Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?

[adamlcasey]

FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you?

We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd.

So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab.

There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings)

Their links are made up of:

• Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links
• Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc)
• Profile page links
• Low quality Press Release sites
• Classified ad sites
• Bookmarking sites
• Article Marketing sites

Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include:

• t-shirts
• sports news
• online marketing
• anti aging
• law
• christian guitars
• computers
• juke boxes

Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places.

So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them.

As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them!

So what steps would you take next?

[adamlcasey]

Just an update.

Our site eventually returned to the 1st position for our main keyword.

The competitors site seems to have levelled out in position 9
There are other long tail terms we'd like to rank for that these are still dominating which I think is still a little crazy based on their link profile. I'd have expected them to have been hit a lot harder by Google?

Thanks to all who contributed to this post so far, I will continue to watch and update this post should things change drastically.

[EGOL]

Hi Adam,

I am really lucky and thankful that I am the owner here and don't have a board of directors.

If I was an employee and had a board of directors, I would tell them to imagine that we are driving on the highway and this guy is speeding.  I would then tell them what might happen if we start speeding too...  we could get a fine, we might have an accident, we might get there two minutes sooner.

If we speed with our domain we might get a ban, that would drop our revenue by $XXX,XXX per month, no traffic from Google, we could be down with that penalty indefinitely, if we speed, get above this guy for a couple of keywords that might increase our revenue by $xx,xxx per month.

So, based upon that analysis, I would not do anything about it.  I would keep working on our website to make it better.   THAT IS HOW I WOULD INCREASE OUR REVENUE.   You will always be passed by occasional speeders, I don't think that we should chase every one of them.  STAY FOCUSED ON OUR MISSION.

Then I would ask the board of directors, "What do you think we should do about it?   Just let me know."

---

Getting philosophical here...   If I had a board of directors who, in a situation like this, pointed at me like I am a kid in a school yard and saying "what are you going to do about it?"... I would have to respond by educating them first.  If they responded well to education then I would be satisfied. But, if they persisted in the "what are you going to do about it" attitude then I would realize that I am working in a situation that does not suit me well.

[adamlcasey]

Hi Egol, I understand why you responded with this.
However what if you have a board of directors asking you, why you have been over taken, what you're going to do about it and how long will it take?

P.S. mine has been that they shouldn't be there for too long as they have used poor seo practice that Google "should" penalise them for. But I have to be honest, I am concerned that if they are still there in 3-6 months time, I'll look stupid.

[Asjad]

Hey Adam,

This is not a surprising story. I am evident of such hundreds of cases. Have a look at case study where a company using same tactics ranking spot 2 for "SEO Services" in Google Australia: updatedseo.info/what-a-shame-penguin-2/

Still I strongly believe

• Your competitor is not going to stick for long. He will be washed out in next update which I am sensing very shortly

But I get surprised sometimes

• It is easy to build such links and get ranked for 2 or 3 months. Get hit and build another website and get ranked for next few months as well. Is it not hurting to companies that are doing right things from years and get outranked by such websites?

[EGOL]

So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you?

I pay zero attention to it.  I keep working on my site.

[bionewstx]

My feeling is to wait them out if you can, and let the algorithm do its thing. If the competition's link profile is the way you describe it, then how long will the site last at the top of rankings? Not long, I would think. Time and time again, we see ranking spikes from low-quality links followed by monumental crashes. I even remember reading a study about this -- how algorithmic penalties are often preceded by impressive spikes in rankings.

In spite of the fact that we know these legacy forms of link building are dead, people are still doing them with gusto -- particularly offshore SEO practitioners, who are happy to make short-term money on short-term results. My guess is that your competitor knows little about SEO, read something about how important it is to have lots of links, and went out and hired the absolute cheapest SEO'er they could find, without having a clue about the business. I would imagine he has a big smile on his face right now, and he's telling people, "it's so easy to rank #1 on Google! All you have to do is pay someone a little bit of money to build a lot of links!"

I'm highly doubtful, however, that he'll remain in that spot.

[GPainter]

I would wait, whilst sites like that may shoot up the the top of Google they tend to shoot down just as quickly.  If you are really flustered you can report them to Google - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en

Make sure you are doing it all right (white hat) and you will out last them.