Linking C blocks strategy - Which hat is this tactic?
-
This related to a previous question I had about satellite sites. I questioned the white-hativity of their strategy. Basically to increase the number of linking C blocks they created 100+ websites on different C blocks that link back to our main domain. The issue I see is that-
- the sites are 98% exactly the same in appearance and content. Only small paragraph is different on the homepage.
- the sites only have outbound links to our main domain, no in-bound links
Is this a legit? I am not an SEO expert, but have receive awesome advice here. So thank you in advance!
-
Thank you Robert! Let me take try your suggestions and then I will report back.
-
C3,
One of the things I would suggest is to start by having success defined utilizing KPI's, analytics, etc. Did you have an engagement with what they were to accomplish and so forth. Have a baseline of where the site was prior to the newcom coming on board. When did the changes take place (were they put into GA on the dates they occurred?)? What is the result since then? What else was done during that period? Now you have a starting point.
Next, I would suggest you get the lower cost ahrefs membership (even if only for a month) and run your site through ahrefs. You will have a near complete list of links to the site. Where are the 100 within this? How do they compare to the other links coming to the site? Also, look at the microsites and see if your site is the only one being linked to. Remember if you have your link and another, they gave half the value of the link away.
If this was the key strategy, when was it implemented and what has changed since then. Remember that data is your friend. With our clients we are careful to get a baseline, talk about the issues they are facing, delineate potential risks, etc. With these sites, run them in copyscape and see if even the unique content is unique. Did you pay for unique?
Next, I would run the site through a moz campaign and see what I see. I would look at GWMT and see if the linking sites are showing in GWMT and I would look to see how many new pages are being indexed subsequently. If someone is saying that this linking strategy is key and you have duplicate meta descriptions, Title Tags, no H1, etc. (run the site through Xenu and you will have all of that and more), I think you can find a dozen places where someone in SEO says, if you do not do the on page, etc. there is no reason to do the other.
So, the data will be your friend if you want to show whether or not this is working. Hey, if it is let us know and how and maybe we will all say, they are right, I was wrong.
Best,
Robert
-
Don't worry about any "major damage to our domain authority". Those sites/links as you described aren't helping any and in light of a potential penalty, you're better off removing them.
-
Hi Robert,
I appreciate you getting involved! According to our SEO provider this tactic is a major part of their strategy and reason for the success of the site. I asked them to disable them and then they said for sure we would see "major damage to our domain authority".
The other issue is that they actually don't spend any time on these sites. They haven't been updated or touched in 7 months. The blog posts and single "unique" paragraph per site has remained the same. In fact, blog posts are exactly the same on all sites, basically scraped. However, they bill us for these sites because they are supposedly required for our SEO success.
My challenge has been trying to question their strategy when I am not an expert and they are supposed to be. Yes, they speak as if this tactic is unicorn dust.
-
If you haven't done any link building to those sites, they are pretty much worthless. G knows about this strategy and best case scenario, ignores them. DA is irrelevant to rankings. I can show you many sites with amazing DA but shit rankings because they are penalized/crappy links.
Opportunity cost: 100 domains @ $10/yr + 100 ips @ $20/yr = $3k in yearly savings. You can easily put that money to better use.
-
Heh, heh. Does ring a bell doesn't it Robert?
I'd de-link stat before Google banishes my site and ignores my reconsideration requests.
-
C3
You have some good responses but this is another of those where it is hard to sit on the sidelines. I have to ask a few different questions with a situation like this; first, forget what they did re the C blocks. What was the desired result they were seeking? What was the plan (with rationale) to achieve that result? And, no matter the answer to any of that, what percentage of optimization/ranking do they or their client believe is related to linking?
So, do they really spend this much effort on a 20 to 30% factor? And remember, this is not effort around bringing in quality links, it is effort around linking as if that is the Holy Grail of SEO. Given the time spend, the opportunity spend, the actual cost to the client, etc. Is this 80% plus of the SEO effort? I would be surprised if it wasn't. Usually when I come across this kind of thing, the "SEO" firm doing it is doing it as some sort of silver bullet SEO. They have discovered a secret way to sprinkle unicorn dust on the algorithm, etc.
To me and in my opinion, it is not white hat, grey hat, or black hat with sequins. It is just a waste of time and energy. It is just highly inefficient. Are they saying they can do more with this strategy than say the people on this forum with an actual strategy? If you are worrying about can linking via multiple C blocks from EMD's I own for some sort of benefit to some site, I think you are looking at SEO from a very odd perspective (not you, I am using the global you as if for anyone who). Interesting approach.
Best
-
C3,
Let's see... if those sites have no inbound links, what value are they to the main domain? If they have no inbound links, how is Google going to find them? If you submit the urls to google, google will see 100 new new sites that were all registered at the same time (and maybe to the same owner), all with the same content, and all with links only to your site.
This attempt at manipulation is very easy for google to recognize and you're putting your main site in jeopardy by following this tactic.
-
Sorry, I just re-read my response. I wasn't trying to be condescending with the first line. I was actually trying to clarify who initiated the tactic. Thanks!
-
SEJunkie,
To clarify, the SEO provider did this. But, yes, 100+ direct match urls, all on different C block ip's, but mostly the same content. Navigational links from these site link to sections of our main site. Ex. "Electronics" on satellite site links to "Electronics" on our main site.
There is a paragraph on each homepage below the fold that describes that is unique for each page, but that is the only differing piece of content. The rest of the content is exactly the same including the blog posts.
-
Hi Eric,
Just to clarify, you have purchased 100+ domain names, created 100+ near duplicate websites, using hosting on 100+ different cblock ip's? I would lean more towards the thinking that it's a little bit on the black-hat side of the fence. With no backlinks these sites are offering no Domain Authority to your site. They still however, maybe passing some rank juice. You need to be able to test the effectiveness of the links in order to decide to keep it or remove it. If you find the links are passing some value, i wouldn't remove them. I suggest developing them into something more over time. You don't need to regularly update these sites, just develop somethng decent for a content centerpiece and move on to the next, before you know it you'll have your own network.
-
Oleg,
So what's best course of action? Building strong content for each of these sites (100+) would be an enormous task, but disabling would kill the number of linking domains, which I assume would lower our DA in a hurry.
We actually didn't ask or want the sites developed because we don't have the resources to develop content for so many sites. The SEO insisted and put the sites up for "free" as part of their strategy. Yet, they haven't developed any new content for these sites in over 7 months.
Seems like it was a mistake from the beginning to do this.
Thanks,
Eric -
This used to work, now its a waste of time that will most likely get you penalized.
You are better off using those time and resources to develop a strong piece of content and link building to it from authoritative sites.
Cheers,
Oleg
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
-
Link with Anchor to header of the page: Keyword is ranking
I saw something interesting this week. I am doing research and spec-ing out a content page we are creating and one of our competitors "office Depot" on their phone repair page create exact match keywords that lead to an anchor that took you to the header of that pages. They were ranking first for all of those keywords with little to no links Thier strategy is the more local long tail that includes "near me" Have you guys ever seen this
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uBreakiFix
this is the URL: https://www.officedepot.com/a/content/customer-service/samedayrepair/ They are ranking for these keywords ( Top 3 nationally ) iphone 6 repair near me iphone 7 repair near me I am assuming that this is both due to their PA and DA authority shifting the authority to itself, but it does not make sense how they are lacking in a lot of SEO low-hanging fruits like H1/H2 keyword saturation, URL, Title Tag within this content page....Anyone up for discussing this?0 -
Google webmasters tools, Majestic and Ahref in a simple case study (Bad links and Good links)
Hey guys, This case study started from here. A simple summary, I discover that I got +1000 backlinks from Blogspot though Google webmasters tools after making a connection with owners of these blogs which points to my new blog. Before starting I proudly invite Thomas Zickell and Gary Lee in this discussion. I wish you accept my invitation. Let's go to the main point, I've used Google webmaster tools so I will start with. Then Ahref which used by **Thomas **and then Majestic which used by Gary. Take a look at "001" screenshot, you will see that Google webmaster tools discovered 1291 links points to my site. Take another look at "002" screenshot, you will find that there are 22 domains points to my site. Most of them are good links since they are coming from websites such as Google.com, Wikipedia.org, Reddit, Shoutmeload, WordPress.org, ...etc. Beside +1000 backlinks came from Blogspot.com (blogs). Also, there's some bad links such as this one came from tacasino.com Necessary to say that I've got some competitors and they nicely asked me to stop the competition for some keywords and I've ignored their request. So, I'm not surprised to see these bad links. At "002" screenshot, we can see that Google didn't discover the bad links as they discovered the good links. And they discovered a lot of backlinks which not discovered by any other tools. **Let's move to Ahref, ** I will use screenshots provided by Thomas. At "003" screenshot, you can see Ahref report that say 457 links from 10 domains. By the way, social engagements data are wrong. I got more than zero engagements .. really. At "004" screenshot, you can see domains points to my site, links with anchor text. Take a look at the second link you will find that it's a spammy link coming from PR2 home page since it's is over optimized. the third link is also a spammy link since it coming from a not-relevant website. Beside other bad links need to be removed. So, Ahref didn't discover all of my good links. Instead of that it discovered few good links and a lot of bad links. In a case like this a question come needs to be answered since there are some people trying so hard to hurt my site, Do I have to remove all this bad links? Or, just links discovered by Google. Or, Google understand the case? **Let's move to majestic, ** Gray Lee provided data from majestic which say "10 Unique Referring Domains, with 363 links, 2 domains make up a majority." Since Gray didn't take any screenshots I will provide mine. At "005" screenshot, you can see some of the bad links discovered by Majestic. Not all of them discovered by Ahref or Google. In the other hand, Majestic didn't discover all of my Good links. Also, there's a miss understand I would like to explain here. When I published the Discussion about +1000 link. Some people may think that I trying to cheat you by providing fake info and this totally wrong. I said before and I'm saying that again you are so elite and I respect you. Also, I'm preparing for an advanced case study about this thing. If any expert would like to join me this will be great. Thank you for reading and please feel free to share you thoughts, knowledge and experience in this Discussion. EE5bFNc jYg21cf Xyfgp28.png iR4UOwi.png D1pGAFO
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eslam-yosef1 -
Rank Drop Possibly due to links but no warning in GWT
Hello, We've been experiencing rank drop in all major keywords for the past 9 months. I've had different people say different things here at Moz about how backlinks effect rank drop. Brilliant answers, but different opinions. Nothing is showing up in GWT for this site. Here's the backlink breakdown: 72 linking root domains. 20 of those are blogs. These blogs have no backlinks in and of themselves, and were created originally as easy links. Not white hat stuff. Three additional root domains are still paid links in this profile, though all but one was made to look editorial. The one that doesn't look editorial has links sprinkled throughout their website, among other paid links. The rest of the linking root domains (49) are legitimate. Again, nothing shows up in GWT. We had 96 root domains last March but in March of 2013 we cut most of the paid links and half (20) of the blogs. This brought our ranking down immediately by 2 or 3 slots. We've been slipping every since. I would like people to speak from experience and let me know if you think the backlinks could be causing the ranking drop and what to do about it. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Black Hat Link Building Ethics Question
I have taken on the SEO/Inbound duties for my company and have been monitoring some of our competitors in the market space. In June one of them began a black hat link building campaign that took them from 154 linking root domains to about 7500 today. All of the links target either /header or /permalink/index and all have anchor text along the lines of "Windows 7 activation code." They are using forgotten forums and odd pages, but seem to be finding high DA sources to place the links. This has skyrocketed their DA (40 to 73), and raised their mozRank, mozTrust, and SERP positions. Originally I thought to report it to Google, but I wanted to wait a few weeks and see what the campaign did for them and if Google would catch on. I figured adding 81K links in 2 months would trigger something (honestly, if I was able to find out they were doing it then it's got to be obvious). But they have grown every week and no drop in rankings. So my question is would you report it? Or continue to wait and see? Technically they are not a "competitor" in the strictest sense of the word (we actually do sell some of their products as OEM), but I find the tactic despicable and it makes my efforts to raise our rankings and DA seem ineffective to people not in the know about SEO. Interested to see everyone's responses! Taylor
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anneoaks0 -
Old SPAM tactic still works and gets TOP 3 in SERP?
Hi Mozers, Below you can see some examples of spam ( hidden text and sneaky redirects) which are in SERP for our branded keywords during last 3 months. Some of them occupy very high position in SERP (top 3/top5). https://www.google.com/search?num=100&newwindow=1&safe=off&biw=1883&bih=1028&q=%22your+mac+-%22%2B%22cleanmymac%22 I sent spam reports and I’m going to continue doing so. (~500 spam reports from personal and work google account) I contacting directly with some of the hacked sites (web-masters) and tried to help them to fix this issue, but it takes a lot of my time. But 3 months!? Can you give me any advice, what doing next? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MacPaw0 -
Black Hat Attack! Seeking Help
Hello, For the first time, I think my site has been the victim of a black hat (spam) attack 😞 I have a blog in a competitive niche and my rankings suddenly dropped (from top 3 to top 20). A quick peek at my latest backlinks using Open Site Explorer "Just Discovered" revealed some nasty looking comment spam links with my target keywords posted recently. Of course, I haven't hired anyone to post such links and I haven't done it myself. So my only guess is that a competitor has been generous enough to invest on spamming my site. Questions: 1. How can I confirm if this is in fact a spam attack? 2. Should I worry about this? 3. If so, what is the best way to go about this? Would appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance! Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd1 -
Link Building Agency refuses to report Hours of work completed, is this normal?
A link building agency we are interested in is promising to work until X number of whitehat (manual) links are acquired for $YYYY each month. They say they don't report on hours, but instead focus on results. Is this common or is it a red flag?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
How do you remove unwanted links, built by your previous SEO company?
We dropped significantly (from page 1 for 4 keywords...to ranking over 75 for all) after the Penguin update. I understand trustworthy content and links (along with site structure) are the big reasons for staying strong through the update...and those sites that did these things wrong were penalized. In efforts to gain Google's trust again, we are checking into our site structure and making sure to produce fresh and relevant content on our site and social media channels on a weekly basis. But how do we remove links that were built by our SEO company, those of which could be untrustworthy/irrelevant sites with low site rankings? Try to email the webmaster of that site (using data from Open Site Explorer)?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | clairerichards0