Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
-
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside?
By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998.
But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe.
Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords.
So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too?
Or is that too simple?
-
Actually, they're pretty easy to copy. Just a bunch of open blog posts and forum profile spam.
-
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
With most competitors this is not possible because: 1) they control the sources of those links, or, 2) those links were awarded on the basis of merit and you probably don't merit.
You rarely win by mimicking a competitor. You win by doing something superior.
-
Yep. Direct message. I'll send you one now.
-
I am unsure what DM is, but based on the context I am guessing Private Message? If so you are welcome to do such.
-
Do you do any guest blogging to obtain links, I have found this to be effective for link building and it has increased my search engine results.
-
Thanks for the advice. I do have to say, all the spammy blog comment links are surrounded by like 200 others spammy links to other sites. Very rarely are they there all by themselves, except for when they've joined a forum to put a link in their profile page.
You willing to DM? Unsure if I want to publicly share URLs.
-
The best practice would be to be aware of your competitor's links and look for opportunities. Look for high quality pages where the competitor earned links.
Most blog commenting is very low value from a SEO perspective. If you are an authoritative member of the community which offers the blog, you are one of the first commenters and you share a quality reply with a link then it can have value IF the link is followed and the page is not stuffed with 100 other links. Most blogs which don't nofollow their links have almost no value as they are filled with spam and links.
You are presuming the site's links are the reason why they are outranking you and it is entirely possible the links are not the reason at all. If you would like more detailed feedback please share your site URL, your competitor's URL and a couple sample keywords where you are being outranked.
-
I know the usuals about creating valuable content. We've done that. That's how we've gotten where we are.
And actually, I can see in open site explorer which of the links are follow vs. nofollow. That's what I'm saying... they're very, very good at this. They've built literally hundreds of back links on random blogs with open commenting and follow links.
This is exactly the question I'm asking: I KNOW this is spammy link building, but I'm in the position of asking, since I can't beat them, why not join them?
-
Widgets.com was a generic example of our site. I didn't mean our site is literally Widgets.com. It was an analogy.
-
When I visit widgets.com the only thing I saw were advertisements... so I thought Content would be your main issue because with only a domain name you're not going to make it to the top of Google search results.
Then I went to your competitors website, but that just gave me an error page... maybe they block European traffic, but I doubt that..
Being a copycat can get you some results... maybe... but commenting on blog posts to get backlinks isn't the best technique to really get quality. If you use open site explorer, try to understand the metrics of a good backlink and only go after those. That's what I recommend, and then go on to build quality links yourselve, and not only on places where your competition is...
-
Hi Brian
This is an easy question to answer; "absolutely not". Please don't copy them, you'll end up regretting it.
How you've described your competitors' links makes them fall into the 'worthless spam' category; their efforts would have been for little gain, especially any long term gain, plus they've risked getting penalised for link spamming.
Links from blog posts are usually nofollow so will hold zero SEO value, there is only a small percentage of decent blogs out there.
To acquire some links that will actually be of benefit to your website, create some unique relevant interesting valuable Content for your visitors and Distribute this well. In turn, you'll likely be rewarded with some great natural links. Infographics with a text link built in can really help.
I hope this has been of some help to you.
Regards
Simon
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
-
How to get rid of bad backlinks
So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png
Link Building | | landlwoof40 -
Does iframe itself count as a backlink?
Our situation is similar to YouTube. We have an original content on every subpage that is genuinely useful when embedded as a widget on 3r party websites. That is why we offer an embeddable widget that shows slightly simplified version of the content - exactly like a YouTube video embedded on your blog. The embed code is simply an iframe sourcing from our subpage: <iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage"></p> </blockquote> <p>1/ Does the iframe itself pass any link value at all to the subpage?</p> <p>2/ If yes, what would be the equivalent of anchor text in iframe?</p> <p>3/ If not, will any link in the subpage pass link value from the 3rd party website to my domain/subpage?</p> <p>4/ If not, will I be punished/rewarded if I ask users to put a visible, unobfuscated link to the subpage below the iframe?</p> <blockquote style="background: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace;"> <p><iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage" /><a href="wikibudgets.org/subpage">rich anchor text</a></p> </blockquote></iframe>
Link Building | | wikiBudgets0 -
I just uncovered a massive 500+ domain PBN linking to competitors
As the title, some competitors I've been watching are using a PBN they (or their agency) have built. I'm looking to get some discussion on how you approach situations like this - do you just report all of the domains to Google and pray they do something? There are 4 sites I'm looking at, all competing in the same niche with very similar websites (different branding and content, but essentially the same pages). I thought all were related, but after Excel-ing all the domains to see which overlap I've found that there's several sets; PBN 1 covers 117 domains that link to competitors A, B & C. Signaling to me that these are owned by the same person. PBN 2 links together B & C with 30 domains, PBN 3 is just C with 40 domains. PBN 4 is just B with 105 domains. PBN 5 is just A with 10 domains. PBN 6 is D by itself with more than 340 domains. Signaling to me that this one probably isn't owned by the same person. It looks like new domains are added to these PBNs every week and this has been going on for quite some time. Now, I'm fully against use of PBNs that don't use authentic websites that provide value, and I can't find any of these sites that aren't just a basic WP template with a single-word text logo followed by spun content. This is a goldmine, because according to Ahrefs these sites are pulling in well over 500,000 monthly visitors between them, and these links make up the majority of each site's link profile. If these networks were to crumble, that would open up a big opportunity for more authentic sites to rank well. How would you recommend to tackle this? Do I find example URLs and write reports for each of the 500+ domains or are there better ways of working through this?
Link Building | | Leads.Bz0 -
How to index Backlinks Fast in Google!
I Made few backlinks with my keyword but they are not getting index and it has been for 15 days. Do you have any idea that will help me out to solve this problem and also to index back links quickly.
Link Building | | rohitdeveloper0 -
Links from PRWeb press release violate Google's quality guidelines?
My site has had a manual action performed on it by Google indicating that I have inbound links that fall outside of their quality guidelines. I did my own research, found what I thought was the issue, had the links removed and requested reconsideration. Google's response surprised me in that they highlighted two specific pages with links that were the direct result of valid press releases and a publisher picking up our release off a wire service. Has anyone else seen this occur? Anyone had a case successfully reconsidered? I realize that I don't need to do anything at all as the manual action is in effect and will stay that way, discounting those links, but I would rather a) not have any manual action against my site and b) know for the future so this doesn't happen again. Also, is this applicable for guest blog posts, which effectively create the same type of backlinks? Thanks
Link Building | | barberm1 -
Duplicate contents with competitors websites
Hello, I have use the http://copyscape.com to check the duplicate content and found that my website have some errors duplicate contents with other competitors website. But a problem is, I could not define the reason of this (my website copied the competitors website or they copied of mine) To solve this issues, should I modify a unique my contents (this is difficult) or anyone have a good solution for this problem? Please give me advice? Thank you!
Link Building | | JohnHuynh0 -
How important is the originating country of backlinks?
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting? Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries? According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
How to remove backlinks?
Hey guys, With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired. My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs. What can I do? Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
Link Building | | nrv0
