Has Google Made Unnatural Link Building Easier?
-
I see lots of competitors and crappy sites ranking well for highly competitive keywords in the web hosting niche.
After analysing their backlinks, I noticed that most of them had only 1 or 2 backlinks to the page they wanted to rank. The anchor text is usually a slight variation of the targeted keyword.
Now suppose you are able to rank well for a handful of highly lucrative keywords using very few spammy links. That would mean that even if you got a Penguin penalty, cleaning up your link profile would take an hour at most.
I really have no intentions of using this strategy but it's frustrating to see spammy competitors outranking you with crappy sites and a handful of backlinks.
Your thoughts?
-
I don't think they buy google ads for most of them (the spammers)
-
I see this all the time within my niche and almost every niche. Google has become a useless engine, unless you are looking for news or information, but in that moment you decide to buy something, BAM, pure crap.... maybe because those sites are the ones that buy google ads?
-
I also happen to see new websites coming in and out of the top 10 on a weekly basis for some competitive keywords. Lots of them are about 6 months old.
-
There's a guy I see he just buys a sh*tload of spammy links and ranks high for about 1 or 2 months. When his website gets hits, he just buy another domain, puts back the exact same content (doesn't even care to change the website name in the image), spams the hell out of it and now he's back at the top with a domain he bought on August 25!!!
That's right! He ranked a brand new domain only 3 days after buying it! The website already got over 15k backlinks.
-
It seems that everyone is talking about this at the moment.
Google would appear to have got super addicted to providing fresh content, that it is ranking the newer sites higher than those with most authority. Why? I have no idea. Everyone is just taking the black hat route of making more sites, newer sites that can cheat the system for now, until Google packs up it's ideas and changes the algo.
I mean look at what has happened this year with updates, everyday is an update. I think we need to hold tight for the storm to settle and wait for everything to stabilise. Google can't keep this up for long, the SERPs change everyday!
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
-
Google Update Frequency
Hi, I recently found a large number of duplicate pages on our site that we didn't know existed (our third-party review provider was creating a separate page for each product whether it was reviewed or not - the ones not reviewed are almost identical so they have been no indexed. Question - how long do you have to typically wait for Google to pick this up On our site? Is it a normal crawl or do we need to wait for the next Panda review (if there is such a thing)? Thanks much.
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Track outbound links
I would like to track outbound links at http://bit.ly/yYHmbf 1. Shall i add the following code before at the above page What does 100 means in above code ? 2. Then use this for each outgoing link ``` [onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">](http://www.example.com) ``` [](http://www.example.com) ```[``` http://www.example.com is the outbound link Am i right on both counts ? where should i look for report in GA ? ```](http://www.example.com)
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Google has not been visiting my site
Hi I am working on a site at the moment http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com and i had the site using a different template and in the search engines for the search term cheap flights gatwick we were fourth and for the term holiday magazine we were 12th in google but now we are not even in google on the first page for the search terms. But now after changing the template in joomla our rankings have gone out of the window. It took me about a day to sort out the site with the new template so i was not expecting any problems with the search engines but for some reason there is. If you put into the search engine www.cheapflightsgatwick.com then you will see that google has not visited the site for four days and also it is not showing the description and instead it is showing details about joomla. Can anyone let me know if there is anything i need to do to sort this out and why google is taking so long to visit my site
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Link Building Advice
Hi Everyone, I have just joined the community and am looking for some help regards Offsite SEO and Link Building. I have done some basic SEO on my website 'Marketing Quotes' Added to web directories (although I am told they do not carry much weight) I have written content and articles around them (on ezine, squidoo etc.) I have written unique content for the site I have done guest posting on blogs Not sure what to do next though for high power links. I did notice a Q&A on contacting webmasters and asking for links (after building a relationship) but wondered if there was anything (offsite wise) that I have missed out? Appreciate any advice. Regards, David
Technical SEO | | Marketingquotes0 -
301s and Link Juice
So I know that a 301 will pass the majority of link juice to the new site, but if that 301 is taken away what happens?
Technical SEO | | kylesuss0