Is this a clear sign that one of our competitors is doing some serious black-hat SEO?
-
One of our competitors just recently increased their total external followed looks pretty drastically. Is it safe to say they are doing some pretty black-hat stuff? What actions exactly could this be attributed to?
They've been online and in business for 10+ years and I've seen some pretty nasty drops in traffic on compete.com for them over the years. If this is black-hat work in action, would these two things be most likely related?
-
Why not just open up their link data (on the Moz toolbar) and take a look at where they're getting these links from?
-
It's not possible to use that information alone and say for sure that those reasons are connected. They very well may be, or absolutely not.
The links could be a variety of reasons. What if they acquired another big company and did a 301 from the old to the new. Could be the tool you used for the backlinks data crawled more. It could be organic links. It could be something that went viral. There are too many things that could happen. So without digging into the details, I can't say anything for sure.
Look at fresh web links and see what you see there. If you are concerned about that competitor, download their backlinks from OSE and audit them.
-
Thanks, Mike... that's what I figured: probably spammy but _might_be legit. They're pretty old-school, but they do have a social presence and some (pretty terrible) content.
Being familiar with them from simply being involved in the industry and my own due diligence, I'm almost 100% certain this has got to be black hat.
Any thoughts on the traffic data? Take a look at their compete data... that's a pretty huge drop back in May-June 2012. I'm wondering if it was due to them getting hit by a Google update for doing the same thing that they are (most likely) doing now.
-
That alone doesn't prove much of anything other than that they had a massive increase in links. It could be due to spammy link building... or it could actually be a legitimate increase. Personally my first assumption would be black hat but you need more data than just that. Do they do any social or blogging or something? Maybe they recently posted something that garnered a lot of attention. They may have created good linkbait for the first time ever. Maybe they were in the news for something or a popular website mentioned them in a post that lead to shares & links.
If it is all spammy, they'll get hit soon enough.
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
-
The Importance of Bold Keywords in SEO?
Hi all, Recently I came cross an RV lifestyle blog named RVing Trends. The website features high-quality contents about handy RV camping tips & guides, and in-depth RV product reviews. They seem to spend a lot of effort on the content quality. I've followed this website for a few months and can see they've been producing 3,000-5,000 word length contents regularly. One thing I notice is that they emphasize the main keyword as bold in almost the posts. You can check 1 sample here about RV mattress reviews. Just want to ask for your opinions about the efficiency of this technique and is the keyword density still important for blog content to rank well in Google. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TungNM1930 -
Disavow or not? Negative SEO
Since last November we have been receiving a lot of low quality backlinks from over 700 websites. It looks like one of our pages from our website has been copied with the links being kept as they are. I have left a link to an example of this here: https://goo.gl/eWQODJ Please note, all examples seem to be copied in the same way. We have also started seeing a decrease in the amount of organic traffic (Analytics Picture), As you can see the decrease is not yet so drastically high, but it is still a decrease and this is the third consecutive month we have seen this decrease. Do you think it is worth it to use Disavow tool for all of these bad link or not? uuuLt
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm1 -
.com geotagging redirect to subdomains - will it affect SEO?
Hi guys, We have a .com domain and we've got geoIP on it, so UK goes to .co.uk and USA goes to .com/us We're just migrating over to another platform so we're thinking of keeping a "dummy" server just to do this geoIP pointing for us. Essentially .com will just point over to the right place and hold a specific .com/abc (which is generic for everyone worldwide) Current Scenario:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Infruition
.com (Magento + geoIP)
.com/us (US Magento)
.co.uk (UK - geoIP redirect to Shopify)
.com/abc (sits on Magento server) Wanted Scenario:
.com - used for GEOIP and a specific .com/abc (for all users)
.co.uk (UK) - Shopify eCom
.com/us -> migration to us.xx.com (USA) - Shopify eCom I just wanted to know if this will affect our rankings on google? Also, any advice as to the best practises here would be great. Thanks! Nitesh0 -
Red Square SEO Backlinking Service. Does Anyone Have Any FeedBack On Them?
Ive done quite a bit of research and I'm strongly considering using a back linking service to speed up my rankings. The one I found to be the best is Red Square SEO, do any of you guys have any feedback on them? Heres their website. http://www.redsquareseo.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Voltron0 -
Looking For SEO expert
We are looking for very competent and expert to handle the SEO for a plastic surgery clinic in Toronto Canada. Does anyone knows who are the best people in that field.. I am looking for the best of the best .. any suggestions or recommendations? Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
Do searchs bot understand SEF and non SEF url as the same ones ?
I've jsut realized that since almost for ever I use to code first my website using the non sef for internal linkings. It's very convenient as I'm sure that what ever will be the final url the link will always be good. ex: website.com/component1/id=1 Before releasing the website I use extensions to make the url user friendly according the choosen strategy. ex: website.com/component1/id=1 -> website.com/article1.html But I just wondered if google consider both urls as the same ones or if it consider just as a 301 redirection. What do you think is the best to do ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AymanH0 -
Rollover design & SEO
After reading this article http://www.seomoz.org/blog/designing-for-seo some questions came up from my developers. In the article it says "One potential solution to this problem is a mouse-over. Initially when viewed, the panel will look as it does on the left hand side (exactly as the designer want it), yet when a user rolls over the image the panel changes into what you see on the right hand side (exactly what the SEO wants)." My developers say" Having text in the rollovers is almost like hiding text and everyone knows in SEO that you should never hide text. "In the article he explains that it is not hidden text since its visible & readable by the engines.What are everyone's thoughts on this? Completely acceptable or iffy?Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Google Panelizes to much SEO
I just read this interesting article about a new Google Penalty that will be up in the next upcoming weeks/months about Google making changes to the algorithm. The penalty will be targeted towards websites that are over optimized or over seo'ed. What do you think about this? Is this a good thing or is this not a good thing for us as SEO marketeers? here's the link: SEL.com/to-much-seo I'm really curious as to your point of views. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0