Strange strategy from a competitor. Is this "Google Friendly"?
-
Hi all,We have a client from a very competitive industry (car insurance) that ranks first for almost every important and relevant keyword related to car insurance.
But they could always be doing a good job.A few days ago i found this: http://logo.force.com/
The competitor website is: http://www.logo.pt/
The competitor name is: Logo
What I found strange is the fact that both websites are the same, except the fact that the first is in a sub-domain and have important links pointing to the original website (www.logo.pt)
So my question is, is this a "google friendly" (and fair) technique? why this competitor has such good results?
Thanks in advance!!
I look forward to hearing from you guys
-
Be very careful about making assumptions regarding competitors.
Just because you see one thing, does not mean either that one thing is helping or hurting a site. SEO is a vast, complex environment. If a site has enough very strong signals across many areas, one or even a few very poorly executed things may not hurt the site. Or it may not hurt the site "until Google catches up with it".
Duplicate content, regardless of method (within a single site, across multiple domains, across a mix of domains and subdomains" is never a true best practice. Ever. it's artificial, and Google most definitely takes the position that if you are attempting to "artificially" (in their view) manipulate rankings in a non-best-practices manner, that's a violation of their guidelines, policies or TOS.
-
Hi Lesley!
Thanks for your response.
The robots.txt file is exactly the same as the "original" website.
I thought the strategy would be to obtain some benefit in being under a strong DA (79).
And i still find strange the fact that is always ranks first for the most important kws for this industry (very competitive one) but maybe it has something to do with the backlinks.
Thanks again!
-
Is there a chance that you could have found their dev site? Look at the source and robots.txt, is it set to noindex and to disallow?
edit: Actually in looking it up, it is something that sales force is doing. I think it would be considered bad, its duplicated content. Another one that is hosted on the same server is
which is also
It looks like salesforce is copying the websites for some reason.
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
-
Script must not be placed outside HTML tag? If not, how Google treats the page?
Hi, We have recently received the "deceptive content" warning from Google about some of our website pages. We couldn't able to find the exact reason behind this. However, we placed some script outside the HTML tag in some pages (Not in the same pages with the above warning). We wonder whether this caused an issue to Google to flag our pages. Please help. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Negative SEO - Spammy Backlinks By Competitor
Hi Everyone, Someone has generated more than 22k spam backlinks (on bad keywords) for my domain.Will it hurt on my website (SEO Ranking)? Because it is already in the top ranking. How could I remove all the spammy backlinks? How could I know particular competitior who have done this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Exchange link from sites in same google account
Hi everyone, Anybody have experience when you have some websites which stored in Google Webmaster Tool and they exchange links between sites. So is it good for sites? We are hosted on different server. Thank you so much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jeepster0 -
A Branded Local Search Strategy utilizing Microsites?
Howdy Moz, Over and over we hear of folks using microsites in addition to their main brand for targeting keyword specific niches. The main point of concern most folks have is either in duplicate content or being penalized by Google, which is also our concern. However, in one of our niches we notice a lot of competitors have set up secondary websites to rank in addition to the main website (basically take up more room on the SERPS). They are currently utilizing different domains, on different IPs, on different servers, etc. We verified because we called and they all rang to the same competitors. So our thought was why not take the fight to them (so to speak) but with a branding and content strategy. The company has many good content pieces that we can utilize, like company mottos, missions statements, special projects, community outreach that can be turned into microsites with unique content. Our strategy idea is the take a company called "ACME Plumbing" and brand for specific keywords with locations like sacramentoplumberwarranty.com where the site's content revolves around plumber warranty info, measures of a good warranty, plumbing warranty news (newsworthy issues), blogs, RCS - you get the idea...and send both referral traffic and link to the main site. The ideal is to then repeat the process with another company aspect like napaplumbingprojects.com where the content of the site is focused on cool projects, images, RCS, etc. Again, referring traffic and link juice to the main site. We realize that this adds the amount of RCS that needs to be done, but that's exactly why we're here. Also, any thoughts of intentionally tying in the brand to the location so you get urls like acmeplumbingsacarmento.com?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AaronHenry1 -
Negative SEO attack working amazingly on Google.ca
We have a client www.atvandtrailersales.com who recently (March) fell out of the rankings. We checked their backlink file and found over 100 spam links pointing at their website with terms like "uggboots" and "headwear" etc. etc. I submitted a disavow link file, as this was obviously an attack on the website. Since the recent Panda update, the client is back out of the rankings for a majority of keyword phrases. The disavow link file that was submitted back in march has 90% of the same links that are still spamming the website now. I've sent a spam report to Google and nothing has happened. I could submit a new disavow link file, but I'm not sure if this is worth the time. '.'< --Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros1 -
Competitors using unsavoury methods of link building. How to combat?
A lot of my competitors are using a lot of unsavoury/old-fashioned SEO methods to build links but are actually doing really well from it. A few different competitors are buying links in directories, using blogspam comments, forum posts, buying links in other places. The problem is, they all seem to be doing very well with it! What I've always been taught is that these methods are out and they could actually harm you - yet I haven't seen this happen to my competitors. Should I be using these spammy methods too or just concentrate on building quality content and high quality link building?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charliedouglas1230 -
Why Does a Press Release Strategy Influence Search Results So Much?
Why do press release websites, and their submissions, carry so much influence with organic search results right now?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | steelintheair1 -
Problems with link spam from spam blogs to competitor sites
A competitor of ours is having a great deal of success with links from spam blogs (such as: publicexperience.com or sexylizard.org) it is proving to be a nightmare. Google does not detect these (the competitor has been doing well now for over a year) and my boss is starting to think if you can’t beat them, join them. Frankly, he is right – we have built some great links but it is nigh on impossible to beat 400+ highly targeted spam links in a niche market. My question is, has anyone had success in getting this sort of stuff brought to the attention of Google and banned (I actually listed them all in a message in webmaster tools and sent them over to Google over a year ago!). This is frustrating, I do not want to join in this kind of rubbish but it is hard to put a convincing argument against it when our competitor has used the technique successfully for over a year without any penalty. Ideas? Thoughts? All help appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RodneyRiley0