Competitor is using a blog network - worth reporting?
-
Hey guys,
Today I checked the backlink profile of a competitor who is #1 in Google Australia for a highly competitive keyword. To my surprise though, every single link (except a few directory link) seems to be from a private blog network. It's a business selling advertisment products, yet somehow seems to have links on blog from website that sell pc repair services, sleepwear, bali villas rentals, etc..
In this case, would filing a spam report in google WMT be beneficial? It's not like they advertise that they sell links (nor are the websites the links are on), but it is quite clear that something dodgy is going on.
Thanks
-
Yeah, report it. Lazy SEOs shouldn't benefit, it sends out a bad message.
-
Yes Go for it !
-
Go for it. Putting aside any discussion as to whether it's right or wrong to "out" competitors, there's little danger to you if you're not doing anything shady.
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
-
Googlebot crawling AJAX website not always uses _escaped_fragment_
Hi, I started to investigate googlebot crawl log of our website, and it appears that there is no 1:1 correlation between a crawled URL with escaped_fragment and without it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yohayg
My expectation is that each time that google crawls a URL, a minute or so after, it suppose to crawl the same URL using an escaped_fragment For example:
Googlebot crawl log for https://my_web_site/some_slug Results:
Googlebot crawled this URL 17 times in July: http://i.imgur.com/sA141O0.jpg Googlebot crawled this URL additional 3 crawls using the escaped_fragment: http://i.imgur.com/sOQjyPU.jpg Do you have any idea if this behavior is normal? Thanks, Yohay sOQjyPU.jpg sA141O0.jpg0 -
Competitor ranking well with duplicate content—what are my options?
A competitor is ranking #1 and #3 for a search term (see attached) by publishing two separate sites with the same content. They've modified the title of the page, and serve it in a different design, but are using their branded domain and a keyword-rich domain to gain multiple rankings. This has been going on for years, and I've always told myself that Google would eventually catch it with an algorithm update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Does anyone know of other options? It doesn't seem like this falls under any of the categories that Google lists on their web spam report page—is there any other way to get bring this up with the powers that be, or is it something that I just have to live with and hope that Google figures out some day? Any advice would help. Thanks! how_to_become_a_home_inspector_-_Google_Search_2015-01-15_18-45-06.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inxilpro0 -
Competitor owns two domains which are essentially duplicates. Is this allowed?
Hello everyone,One of my competitors has two E-commerce sites that are almost exactly the same. The company re-branded a few years ago (changed the company name, changed the domain name) but kept the first domain live which is still fairly successful. Their re-branded website is a Top 1000 retailer.The thing is, both websites are essentially the EXACT SAME. They have the same products (with the same item #'s), the same pricing, the same copy and product descriptions, the same contact info, same layout, etc. The internal search bar on the first domain even redirects to their current site! The only real difference are the brand names. Currently, both sites are ranking very well for some very competitive keywords. For the past two years, I kept waiting for Google to penalize one (or both) of them for duplication. But for some reason Google seems to have not noticed. **Is there any way to "show google" site duplication they might be missing?**Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bpharris90141 -
How to remove trailing slashes in URLs using .htaccess (Apache)?
I want my URLs to look like these: http://www.domain.com/buy http://www.domain.com/buy/shoes http://www.domain.com/buy/shoes/red Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Should I use nofollow or don’t I have to worry about that?
I'm a developer and each time than I put at the bottom of the sites I build my company's logo with a link to our site. Could This action harm my website? Should I use nofollow or don’t I have to worry about that?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
Guest Blogging question
Once your guest posts go live do you do anything to promote them or do you just wait and hope they get indexed? If so what do you do exactly?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
How Would You Go About Building a Private Link Network?
Assuming you need to build a private link network from scratch, how would you go about doing it? I am not looking for some shady tactic, but rather something that would be white hat, yet will help in our SEO efforts. Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0 -
Is Blog Commenting Worth Doing Anymore?
I set a little bit of time aside for each client to comment on blogs for backlinks, but it just seems like a waste of time at this point. Most blogs have comments turned off, or won't allow links. Obviously making your name a keyword and making that a link is very spammy, and alot of blogs are using Disqus or making you login with your facebook account to post a comment. What's the best way of going about this these days, or is it not even worth the time?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0