City and state link stuffing in footer
-
A competitor has links to every state in the U.S., every county in our state and nearby states, and every city in those nearby states. All with corresponding link text and titles that lead to pages with thin, duplicate content. They consistently rank high in the SERPS and have for years. What gives--I mean, isn't this something that should get you penalized?
-
Thanks for your response, Will. It's small business (maybe 10 or 12 employees) at a single location. While they don't really impact me directly, it's particularly bothersome because they are in the advertising and marketing business. We tell clients not to do these things, but all around there are agencies that succeed using these tactics.
-
Hi There!
Unfortunately, as both Ben and Pau are mentioning, this absurd practice is still hanging around the web. While it's very unlikely the stuffed footer is actually helping this competitor to achieve high rankings, it is aggravating to think it isn't preventing them, either.
Your post doesn't mention whether this is actually a business model with physical local offices or is fully virtual, but what I have seen in cases like these is that big brands tend to get away with a great deal of stuff I would never recommend to a smaller brand. It begs the question: how can we explain this phenomenon?
In the past, I've seen folks asserting that Google is soft on big brands. There could be some truth in this, but we've all seen Google take a massive whack at big brand practices with various updates, so that really makes this an unsatisfying assertion.
Another guess is that big brands have built enough supporting authority to make them appear immune to the consequences of bad practices. In other words, they've achieved a level of power in the SERPs (via thousands of links, mentions, reviews, reams of content, etc.) that enables them to overcome minor penalties from bad practices. This could be closer to the truth, but again, isn't fully satisfactory.
And, finally, there's the concept of Google being somewhat asleep at the wheel when it comes to enforcing guidelines and standards, and whether or not that's kind of excusable given the size of the Internet. They can't catch everything. I can see this in this light, but at the same time, don't consider Google to have taken a proactive stance on accepting public reporting of bad practices. Rather, they take the approach of releasing periodic updates which are supposed to algorithmically detect foul play and penalize or filter it. Google is very tied to the ideas of big data and machine intelligence. So far, it's been an interesting journey with Google on this, but it is what has lead to cases exactly like the one you're seeing - with something egregiously unhelpful to human users being allowed to sit apparently unpunished on a website that outranks you, even when you are trying to play a fairer game by the rules.
In cases like this, your only real option is to hang onto the hope that your competitor will be the subject of an update, at some point in the future, that will lessen the rewards they are receiving in the face of bad practices. Until then, it's heads down, working hard on what you can do, with a rigorous focus on what you can control.
-
I've seen a lot of websites that do similar things and rank high on SERP's...
Sometimes this can be explained in some part by a good backlink profile, old domain / website, high amount of content (if the content is relatively original and varied), or because the niche is more receptive to this type of content (when it's something relatively common on your niche)... and other times simply makes no sense why things like this are working in Google for years without getting automatically or manual penalyzed.
Iv'e seen webs with so big keyword stuffing repeating a keyword about 500 times in the homepage, and being ranked in the top of Google for that keyword without seeing nothing internal or external of that website appart of this that can explain that awesome ranking. It's so frustrating knowing that this is penalized by Google and some of your competitors are doing it with impunity while you can't or at least you shouldn't...
-
Hi!
Yes, this absolutely should get them penalized. Unfortunately, I have also seen this work very well for different competitors in various niches. Regardless of what Google says, some old black-hat tactics still work wonders and these sites often fly under the radar. For how long is the question though. It still carries a heavy risk. If they are discovered, they can get a serious penalty slapped on them or at the very least get pushed pretty far down the SERPS. It's really just risk vs. reward. If you are like me, I work for a company that has a ton of revenue at stake, so I think of it like this.
It is much easier for me to explain to them why these thin, low-quality sites are ranking because of a loophole than it would be for me to explain why I got our #1 lead generating channel penalized and blasted into purgatory.
Usually, these sites that use these exact-match anchors on local terms look like garbage. So even if they are driving traffic, I often wonder how much of it is actually converting since the majority of their site looks like a collection of crappy doorway pages. It is still very frustrating to watch them succeed in serps though. I have the same issue.
You could always "try" to report them to Google directly. I do not know if this really works or if anchor-text spam would fall under one of their official categories to file it under, but you could try submitting a spam report here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport.
I have no idea if this works or not though. Also as a side note, I would run their site through a tool like Majestic SEO or AHREFS and really dig on their backlink profile. I have seen a couple of instances where some spammy sites pulled off some nice links, so their success could also be attributed to those as well.
Hopefully, this helps, I know your pain.
-Ben
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
-
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.0 -
Home Page SEO and city specific targeting?
From What I have read you should target one keyword for each page on your site with the exception of the home page. Is this correct? If the most searched keywords for a Dentist in the area are Dentist "city name"
On-Page Optimization | | scott315
Cosmetic Dentist "city name"
Family Dentist "city name" Should you try and add content on the home page with h1 tags of each of these? If so then what about the page title/url Also if you are targeting keyword Dentist "city name" but like 4 different cities, should you have a separate page for each of this cities and then if so would that not be duplicate content with the exception of city name? Thanks1 -
? Keyword stuffing
I have a new website. Did "on page grading". Although the page received a grade of A the only area that did not receive a check mark was key word stuffing. It recommended I not use keyword more that 15 times but I only counted 11 uses of the key phrase "breast augmentation." However the phrase is also used in alt tag of images which would take me over 15. Are alt tag on images counted and is this a concern? I tried to use "augmentation mammaplasty" to reduce the use of the phrase "breast augmentation" but will use of "augmentation" and "breast" alone also cause the count to increase for the phrase "breast augmentation"
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
Does the link title attribute benefit seo?
Hello, Anyone could tell me the benefit SEO of link title attribute. Is **Link Title **ranking factor? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Webmaster Tools - How your data is linked?
This may be an easy questions, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere and I never really looked into it before. In google webmaster tools, in the dashboard there is the section that says "How Your Data Is Linked". What does that refer to? Is that just using internal link anchor text, external link anchor text or a combination of both? I am pretty sure that it is a combination of both, but I just want to make sure before making some internal link changes so that the most common anchor text is no longer "Prices" and "Sign up". Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | rayvensoft0 -
Crosslinking Question - Footer or Header?
We own 9 fashion blogs that focus on different niches. We have Your Next Shoes focusing on shoes, Your Next Dress focusing on dresses, Your Next Handbag focusing on handbags, and so on. Previously we had links in the blog header to the other sister sites. Your Next Shoes had text links to its 8 sister sites, and so on. However, we were told that this could cause a cross-linking penalty, so we removed these links. My understanding now is that the advice we were given is not necessarily correct. We think it is useful for our visitors to see that we also operate other blogs, so we are thinking of adding back the links - this time to our footer. Basically I am looking for advise on the best way to go about this.
On-Page Optimization | | Jantaro0 -
What is everyone doing to reduce the number of links on a page?
Some clients of mine have sites that are throwing the "too many links on one page" error and we're not just talking a little more than the status quo 100 links, it's much more. I believe it could be due to the fly-out navigation. My Solution: shorten the Tier 2 categories in the left nav down to 5 and add a "View All" link after the 5th and remove top nav fly-outs. I'm not sure if these are best practices or the best for usability though?
On-Page Optimization | | LisaS130 -
Link cannibalization
My on page report card gives me an "A" in every category but "link cannibalization". The key word is I am targeting is "home care". It says my links to "home care blog" and "in home care agency locator" are cannibalizing my home page. Am I indeed causing problems by using these modified versions of the keyword? Also is it okay to have the link "home care" for the home link in the main navigation bar? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | mmaes0