Our main competitor is/was doing some Black Hat tactics....
-
Our main competitor Royal Cases, a custom case manufacturer and designer, has some really shady links and some dummy domains with duplicate content, yet they are ranking #1 organically for some of the industry's top search terms. Let me give you some examples.
First off, they have multiple dummy domains with the same exact same content as their main website. One of these is casescasescases.net. They have a couple more that are just as bad.
Secondly, their link profile is so shockingly black hat, I can't figure out why/how they haven't been deindexed or hit with a filter. I'll give you some examples. I ran a link analysis through Moz, and found multiple links from many websites that have absolutely NOTHING to do with custom cases. Here are a few of the linking domains: http://moneysourceonline.com/ ; www.lemons2lemonade.com/ ; http://jenaesboutique.com/ ; These are just a few. Now here is what I don't understand, when I go to explore the individual inbound links, I can't find the links to Royal anywhere on the pages. They have dozens from different pages on these obviously completely unrelated websites, but when you go to those pages, the links themselves are nowhere to be found. Yet, they are showing up as inbound links....I am lost.
Does anyone have any idea what in the world is going on here? Is there a way to report this to Google? Normally I wouldn't resort to this sort of "tattle-tailing" but this company has a history of scheming and just horrendous business practices, and they recently had to pay a large settlement for pirating software for their company.
-
Karma will Kome
-
We don't necessarily know what Google is "rewarding" them for. Organic rankings are sometimes not fair, but we just need to work at what believe will benefit us in the long-term. It's frustrating, labor-intensive and difficult. However, that is why it is also rewarding.
I see where Chris is coming from though, in the respect that (I believe) in focusing attention on creating sites with value as opposed to spending efforts elsewhere (he knows his stuff).
Good luck!
-
Now is there anything that can be done to report webmasters engaging in black hat seo? Would you guys even report it? Has anyone had any success reporting webspam to Google?
-
um–hum
-
??? I am confused by your response. I am not building links to my competitor, I am simply trying to figure out why Google has all of these golden rules of what not to do, but yet rewards the websites that use those black hat tactics with high organic rankings. I assure you, I take my job very seriously and I work very hard to make sure I am doing things the right way to get my business ahead of the competition. I reached out to the community of Moz for some insights, you don't need to be so condescending.
-
Further proof that black hat tactics work and work well. And they always will work. Google still can't really determine the quality of a link, whether it's natural, negative SEO, spam, etc.
-
So scheming and poor business practices makes your resorting to "tattle tailing" OK? I don't follow that logic. You're probably better off working on building new relationships for your own site than building links to your competitor.
-
"First off, they have multiple dummy domains with the same exact same content as their main website".
One of my competitors has been doing this exact thing and have been rewarded by ranking well in Google. I don't even think reporting web spam to Google even works. I can't understand how they haven't been deindexed or penalized for this.
-
Hahah I found that amusing as well. I guess they are just ranking because of their age...I just dont see why they are so high up with such a crappy website, bogus links, and so much duplicate content.
-
Am I the only one here that finds it hilarious that bsa.org gives companies that pirate software a followed link? Oh man, that is rich. The giggles keep coming.
It's an expensive link, but maybe your company should turn itself in for piracy?
They're only shooting themselves in the foot with the duplicate content.
The site's link profile doesn't look 'shockingly' black hat, though there are some shady spots. It looks like a lot of the newer links were made because the site was scraped. I've found quite a few, at random, that redirect to some Chinese ccTLD. That might be one of the reasons you can't find the link.
Besides, even crap links can possibly prop up a domain for a little while. (Not recommended) But a site may eventually get hit, or it will drop a bit after new low quality links ebb.
Maybe you just don't have the domain age... there's a bunch of things.
-
The links may have just been removed. Also, there rankings may/may not been influence by these tactics (they been around since 1998). As you know, many factors matter in organic ranking. You can make a report of webspam at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport.
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
-
SEO impact of redirecting high ranking mirror site to the main website
During SEO audit for a client I noticed that they had over a dozen duplicate websites that are carbon copies of the main website. This was done via CMS platform and DNS. One of the mirror sites has about 400 indexed pages and has Moz DA of 42 and 137k External Equity-Passing Links. Full metrics comparison is attached. I originally planned on doing rel="canonical" on the mirror site but the CMS vendor never even heard of it and is refusing to implement it in the header. My only other option is doing one to one 301 redirects. Since the mirror site ranks well, even competes with main domain for some positions on the 1st page of SERP, what will be the impact after the redirects? Is doing 301's still the best option? Thanks! PrUpN3q
Moz Pro | | dasickle0 -
GWMT / Search Analytics VS OpenSiteExplorer
Just had the experience of using OSE data to show what we call "linkrot" to a client -- only to find that GWMT / Search Analytics shows no such thing. Fortunately the client is an old friend and no face was lost, but it was dicey there for a bit as I have come to rely on and reference OSE again and again and again, OSE showed Domain Authority dropping by about 1/3 in the last 12 months, presumably due to old links getting broken, linking sites changing their architecture etc. And of course, ranking is tanking, as you would expect. But Google shows many more (and much more spammy looking!) backlinks. Has anyone had any experience benchmarking the 2 data sets of backlinks against each other? Dr Pete?
Moz Pro | | seo_plus
Does one update more frequently than another? Do you trust one more than another?? If so, why?? Thanks!0 -
Rankings reporting showing inaccurate improve/decline/unchanged numbers
Our rankings report is showing inaccurate numbers for the improved, declined, and unchanged summary, both in the email and on the site. According to the added up numbers, we have 315 keywords in the campaign, but that's not possible as we only have 172 set up for it. The total for this section is correct, it just doesn't add up.
Moz Pro | | tncomseo0 -
How can you measure competitor visitor volumes?
I am trying to understand how I can use SEOMOZ to ascertain the volume of visitors a competitor will achieve either daily, weekly or monthly.
Moz Pro | | edwardlewis0 -
How to remove /index.html that causes duplicated content
Hi, How to remove /index.html that causes duplicated content?
Moz Pro | | whitelies
From my website navigation links, it does not shows the /index.html. However, when I run the seomoz crawl errors, it show duplicated content. Can anyone tell me how to do it?0 -
How to tell where a competitor's Facebook Shares are coming from?
Is there a way to tell where a competitor's facebook shares and likes are coming from? How to also tell what ads they have running in Facebook and their spend? I am looking at OSE's data and its telling me a competitor has 8.5K Facebook shares and 1K facebook likes. I go to their facebook page and it has about 25 likes. This site should not have anywhere close to the facebook shares/likes its receiving so wondering where they are getting their boosted traffic from.
Moz Pro | | rjb6270 -
Is there a way, to display historic data / chart of a domain?
Is there a funktion / tool, that displays domain data like: Domain Authority
Moz Pro | | softclick
Domain MozRank
Domain MozTrust
No. of Links
No. of linking Domains historical?1 -
Anyway to Verify MozRank & MozTrust Scores w/alternate method?
Hey everyone, I am wondering if there is a way to confirm or reinforce what am i seeing on a webpage using the Moz Toolbar? When I go to this website here: abilogic.com they have a high page/domain trust rank. However, when I filter down to the niche category I would be interested in submitting too abilogic.com/dir/Home/Gardens/ - Then everything, including PageRank, drops to zero. The question I have, is I am not sure if this is really just a poorly constructed and untrustworthy page as identified in the Moz Toolbar. Or is it possible that these page categories have recently been redeveloped or something like that, and that's why the deeper pages are not showing any benefits? Thanks for any help or tips!
Moz Pro | | JerDoggMckoy0