites have PR 2 to 8, all with different C classes IPs. 3. 480 links submissions = 240 Guaranteed One Way Theme Links – The links are built by manually publishing 3 Original Press Releases on 35 Press Release sites(each published press release will have 2 back-links to your site). We can use up to 6 keywords and 6 different URLs of your site to build the links. All our Press Release Sites have PR 2 to 7 all with different C classes IPs. 4. 220 links submissions = 110 Guaranteed One Way blog links – These links are built by publishing 3 Original Blog Article (300 words each) with 2 back links to your site on 20 different free blog sites. These free blog sites are our sites (new sites with PR 0) which we are promoting to get the highest PR for them and your blog back links too.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | symbolphoto0 -
How does Google rank a websites search queries
Hello, I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. I was wondering how a websites search query keyword string url can rank above other page results that have stronger backlinks. The domain is usually strong, but that url with the .php?search=keyword just seems like it doesn't fit in. How does Google index those search string pages? Is it based off of traffic alone to that url? Because those urls typically don't have backlinks, right? Has anyone tried to rank their websites search query urls ever? I'm just a little curious about it. Thanks everyone. Jesse
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | getrightmusic0 -
Google rankings dropped like a stone
I've heard of this happening many times, but never to me. My client was Page 1 or 2 for 20 phrases, and they ALL dropped like a rock overnight. The site hasn't been banned by Google, as it's still indexed and the company name is returning results.There were no major changes done to tags or the code, and nothing black hat has been done. The only phrases that didn't drop contain the company name, and the results in Bing and Yahoo either stayed the same or moved up slightly since last week for all the terms. There's also no threat of spam, and it's very search engine friendly. The URL is http://www.universalaccounting.com. Help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesBSEO0