Poor Link Profiles Out Ranking Whitehat
-
Hi guys / girls,
We have a few clients in some very competitive areas that are struggling to gain the top spots. We have been building some good quality links, relevant directories, quality citations, guest posting from good quality websites, broad anchor texts profiles, really strong social signals, competitor back links lookup etc.
The issue is that nearly all the websites that are out ranking us have really bad links profiles, lots of spammy links, abusing anchor texts etc
So what can you do in this situation. The obvious path is to think, right well lets match them for cr*p links and get some results. However I am more than aware that Googles Algorithm eventually will pick up on this... well at least you hope so.
Its just very frustrating when you're getting your ass kicked by poor link building techniques and you're doing good work.
I am sure other people have come across this, and I was just wondering if there are any bits of advice of how to move past this? Or is it simply a case of keep doing good work and eventually we will get rewarded?
Thanks!
-
I a agree with Zakaria and George. I too am struggling with the same issue. I even private messaged SEOMoz to get their take on my specific situation. Their answer agreed with Zakaria. But believe me, I understand how hard it is to go to a CEO who sees his competitors outrank his site and convince him that you just need to keep exactly what you are doing. I think you are definitely on the right track by going after your Toyota niche. Sometimes the problem when trying to explain to a CEO or Marketing Director that you are doing the right thing is because they are hung up on "vanity" keywords. What I mean by that is keywords that they want to rank for but probably the site really shouldn't rank highly for based on content and competition. As you mentioned, your competitor's site has a broader scope, meaning they will have a better chance at ranking for broader, and perhaps more competitive keywords. However, by going after "Toyota" you probably have a better shot at actually increasing revenue than you would if you spent a lot of time, money and energy chasing those harder keywords.
Good luck Jon. I feel your pain!
Dana
-
Agree with Zakaria, hang in there, My niche was exactly the same, i tried to compete doing as the bad guys were and got penalised. thankfully im back on track, not where i was but traffic is steady.
If its any consolation I see the the spammy sites come and go, however the white hat sites are still there or about's .
Keep things real and don't cut corners you will get your rewards.
One thing i have noticed as that some sites can get away with a mixed bag of links, but my advice is don't gamble, do it right and reap the rewards
Good Luck
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
-
Links Not Detected by MOZ, AHREFS, GSC-ARE THESE QUALITY LINKS?
Our SEO provider has been creating content (6 blog posts per month as well as building page write ups) and has been promoting that content. Several links per month have been created as a result of this effort. Many of the links have been from commercial real estate publications. I am concerned that the quality of these links is not high enough to improve our ranking. Most links do not appear on AHREFS, Google Search Console or MOZ. Is this a red flag that these links are weak? Ranking and traffic on the site have improved considerably since this provider began the project in April of 2019. They have been writing about 30 pages about New York City. commercial buildings each month in addition to 4 short blog posts and 2 extremely well researched and authoritative blog posts. My concern is that the links are not of sufficient quality to result increased ranking. That the improvement in ranking is solely due to the addition of new content rather than the creation of these links. Basically, that I am incurring the cost on an ongoing basis of an link building campaign with little to no benefit. That being the case, I would shift resources to content creation and increase and improve content rather than develop links with little value. A sample of links are below: Would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether these are in fact helpful to the domain authority, reputation and ranking of our website. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan https://patch.com/new-york/bayside/bayside-queens-priciest-area-retail-office-space-study https://qns.com/story/2019/12/04/these-commercial-streets-in-queens-were-among-the-most-expensive-in-2019/ https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/flatbush-ave-priciest-retail-spot-outside-manhattan-study http://thejewishvoice.com/2019/12/07/nycs-most-expensive-commercial-streets-neighborhoods-in-2019-would-surprise-you/ https://atalyst.com/investment-banking-interview-metro-manhattan/0 -
New link explorer
I was checking this new tool which is really cool by the way and was wondering if I can outrank big guys with just content. I have a Domain authority of 28 with a spam score of 28 % Can I outrank with amazing content a site that hase a domain authority of 50 and a spam score of 1 % ? Should I ask for all my bad links to be removed so that my spam score goes down or doesn't it matter anymore those days and what matters is good content, link just don't count anymore ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Directory links with no follow
Hi I'm researching competitor backlinks & they have a lot of directory links which are no follow - but they rank very well. Is this type of link building even allowed by google? I know they they aren't allowed followed directory links, but will no following them help with rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Internal links question
I've read that Google frowns upon large numbers of internal links. We're building a site that helps users browse a list of shows via dozens of genres. If the genres are expose, say, as a pulldown menu as opposed to a list of static links, and selecting the pulldown option filters the list of shows, would those genres count against our internal links count?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?
I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB1 -
Links how long do they show?
How long do links show for in software such as Majestic ect once the link has been removed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Internal linking between categories
Is it necessary to do internal links between the same categories of a website ( Let's say Ihave a category about shoes and in the category I have a page about boots and one about sandals ( should the page boots be accessible from the page sandals and the other way round or is the back button going back to the section shoes enough ) ? If internal links between the same category ( sandals to boots ) are needed/recommended is it also a good practice to do site wide links between categories ( shoes and and bags for example ) Because by reading google recommendations "Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link" I am not sure if they are talking about breadcrumbs or text links i am kind of lost ... Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0