Can competitors pay to have spammy sites link to your website?
-
Is there anything stopping competitors from doing a negative text-linking campaign against your site to purposefully harm your business?
-
First of all, is it a problem for you? Have you seen random spammy links to your site and a drop in SERP? If it isn't, don't sweat it. It would takea lot of time or money for a competitor to create enough bad links to hurt you. Unless you're in a Hatfields and McCoys situation with a competitor, I think it's unlikely.
If you're really worried about it, do a lot of White Hat link building. At least then you have something to balance out a competitor's sabotage.
-
We've heard a lot of nonsense from Google before, stating that this was impossible blah blah, but now they seem to be finally accepting that this does happen.
-
No one is stopping competitors from doing this and it does occur.
Google is discussing a disavow tool that may help filter these links out:
http://searchengineland.com/live-blog-you-a-with-matt-cutts-at-smx-advanced-123513
-
ditto
-
Nothing is stopping someone from doing it........... although paybacks could be rough.
I think 6 drops of Visine in their food would be a good start.
At the least, it would keep them off the computer for a while.
-
No. Anyone can build links to any site.
You can always ask webmasters to remove links, but they are much easier to build than have them removed. If the site is stating false negative information about your site, it might be considered libel and you could try to threaten legal action.
-
Nope, its one of the meanest things someone can do to you, but it does happen.
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
-
Somone is creating a ton of links to my site!!!
Today I looked at site explorer and found over 1100 linking root domains and over 750 linking c-blocks. My site was hovering around 200 linking root domains and 150 linking c-blocks. I have not paid anyone to link to my site... Is this one of my competitors trying to create negative seo for a specific key word? I've worked very hard to never try to build links and only get links naturally by providing good content that people would want to link to. Can all hundreds of new links hurt me? What can I do? my site is www.yakangler.com | | |
Link Building | | mr_w
| | |0 -
Why aren't links to my site from YouTube showing up in my link reports?
Our company is paying for a service to create hundreds of videos/month for us with links back to our primary domain. If I go to YouTube I see the videos with the links, but YouTube does not show in my link reports. Why not?
Link Building | | jtroia0 -
When a competitor site jumps from 4000 to 10000 links in 2 months are they most likely spamming?
One of my competitors site's jumped from about 4000 links 2 months ago to about 10000 links today. That seems REALLY unnatural to me given the market (roofing products), but if it isn't what are they doing? My gut tells me it's fake, but I'm just curious what some of your takes on it are.
Link Building | | kadesmith0 -
Over 47.000 inbound links from one site - can it hurt my rankings?
Im currently having some banner commercials on a relatively large Danish forum. I talked the forum owner into maing the banner "dofollow" so i could get the "juice" from the site, however im in doubt if this is good or bad for my SEO. Webmaster tools is telling me that i now have over 47.000 links from this forum. it seems like a Lot of links considering that i only have external links from about 5 other sites and the fact that my site is quite new. It seems like my site is not ranked very good yet(as mentioned in another question). I hope someone has some input 🙂 Best reguards
Link Building | | Havalina0 -
What is the delay of link insertion in Open Site Explorer?
Hello, Someone know the delay for links insertion in Open Site Explorer? Because i know my site have a lot more links who are not in OSE. Thanks.
Link Building | | caroy0 -
Can anybody recommend a link building company for outsource?
I am about to land another fat client and it's in a highly competitive industry. While looking at the competition, it is clear to me that the competitors have an SEO link building team. Since Americans are too expensive for the budget allocated to this project, I need to outsource to India, Philippines, or some third world nation. CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A GOOD LINK BUILDING COMPANY IN A DEVELOPING NATION (EDITED: 3RD WORLD) COUNTRY?
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0 -
New PDF Guide. On My site or linked by blogs?
Hi experts, I created a new worth guide about food. Its purpose it to improve backlink by adding website's URL on PDF's footer (spider crawls that one, is it true?). I want send my guide to trusted blogs so users can download new pdf guide on the web. Is it the best way to gain popularity and let my backlinks grow? I've seen that seomoz published is guide such as html pages.
Link Building | | Greenman
Could it be the worth way for me? Thanks a bunch in advance! G.0 -
Many competitor's backlinks are in content anchor links. Ho do I get these same links?
Hi I managed to open up OSE. I'm finding that much of the competition's backlinks are in content anchor text links. Am I supposed to get backlinks from these same pages using the same anchor text but linking back to my page or is that allowed? If so, how do I get these in content blog post links? Thanks. Sunil.
Link Building | | sunilmuse0