We have been using reviews.io for around 6 years (in house and now as an agency). It's a fantastic platform and great value. The team are fantastic, too. In my opinion, they are by far the best option when it comes to gathering trusted reviews.

I'd guess that the jobs get pulled from a job board. If this is the case, then the content ( job description, title etc.) will just be a duplication of the content that can be found in many other locations. If a plugin is used, they sometimes automatically add a disallow into the robots.txt file as to not hurt the parent version of the job page by creating thousands of duplicate content issues.

I'd recommend creating some really high-quality hub pages based on job type, or location and pulling the relevant jobs into that page, instead of trying to index and rank the actual job pages.

Can you share the URL of the site in question, please? I'd be happy to take a look for you. Those resources should be blocked from being crawled in the robots.txt file, at the bare minimum.

• What CMS is the website running?
• Do you have a plugin like Yoast running?

Ranking declines could indicate a poor migration from HTTP to HTTPS, but would require some investigation.

"However, you CAN do white hat tiered link building."

Oh absolutely. This can actually be a nice tactic to use and can also be pretty safe if done in a natural way. That's an important note Brian.

However, software cannot do this and more often than not - certainly if you are a novice - it can be hard to implement. Generally, people just assume a tiered link building tactic is spammy.

"The way it is being explained is that the websites pointing at your website are 'clean' websites that have gained rank by the other websites pointing to the second tier and then all the spammy and automated links pointing to the second tier."

Ah, see, there is an issue with this. Google's algorithm is very complicated and clever. If you imagine a link passing PR from tier 1 to tier 2 and then to your site then you can also easily imagine a link passing bad trust metrics from tier 1 to their 2 and then to your site.

Link juice is not the only thing that passes through a link. Just because there is a site in-between doesn't mean you are safe.

These are methods that used to work pre 2010 which are considered (rightfully so) as spammy. Look at it from Google's point of view; their algorithm is built to serve the searchers. If you are doing things to try to manipulate their algorithm then the searchers might not get the best results. It is their job to try and ensure that spammy sites don't rank as well as sites that belong high in the rankings on merit... Whether this happens in reality is a separate topic. As you are already seeing, competitors do rank well whilst using poor methods of link building. I'd argue that they won't rank for too long and will be caught out at some point but there are other who cant beat them so they join them.

I can see reviews on his site for things like SENuke and many automated link building programs. He might know his stuff, without me looking into it further I couldn't tell you. However, any real SEO who is tried and tested will tell you to steer clear of methods that are automated. His site seems pretty honest though and it looks like he talks about varying methods of digital marketing.

Generally, if something is too good to be true then it usually is. Link building software is something I wouldn't touch personally.

There are a few methods of tiered link building. I'm not sure which one you are talking about in your question. Could you elaborate on the method?

If you are thinking about the generally accepted concept of tiered link building it would go something like this:

Tier 1: 10,000 links pointing to 10 websites

Tier 2: 10 websites pointing to 6 websites

Tier 3: 6 websites pointing to your main website

You can replace the amount of websites above with any you like but I entered 10 and 6 as just random numbers.

Can you confirm that this is your intention? If it is, don't do it. PLEASE! This is considered as evil spam by G.

I would regard this as actually being more dangerous than beneficial. You should be very careful about introducing lots of links from lots of new sites.

Bare in mind that links from new sites could happen once or twice, completely naturally, that is the way of the web. But if it becomes a large part of your websites link profile then it will do no good at all.

Above all else, beware of footer and sitewide links from new domains to your domain.

Matt

It would mean duplicated content if you kept the description the same, yep. However, there are many ways of saying the same thing... You would have to rewrite the descriptions for sure.

Whether or not it would give your website any benefit is hard to say without knowing which product it was you were thinking about splitting down and which keywords you were targeting for that product.

As an example. One of the sites I am working on sells plastic chains. We optimise the category page for the main plastic chain keywords, within the category we add the products and split them up based on colour. This allows us to target long-tail keywords such as "Green Plastic Chain". This benefits us because (even though they are fairly low) there are people searching for this term. If nobody is searching for your product in a specific colour then there is no real advantage other than having more content on your site.

On the other side of the coin, it does mean more clicks for visitors. As we know, more clicks often means losing visitors. The only real answer is to test test test. I always recommend using a combination of both methods after lots of testing and analysing.

Hope this helps?

Matt

Oops. I only just noticed the date on this question! Sorry folks...

Agreed. However, it might be worth adding that reciprocal links can also look natural but only if they form a small part of your link profile.

Whatever you do, Jay, dont add a page called links or resources. Make sure the links are contextual links in the content of article's or content.

My way around doing this is putting them in the testimonials pages on my sites

A good example would be when I managed to get a link from Sky.com - in return they requested a link back to their site and I would be silly not to have provided one. I didn't want the link for the juice, I wanted it for the click through's. The reason I'm saying this is to show that not all reciprocal links are seen as un-natural.

I can see reviews on his site for things like SENuke and many automated link building programs. He might know his stuff, without me looking into it further I couldn't tell you. However, any real SEO who is tried and tested will tell you to steer clear of methods that are automated. His site seems pretty honest though and it looks like he talks about varying methods of digital marketing.

Generally, if something is too good to be true then it usually is. Link building software is something I wouldn't touch personally.

There are a few methods of tiered link building. I'm not sure which one you are talking about in your question. Could you elaborate on the method?

If you are thinking about the generally accepted concept of tiered link building it would go something like this:

Tier 1: 10,000 links pointing to 10 websites

Tier 2: 10 websites pointing to 6 websites

Tier 3: 6 websites pointing to your main website

You can replace the amount of websites above with any you like but I entered 10 and 6 as just random numbers.

Can you confirm that this is your intention? If it is, don't do it. PLEASE! This is considered as evil spam by G.

Scary stuff indeed...

I don't care how effective it may or may not be, I could never do this to a competitor... My motto would always be to beat them on merit and not cheating.

I have no doubt that this currently works but I also have no doubt that Google will close the loophole and instead of devaluing a website for "un-natural links" it will simply ignore the links - it is only a matter of time.

Lets cross our fingers that we don't have immoral competitors until that time comes.

I would regard this as actually being more dangerous than beneficial. You should be very careful about introducing lots of links from lots of new sites.

Bare in mind that links from new sites could happen once or twice, completely naturally, that is the way of the web. But if it becomes a large part of your websites link profile then it will do no good at all.

Above all else, beware of footer and sitewide links from new domains to your domain.

Matt

"The way it is being explained is that the websites pointing at your website are 'clean' websites that have gained rank by the other websites pointing to the second tier and then all the spammy and automated links pointing to the second tier."

Ah, see, there is an issue with this. Google's algorithm is very complicated and clever. If you imagine a link passing PR from tier 1 to tier 2 and then to your site then you can also easily imagine a link passing bad trust metrics from tier 1 to their 2 and then to your site.

Link juice is not the only thing that passes through a link. Just because there is a site in-between doesn't mean you are safe.

These are methods that used to work pre 2010 which are considered (rightfully so) as spammy. Look at it from Google's point of view; their algorithm is built to serve the searchers. If you are doing things to try to manipulate their algorithm then the searchers might not get the best results. It is their job to try and ensure that spammy sites don't rank as well as sites that belong high in the rankings on merit... Whether this happens in reality is a separate topic. As you are already seeing, competitors do rank well whilst using poor methods of link building. I'd argue that they won't rank for too long and will be caught out at some point but there are other who cant beat them so they join them.

I'd guess that the jobs get pulled from a job board. If this is the case, then the content ( job description, title etc.) will just be a duplication of the content that can be found in many other locations. If a plugin is used, they sometimes automatically add a disallow into the robots.txt file as to not hurt the parent version of the job page by creating thousands of duplicate content issues.

I'd recommend creating some really high-quality hub pages based on job type, or location and pulling the relevant jobs into that page, instead of trying to index and rank the actual job pages.

"However, you CAN do white hat tiered link building."

Oh absolutely. This can actually be a nice tactic to use and can also be pretty safe if done in a natural way. That's an important note Brian.

However, software cannot do this and more often than not - certainly if you are a novice - it can be hard to implement. Generally, people just assume a tiered link building tactic is spammy.

Definitely. I think that example was way OTT and not needed for most websites. I think it looks like it would be pretty easy for small businesses with smaller websites.

Unfortunately there seems to be plenty of to55ers around. It worry's me that some people have no remorse... It could mean jobs lots and life's destroyed! Shame on Google!

It would mean duplicated content if you kept the description the same, yep. However, there are many ways of saying the same thing... You would have to rewrite the descriptions for sure.

Whether or not it would give your website any benefit is hard to say without knowing which product it was you were thinking about splitting down and which keywords you were targeting for that product.

As an example. One of the sites I am working on sells plastic chains. We optimise the category page for the main plastic chain keywords, within the category we add the products and split them up based on colour. This allows us to target long-tail keywords such as "Green Plastic Chain". This benefits us because (even though they are fairly low) there are people searching for this term. If nobody is searching for your product in a specific colour then there is no real advantage other than having more content on your site.

On the other side of the coin, it does mean more clicks for visitors. As we know, more clicks often means losing visitors. The only real answer is to test test test. I always recommend using a combination of both methods after lots of testing and analysing.

Hope this helps?

Matt