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
-
Authority from Linking Root Domains: youtube.com / wikipedia.org / adobe.com
Hi there, Presently doing competitor analysis and note two competitors who have a way higher 'moz domain authority' than my client. Using moz tools I notice their top 5 linking root domains all have a score of 100. Refer to screen shot. Of note, both list youtube.com and _wikipedia.org. _ Similarly, my client's domain is ALSO linked from their user profile on youtube.com. They also have a published wiki page with their URL linked. BUT, youtube.com or wikipedia.org are not listed in their "top 5 linking root domains". Their highest scoring linking root domain is prweb.com - with a score of 97. If my client has links on these top domains why would they not be listed in my client's top five domains list like they are listed in their competitors top five? Researching for reasons I came across this old post (2009) here - http://moz.com/blog/followed-links-from-four-unexpected-sources - and wonder if the competitor's links are 'followed' links - even though all resources suggest wiki and youtube are definitely 'no follow' links? Other interesting "Top 5" domains that are listed for my competitors as top "linking root domains" are microsoft.com, adobe.com and europa.eu - again, refer to screenshot. Questions are IF these top linking root domains are in fact 'followed' links/valuable links and help with domain authority scores calculated by the moz tool then 1) HOW do I get these links to show/provide the same value? AND 2) How are my competitors, who are simply travel products, getting links from top domains like adobe.com? I do hope all the above makes sense and that I'm using/interpreting the moz comparative tool correctly! Cheers iGe864i.jpg?1
Moz Pro | | catherineh0 -
How do I exclude my blog subfolder from being crawled with my main domain (www.) folder?
I am trying to setup two separate campaigns for my blog and for my main site. While it is easy enough to do through the wizard the results I am getting for my main site still include pages that are in my blog sub folder. Please Advise!
Moz Pro | | sameufemia0 -
Drop in domain authority for myself and all my competitors, was something changed?
On the 1/11 report all four websites dropped, and starting on 2/12 they all dropped a few more times. These are all large companies who are completely white hat. Was something changed? The reason I asked is all of our linking C-Blocks dropped as well. Mine dropped from 114 to 42 and I have no idea why. All of my competitors dropped as well, is this related?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite1 -
Exact match .ORG/.INFO vs. all query terms .COM - proof?
Hello world 🙂 I have searched among tons of quality articles here on forums, but surprisingly I haven't found topic that goes into the deep water when it comes to a specific KW rich domain problem. Let me first state that I'm mainly based this topic on the information found in following blog posts by randfish (that guru with the beard). http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements My questions is only related to RANKING aspect of the domains - NOT how is sounds, smell or dance. As all good simple .COM KW domain combinations are already taken, only thing that is left is to be a bit creative using non .COMs exact match, hyphens .COM exact match, all query terms .COM with a letter or word added etc. QUESTION and case study I found a good keyword phrase, let us called it 'super domain' with low competition & high monthly searches and great revenue possibilities. Naturally, first step is to acquire a exact match .COM domain (EMD). But, of course, that is not possible because 'superdomain.com' and super-domain.com has already been taken by some greedy domain broker waiting someone to pay $1.000.000 for it. Not an option. What options do I got? OPT1) superdomainA.COM (keyword phrase with added 'A' at the end) OR OPT2) superdomain.ORG/NET/INFO (keyword phrase on non .COM TLD) I couldn't find any studies with test and clear results regarding this subject. This is VERY important because, regarding to the links I posted, there is a 0.10 better correlation if choosing OPT1) superdomainA.COM, even if using exact match domain OPT2) superdomain.ORG/NET. But they haven't been cross tested in that results in the same post. So it's big '?' sign to me. As SEO market is getting more and more competitive, it is important to not leave anything to chance. I would appreciate if randfish, or anybody else could give some inputs about this. Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | RetroOnline0 -
Does SEOmoz have a keyword visibility report / tool?
Know of a tool where I can show the overall success of a set of keywords, us vs. the competition? A visibility report where a #1 ranking is worth 30 points, #2 is worth 29, so on and so on down to #30 worth 1 point, outside of the top 30 is worth nothing. (something like this). Trying to show an overall visibility scorecard, not sure if I can do it here or with some other tool. Didn't see it on Raven. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | akim260 -
SEOMoz Campaigns: Bulk management / deletion of keywords?
For the SEOMoz campaign tool, how do you manage / delete / export keywords in bulk? We have several hundred keywords and need to delete some efficiently from a campaign. I see how you can delete words from one page of the list, but is there a way to combine the keywords with ranking or traffic data to stack-rank, and than delete the "least valuable"? Tough to manage in bulk
Moz Pro | | sftravel0 -
What is the difference between followed/no followed/ internal/ external links? And how do i improve them?
Am on a beginner level of SEO and as a pro member when i ran a report for my site i found some basic terms used. Can anyone please let me know what exactly is the difference between these terms and how important are they and how do i improve them?. or please let me know a source to find out.
Moz Pro | | NikhilM0 -
What is mT/mR good for In the keyword tool difficulty full report results?
So the ratio is MozTrust to MozRank, but what is this good for? What can I deduce from this and what can I use it for?
Moz Pro | | MarloSchneider2