Competitor Black Hat Link Building?

[EricFish]

Hello big-brained Moz folks,

We recently used Open Site Explorer to compile a list of inbound linking domains to one of our clients, alongside domains linking to a major competitor.

This competitor, APBSpeakers.com, is dominating the search results with many #1 rankings for highly competitive phrases, even though their onsite SEO is downright weak. This competitor also has exponentially more links(602k vs. 2.4k) and way more content(indexed pages) reported than any of their competitors, which seems physically impossible to me. Linking root domains are shown as 667 compared to 170 for our client, who has been in business for 10+ years.

Taking matters a step further, linking domains for this competitor include such authoritative domains as:

• Cnn.com
• TheGuardian.com
• PBS.org
• HuffingtonPost.com
• LATimes.com
• Time.com
• CBSNews.com
• NBCNews.com
• Princeton.edu
• People.com

Sure, I can see getting a few high profile linking domains but the above seems HIGHLY suspicious to me.

Upon further review, I searched CNN, The Guardian and PBS for all variations of this competitors name and domain name and found no immediate mentions of their name. I smell a rat and I suspect APB is using some sort behind-the-scenes programming to make these "links" happen, but I have no idea how. If this isn't the case, they must have a dedicated PR person with EXTREMELY strong connections to secure this links, but even this seems like a stretch.

It's conceivable that APB is posting comments on all of the above sites, along with links, however, I was under the impression that all such posts were NoFollow and carried no link juice. Also, paid advertisements on the above sites should be NoFollow as well, right?

Anyway, we're trying to get to the bottom of this issue and determine what's going on. If you have any thoughts or words of wisdom to help us compete with these seemingly Black Hat SEO tactics, I'd sure love to hear from you.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it very much.

Eric

[Linda-Vassily]

If you go to the OSE results page, start clicking on the links, view source, then do a search for APBSpeakers you will find them. Here is the Huffington Post one, for example: “When I turned 5, I had had symptoms of AIDS. I had had fungus in my brain, blood infections, pneumonia,” Hydeia told Oprah back then.

rbkyf

[Linda-Vassily]

The cnn link is on this page: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/opinion/david-love-medgar-evers-trayvon-martin-survivors/index.htm

In this paragraph: Meanwhile, not unlike Myrlie Evers-Williams, Sybrina Fulton found her calling through grief nearly 50 years later.

[HiveDigitalInc]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/human-rights-advocate-mavis-leno/  -- Link is in the external links section with the anchor "Ms. Leno's Bio"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/20/eric-schmidt-google-alan-rusbridger -- Link is on anchor Jared Cohen

I didn't see the reference to a link from CNN.

-Jake

[EricFish]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for your input. Much appreciate it. Can you show me a page or two where you see those links located? I actually searched the page source for variations of APB, speakers bureau, etc. and saw nothing. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right place.

Thanks again for your help.

Eric

[EricFish]

Hi Jake,

Thanks for taking the time to dig into this and provide me with some advice. You bring up some good points that are well taken.

I will speak with the client about this and reach out to you at Angular if we need a hand.

Thanks again.

Eric

[HiveDigitalInc]

Hi Eric,

I understand it can be frustrating and challenging to succeed and manage client expectations when working in a competitive space where business may use tactics that your client is not comfortable with.  It's also unfortunate that links often have such a strong signal that rankings can still be achieved regardless of the quality of onsite SEO.

Typically many of the large publications no-follow their comment links and links on paid advertisements.  It is important to note that Google may still consider those links as part of some other signal and that achieving a placement on those sites can often lead to additional press, citations, etc. on other sites that may place followed links.

...  however, you must also consider that Google's goal is to confidently provide the website it believes searches will find most relevant to their query.  A few facts I quickly dug up on APB

• has been in business for over 50 years compared to your clients 10+ years.
• has a long history representing US Presidents, Foreign Prime Ministers, Martin Luther King, Andy Worhal, Mikhail Gorbachev, Dan Rather, etc. etc..
• has a record in the Guinness World Book as largest lecture agency in the world.
• has been receiving legitimate press with a 10 page feature in the NYT, repeat coverage in Newsweek, etc. since the 1960's

Regardless of the link sources, etc..  this business is in the knowledge graph and Google can reliably and confidently present this business to people searching for competitive terms. Now that I've tooted their horn a little, please don't feel overwhelmed or interpret this to mean you can't compete with large global companies that have a long history of success and are well established in the SERPs... this is why I love SEO.

However, to be successful, you need to change your mindset a little and focus on what you can control:

1. Instead of focusing on those highly competitive terms, you are going to have to "chip away" by finding and establishing your authority within various niches. Is there a specific industry or topic area where your client is more strong?  APB appears to have invested heavily in the civil rights space at one time, and also in the global leaders space.
2. Instead of counting their links and judging their link building practices, ask what you can do to build your own authority?  Can you build press around your clients talent?  Does your client sponsor/donate for charitable events?  Has your client written "the Bible" on various topics within the speaking industry?  Does your client have an internal publicist or PR agency getting their executives international speaking engagements?
3. What can your client do that they can't?  If you want to rank #1, you have to be better than them... make sure that message is clear to every person and machine....

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Jake

[Linda-Vassily]

I took a quick look at those links and I am not sure why you think they are black hat. They seem to have a lot of well-known clients which would account for the authoritative domains.

And when I clicked on the sites listed in Moz, I saw that there were in fact links back to APBSpeakers.com. [Even if the company wasn't named, its speakers were--you have to look at the page source, not just do a site search.]