Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
What are effective ways of finding people to link to my blog post?
So I spent ages creating amazing content and have loads of interest in it from my social media and people visiting my site are reading deep into it. I have so far not been able to get anyone to link to it. What am I doing wrong???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Using competitor brand names. How far is too far?
We are a small company competing for traffic in an industry with more or less one other very large brand. I'm noticing we are getting a descent amount of organic traffic for the competitor's brand name however I haven't done any on-page inclusion or link building for the term. We are using their brand as a keyword in our paid campaigns and seeing potential. I firmly believe we have a superior product. I'm tempted to start going after our competitor's brand as a keyword to skim some of their traffic. My question is how far it too far? Do I actively try to obtain a few anchor text specific backlinks? Dare I use their brand name as a term on our page? Maybe just a simple blog post comparing our two products is more appropriate? Any suggestions are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaliB0 -
Search Results Showing Additional info/Links
Did I miss something? I was looking at search result listings this morning and noticed that Walmart has additional information at the bottom of their (non-paid (I think)) search results. Please see the attached image and you'll notice links to "Item Description - Product Warranty and Service - Specifications - Gifting Plans" How are they doing this? I just noticed the same on one of our competitors listings so It's not just Walmart and the links are item specific. (I have update the image) Z0yqKtO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BWallacejr1 -
Spam report duplicate images
Should i do a spam report if a site competitor as copied my clinical cases images and placed as their own clinical cases. That site also does not have privacy policy or medical doctor on that images. My site: http://www.propdental.es/carillas-de-porcelana/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Footer Link in International Parent Company Websites Causing Penalty?
Still waiting to look at the analytics for the timeframe, but we do know that the top keyword dropped on or about April 23, 2012 from the #1 ranking in Google - something they had held for years, and traffic dropped over 15% that month and further slips since. Just looked at Google Webmaster Tools and see over 2.3MM backlinks from "sister" compainies from their footers. One has over 700,000, the rest about 50,000 on average and all going to the home page, and all using the same anchor text, which is both a branded keyword, as well as a generic keyword, the same one they ranked #1 for. They are all "nofollows" but we are trying to confirm if the nofollow was before or after they got hit, but regardless, Google has found them. To also add, most of sites are from their international sites, so .de, .pl, .es, .nl and other Eurpean country extensions. Of course based on this, I would assume the footer links and timing, was result of the Penguin update and spam. The one issue, is that the other US "sister" companies listed in the same footer, did not see a drop, in fact some had increase traffic. And one of them has the same issue with the brand name, where it is both a brand name and a generic keyword. The only note that I will make about any of the other domains is that they do not drive the traffic this one used to. There is at least a 100,000+ visitor difference among the main site, and this additional sister sites also listed in the footer. I think I'm on the right track with the footer links, even though the other sites that have the same footer links do not seem to be suffering as much, but wanted to see if anyone else had a different opinion or theory. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LeverSEO
Jen Davis0 -
Is my competitor up to no good? Strange site-explorer results.
I'm researching a competitor using site explorer and the seomoz toolbar and getting some strange results. When you search by the domain name in site explorer you get no results, but the toolbar shows 170K incoming links. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com I noticed the top referring page was a strange internal url so I ran that through site explorer and discovered 19 links.. When you put the strange link in a browser, it redirects to the home url;.. At this url the toolbar shows 220 links and semoz shows 19 http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/?xid_78e7f=0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com%2F%3Fxid_78e7f%3D0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c What is up with that url? What are they doing? This is a site ranking #1 for my local search term even though he has about 50 pages of almost duplicate content. See link below. I'm really scratching my head here. http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/home.php?all=categories
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dwallner0 -
Why does my competitor rank so well with so many paid/traded links?
Greetings everyone! I've really been enjoying my Moz membership these past few weeks after studying my data and comparing it with my competitors I think it's high time I started asking some questions. The website I manage has a very good ranking history but over the past year we've seen a slight decline in our SERP positions. I don't think this has anything to do with on-page optimization but rather with our link profile. We have only about 10k links total while they have 175k - our mozranks are nearly identical, but his moztrust is 4.46 and our's is 3.51. I am guessing, on our end, I need to remove some of these low-quality nofollow links (though I'll be honest I have no idea how we obtained them to begin with) but what I don't understand is how our competitor is ranking so well because when I browse their link profile, it is filled with paid link and traded link directories that don't appear to be penalized for what they are. I was under the impression that this was bad SEO, but now I am thinking I should just play his own game and submit to these sites too. Looking for any advice or ideas on a better way to compete... ❤ Jennifer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Virage0 -
Client Selling Links On One Site Hurt Their Other Site?
Hi, I have a client who is thinking about selling ads on one site they own via something like textlinkads.com. Do you think they run any risk of exposing their other sites to scrutiny, penalties or problems?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010