Links in the independent.co.uk
-
So I was doing some research in OSE and come across links in different articles on the independent.co.uk. There are more than three but I have included three below. Do a find for "blinds" on the articles.
What I find interesting is that each article has a different author. Which probably rules out a friend doing a favour. As far as I can see, of all the many different types of advertising programmes the Independent has, this is not one of them. Which begs the question, how are they getting these links?
What do you think?
-
Thanks Ryan, my "conspiracy theory radar" lit up when I come across those links.
I think i'll call the newspaper today.
-
Kevin,
It took me a bit but now I understand your concern. Each of the three listed articles uses "blinds" as anchor text to provide a link to http://www.roller-blinds-direct.co.uk/.
It is definitely odd. As you mentioned, the articles are written by different authors. I did a search of the site and found other articles with the term "blinds" used where there is no link involved. I was curious to determine if a site wide replacement was being used for the term. That is not the case.
What is also odd is the context is not related to window blinds in each case.
Use #1 "The blinds were down at the Ashcroft home" - In this instance at least the reference is to window blinds.
Use #2 "the elegance of the crinum's swan-necked trumpet flowers blinds you to any fault in the foliage department." - The reference has nothing to do with window blinds and is clearly an inappropriate use of text linking.
To answer your question, yes it is suspicious. It is possible, but unlikely, the site is selling links in this manner intentionally. It is far more likely that a single employee with access has made these changes under the table.
If this is a competitor you can proceed by notifying Google you suspect the site of buying links and offer the evidence. I would suggest making it a bit clearer by stating specifically the term "blinds" is being used as anchor text within the following articles even when the usage has no relation to window blocks and is taken out of context. Google may find other similar issues on the site and penalize the site's links.
Another approach you can take is to contact the newspaper directly. I would suggest not using the website as the person who receives your report may also be the one selling the links.
The above is all based on adopting the belief that your view is correct. Personally I do agree with you completely. Others may view us as conspiracy theorists
Good luck.
-
It's the website of a major UK national broadsheet newspaper Ryan. I'm not doubting the quality of the website.
The links are not relevant to the discussion, it would not be classed as a further reading resource.
Am I the only one who finds these links strange?
-
The site seems quite respectable with an impressive DA of 90, and over 55k facebook fans.
I looked at the first article. It is an in depth article written 2 years ago by an award-winning author who seems to have respectable credentials. This particular page has 19 likes, 9 tweets and OSE shows a total of 5 links which share identical anchor text, apparently from the article's title.
The second and third article only show 1 linking domain each.
The main site is alexa ranked in the top 1000 of all site world wide. At a glance these links appear completely natural to me.
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
-
My competitor's sneaky link building technique
Hi, I can't figure out how my competitor seems to fit four invisible nav menus into her home page. If you view her page source and type "/about" for example, it shows five examples of the text linking to her "about" page. But four of them can't be located on the web page (they are hidden). How does she do this? She basically has four duplicate links that are counted for SEO but can't be seen on the webpage. address: http:// camilla peffer.com. au/ Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | SleekCopy0 -
Abnormally high number of root domains linking to root domains
My client runs a very small business hiring out space in a single warehouse and rarely adds content to his incredibly badly optimised wordpress site. Can anyone make any wild guesses as to why my client has 2.9 million root domains linking to root domains? He also has a domain authority of 100. Strange when the number one competitor in warehouse space in this part of the world is Gumtree (equivalent of Craig's List) and that only has 9.25k root domains linking to root domains and site authority of 80. Is there any way of finding out where these links are coming from via Moz? Thanks
Competitive Research | | SocialStreets.Co0 -
Only 4 Internal Followed Links
Hello , i compared our (www.bighunter.net) and competitor pages. Only 4 internal Followed Links are in result page . I don't understand why Thanks for any answer
Competitive Research | | lbecarelli0 -
Discrepancy in Competitive Link Analysis?
I currently have a campaign set-up that monitors a few competitors compared to our site. When I look at the Root Domain Metrics I see that Company A has 2,053 total external links, and Company B has 1,632 total external links. I wanted to view these links in more detail so I ran Advanced Inbound Links reports. The reports returned 432 results for Company A and 693 results for Company B. Shouldn't these numbers match up with each other, or am I missing something? Also, I noticed that in the Inbound Links analysis for my competitors there are a number of results listed that are not actually inbound links, but are internal links from there own site. Is there a reason these are appearing? I am having problems because I am trying to use this campaign to show the improvements in our site vs our competitors. However, OSE shows dramatically fewer total external links for our site (about 260 vs 3200 in Webmaster Tools) and I cannot tell if the competitor data is accurate? Thanks
Competitive Research | | zazo0 -
Online checkers for Anchor Links ?
Okay, we are looking for online tools to check our backlinks, and anchor links top domains, etc. OSE is not working for us, because looks like , it gets updated in some months. We are looking for something, which can drag the statistics in fw hours and show up. Let me know.
Competitive Research | | qubesys0 -
Does InAnchor count partial match links?
Here is what Google says about the InAnchor operator. I am curious to know if this will show results with exact match or partial match anchor text. Does anybody know?
Competitive Research | | TheEspresseo0 -
Why are links not being added to my Domain Authority
I have just compared my domain authority with competitors and I can see that they are outscoring me on links from YouTube etc. Even though I have same set-up with regard YouTube and Squidoo etc and am also featured on Dmoz... these are not being added to my domain authority. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | manedog0 -
How does a site get to no 3 in Google with no KW in their links?!!
Hello everyone, my first post - ahhh I'm investigating a niche and there is a site that should have no right being there in my view. It's no. 3 Google UK for 'company formation' with a small site with 65 weak links from only 7 domains and hosted in the US. But more importantly, the Open Site Explorer says there is not 1 link with that term in its anchor text. This I find crazy and makes me suspicious. But before I go back to my client saying "oh they must be black hat" I would like your expert views. I'm not sure whether to tut or congratulate them and for the first time I'm not sure what reasons to give for their amazing performance! What's your views?
Competitive Research | | GOYMedia480