Should we imitate our competitor's blog network?
-
One of our competitors has built a little blog network, and I'm wondering if it's worth it for us to imitate it. Here's how they have it set up: They have domain.com, their e-commerce site, and blog.domain.com. They also have a half-dozen EMD blogs set up that all link to each other and to the e-commerce site, each one supplying content related to one niche of their busines (e.g. kitchenwidgets.com, widgetsforkids.com, etc.). It seems they've been doing this since December 2011.
In my opinion, the content on these EMD blogs is pretty low value. Sure enough, they have basically no inbound links from outside the blog network, and it's not getting shared socially. I'm having a hard time imagining a lot of long-tail searches that would bring in qualified shoppers, since they basically just write up 300-word long descriptions of photos.
Based on SEMrush data, it doesn't look like this approach is hurting them -- they didn't take a Penguin dive in April, for example. But how likely is it that this approach is helping them enough to justify the time they must spend writing (probably ~30-60m a day)? It would be trivial for the algo to determine that these are not natural links and completely devalue them. Would it not be better to consolidate that time into 2.5-5hrs a week spent researching and writing a valuable, link-worthy, long-tail-rich post for the main blog and then promoting it in hopes of attracting natural links?
-
Agreed, plus the answer that you marked as good really is the best answer for this question
-
Not sure to be honest with you. By clicking on a Good Answer it will automatically mark the question as Answered... But people other members still can and often do reply after its marked as answered.
-
Hmm, I didn't mean to mark this "Answered." Is there a way to undo that?
-
Here is a recent post from today, about shady linking:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-shady-backlinks-actually-damage-ranking
Your competitor decided to this themselves, instead of going out and buying links, they're doing it on a much smaller scale then if they were to purchase 1000s of links, so Google might not catch them right away, but its a matter of time until their rankings go down...
-
Yes, that is always the toughest thing to accomplish. What you need to explain to them is focusing on amazing content that will be beneficial to your customers is far more important than concentrating on getting links that are of no value and can get you in trouble with Google...
Getting a link to your site from a self made EWD domain with a blog that doesn't have any PR, PA, & DA is absolutely a waste of time and most likely will get you penalized...
There are numerous posts, whiteboard fridays on SEOMoz that talk about this. Here is some reference:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-for-ecommerce-sites-targeting-the-right-anchor-text
and there are many more, just search for link building on seomoz.
-
That's my suspicion, Igor. Now to convince the higher-ups, who saw our competitor's strategy and decided that must be what we need to do in order to vault over them in the rankings.
-
Hello,
I think you should definitively start a blog just like your competitor however copying their tactic is not a good idea, as search engine spiders are very intelligent these days and can figure out linkspam. I assume that your competitor has all of his sites and blogs hosted probably under the same hosting account which would provide no value in regards to link value.
Your strategy of " to consolidate that time into 2.5-5hrs a week spent researching and writing a valuable, link-worthy, long-tail-rich post for the main blog and then promoting it in hopes of attracting natural links?"
Is much better and will pay off in the long run.
-
I should clarify that the EMD blogs are not attracting actual inbound links; their e-commerce site is doing fine.
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
Backlinks from different TLD's impact
Hi MOZ'ers, I'm wondering what the impact of different TLD backlinks is for same language pages. For example: we're on a website that has a German national TLD .de. We're earning backlinks and they are coming from .de as well as .ch (Switzerland) or .at (Austria) pages. What would be more desirable, and how big would you consider the difference? Looking forward to hearing your responses 🙂 Justen
Link Building | | Justen_H0 -
Angies List and Judy's Book and other sites
How much SEO weight do sites like Judy's Book or even Angie's List have. I do see the links in the linking reports but I am not sure if I should classify them as paid directories for inclusion. Also a second part of the question is do most of you still recommend the use of paid directories for link building? Yahoo Directory, BBB and so on?
Link Building | | runnerkik0 -
What impact do no follow links in blog comments have if any?
Hi I think we all agree that social network sites such as pintrest/instagram/twitter are all now no follow however I believe there is benefit in having them.... So I wondered if anyone had been experimenting with commenting on blogs which had no follow attributes and if there was any benefit in terms of improving your rankings?
Link Building | | RankStealer0 -
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 -
What is the best links exchange network?
Hello there, Does anybody know a good white hat link exchange network/program? Thanks Davys
Link Building | | Davys0 -
Played Out ? about BLOG COMMENTING LINKS
Want to get some thoughts if some of you still see significant (or have ever) results from blog comment links. Heard them all about why it's worth it, people see you, click, etc etc etc... Want anyone to share experience with this type of link building and if you guys think its worth it and has seo value.
Link Building | | PaulDylan0 -
My client's first press release...what to do?
My client is in the clothing, apparel tshirt industry geared toward a specific music icon. They have a few competitors, my spider senses tell me I will be able to get them great SERP standing, and place them in a very competitive position. Their company has been around for a while but has never written a press release. I had them craft a PR on the subject of cotton prices and how it has affected their business. A local paper will pick this up no prob. Where is the best place to go? It is not like it is breaking news, I dont want duplicate content, and I need an experts advice. I will provide more details if needed. Thank Mozzers!
Link Building | | Giggy1