Is competitive analysis only for high level links now
-
Hello,
Is finding backlinks through competitive analysis only for high quality links these days. It seems commonly thought that link building is dead.
If the site with a link section in my industry has a DA below 35 should I leave it alone? Or what's safe and future (update) proof these days?
Thanks!
-
Hi James,
Don't worry too much about visual aspects - Matt Cutts once said that Google doesn't pay a lot of attention to this themselves as there are some amazing white-papers out there with amazing work, but they are just pages of text and have none of the latest visual wizardry that we tend to see.
Have a look through the site. Does the content read well? Does SEMRush throw up any concerns? Does the content seem unique (check this through Copyscape or pull some sentences out and search for them through Google)?
Where you can, just try to get a feel for what the site has to offer and how you can envisage trying to get a link from them.
-Andy
-
So if I am doing competitive analysis on an important competitor, and I find a site that has a DA of 25 or 30, and has the same general topic as mine, but not a very good design visually, how would I know whether to add them or not?
Thanks!
-
Hey Bob,
Link building is far from dead, but it has changed direction hugely! You just have to be a little smarter about what you do.
Competition analysis is a fantastic way to find high quality links through a niche market. It helps you to track down opportunities that you might not otherwise find. For example, a high quality site links to a competitor who has written a useful blog post. Write a better version of that blog post and approach that site with it. Tell them that the link on there is out-dated now and hint that your article is much more relevant. Hopefully, the gears should start turning.
Also, don't worry too much about DA. Look more at the site itself and if it is a quality resource. It might not have a high DA, but that doesn't mean it isn't a trusted resource.
-Andy
-
Hi Bob,
Link analysis for a competitor's site is a very solid tactic for finding linking opportunities in our opinion. You can find a lot of relevant links by utilizing this strategy and use it for your site's benefit. Although DA is important, analyze lower DA links and question their relevance for your site. If the relevancy is high, then i would suggest going ahead and adding your site to it as well.
Couple of resources below to assist you with your query:
31 Link Building Tactics Discovered from Competitive Analysis
Cheers,
SEO5..
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
-
Back links issue and how to resolve it
Hi there! We have a client who has been generating back links from external sites over a period of two years with all the same anchor text which all link back to the home page. This anchor text is also their main search phrase they wish to score highly on. In total, they have roughly 300 domain names linking to their site. Over 50 of these domain names all have the same anchor text. These links have been generated through articles and blogs. So roughly 20% of the total number of links all have the same anchor text. Over the past 6 months the client has noticed a steady drop in their rankings for this term. From the back link analysis we have done, we believe it is this which is causing the problem. Does any one else agree? For the remedy, do we go in and see if we can change the anchor text or disavow them through Google webmaster tools? Suggestions? Thanks for your help! P 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
Regular links may still
Good day: I understand guest articles are a good way to pass linkjuice and some authors have a link to their website on the "Author Bio" section of the article. These links are usually regular links. However, I noticed that some of these sites (using wordpress) have several SEO plugins with the following settings: Nofollow: Tell search engines not to spider links on this webpage. My question is: If the setting above was activated, I would assume the author's website link would look like a regular link but some other code could still be present in the page (ex, header) that would prevent this regular link from being followed. Therefore, the guest writer would not experience any linkjuice. Any idea if there's a way of being able to see if this scenario is happening? What code would we look for?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Audreythenurse0 -
Was hit with panda in 2012, what to do now?
Hi Folks, back in june 2012 when link building was the thing and I had no idea how to do it and hence outsourced link building. Company 1 would write a post and distribute it on multiple different domains after spinning it. Company 2, after company 1 was fired did directory submissions on PR0 websites for two months before i discontinued the service with them. I still have the excel file of the links they built. It goes without mentioning that the links were junk. When panda came about our website was hit. Back then i let it slide and we stopped link building and started doing things "white hat". Genuinely doing good things so to say. I never however did anything to fix the penalty. Now i would like to look back at that issue and see if the penalties are still holding us back and if I can do anything to fix it. Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter? How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer? What do you SEO mozters recommend?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TVape0 -
Should I disavow this Link?
I am trying to clean up my link profile to get rid of a partial penalty and am not sure to do with one of the links to my site http://www.seoco.co.uk The link is 100% organic and has come from a foreign language site that published an infographic that I did: http://www.clasesdeperiodismo.com/2012/12/23/la-evolucion-de-las-redes-sociales-este-ano-en-una-infografia/ The thing is that in the link to my homepage they have used the anchor text SEO as opposed to my company name. I have already sent them an email and asked them to change the anchor text but they haven't responded so I am guessing they probably wouldn't respond to a removal request either. Should I disavow it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eavesy0 -
What is your SEO agency doing in terms of link building for clients?
What are you or your SEO agency doing for your client's link building efforts? What are you (or the agency) doing yourself, or out-sourcing, or having the client do for link building? If a new client needs some serious link building done, what do you prescribe and implement straight off the bat? What are your go-to link building tactics for clients? What are the link building challenges faced by your agency in 2013/2014? What's working for your agency and what's not? Does your agency work closely with the client's marketing department to gain link traction? If so, what are collaborating on? What else might you be willing to share about your agencies link building practices? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Linking my pages
Hello everybody, i have a small dilemma and i am not shore what to do. I am (my company) the owner of 10 e-commerce web sites. On every site i have a link too the other 9 sites and i am using an exact keyvoerd (not the shop name).Since the web stores are big and have over a 1000 pages, this means thet all my sites have a lot off inbound links (compared with my competiton). I am woried that linking them all together could be bad from Googles point of wiev. Can this couse a problem for me, should i shange it? Regardes, Marko
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Spletnafuzija0 -
Link Quality and Anchor Text
ok I was wondering how to determine the quality of a link and if there is a way to tell that the site linking to you could be passing on penalized link juice to your site. Also i would like to know some of yalls opinion on using anchor text links in articles and blogs. Now that google seems to have taken some of its "importance" away
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | daugherty0 -
Creating multiple domains with key phrases and linking back and forth to them
There are several of my competitors who have built multiple sites with keywords in their domain names such as localaustinplumber.com, houstonplumbers.com, Dallasplumbers.com, localdallasplumbingservices.com...you get the picture. (These are just made up examples to illustrate what they are doing) They put unique content on each page and use alias whois using a different credit card to set up each domain to hide the fact from Google that they are the same entity and then link back and forth to each of the domains with appropriate keywords in the anchor text. They are outranking me on a lot of key search phrases due to the fact that they have the keywords in the domain name. They have no other outside links other than the links from the domains that they own. Is this a good idea? is it black hat? are they going to get slapped if someone reports them as a link farm? It's frustrating for me staying white hat and getting legitimate links and then these competitors come in and out rank me after only a few months with this scheme. Is this a common practice to rank highly for certain key phrases? Thanks in advance for your opinions! Ron10
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100