Seriously How do you compete against paid links?
-
Hi everyone,
I would call myself a mid weight web marketer, I'm pretty savvy about knowing what you should do but how do your compete with someone who has clearly bought a massive amounts of links?
Do I suck it up, put my head down and do what I can.
Thanks
-
Thanks Matthew, the long tail stuff was not on my mind. But will definitely look at it, a little closer.
-
Put your head down and get some links in the good way. product reviews, service reviews, run some contests etc.
Then look over your site and your competitors. There always is some way to battle it. For example, if you are on page 1 and they are higher, are either of you using schema markup? Start thinking outside the box and thinking about CTR. You don't have to be #1 to start taking the bulk of the traffic. Make your result more attractive. Offer free shipping? Append it to the end of your title tag
-
I'm grappling with the same issue, and I just have to keep telling myself that with all the spam-attacking algorithm changes Google has been coming out with lately that those sites will be penalized soon.
You could always help Google along with it.
-
Sadly, I think that is part of what you have to do unless you want to risk the paid link route.
Usually in these situations, I've tried to find alternative ways to rank in areas that the competitor with paid links is ignoring. For example, targeting the long tail searches is usually a good option as many paid link setups narrow targeting only a few keywords. Another route is to build up up social proof (including reviews on local sites if it is a local business).
While there is still a lot of work to do in those areas, that work can at least see returns as compared to competing against somebody with thousands of paid links.
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
-
Does This Link Have Value?
Hi Mozzers, A client paid to publish a white paper, thinking that the link to the web site is beneficial. The link does redirect back to the web site, but is in a format that I've never seen: http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001YdyyLrzOQJxM87SJZkJYVbQKSdCmFpwqg1fuX3yqVqpGboUjdSaHv9IdW5HsQpgmvwOrg5N4T3DNHYV8e1UVe_YCua_XQCFykoSJvu1HzDyb-3x-aFcPU-ER-vwWxq4- Does this link have any value?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Best Back Links (paid/unpaid) Real Estate
Where can I get the best backlinks for Real Estate? I don't care if it is paid/unpaid. As long as it's not the kind of paid link Google would go after. Paid directories are A OK. Please help 🙂 Keywords: property management, vacation rentals, real estate, real estate agent, realtors
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Editorial links
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/01/17484 how do you get a link from an article like this where the author writes for a high domain authority site and just ends up listing a lot of links to different companies?
Link Building | | JohnWalker0 -
Is it a reciprocal Link ?
Hi, I found a great website and tought its content would be extremely interesting for our clients. I wrote about it on my blog (which has an URL with our website URL in it) , Facebook Page and even in Twitter. Meanwhile, I contacted them and offered to write an article about an interesting subject for them. They accepted and liked it so much that they decided to put 2 links for us on two of their pages. My questions are : Will this be a reciprocal link for Google? Did I make a mistake talking about them on my blog ? Did I «devaluate» the links they gave us?
Link Building | | Caru0 -
Outsource Link Building?
Currently we are in the process of creating a new ecommerce website. The site is not live yet, but we have done all of the planning and brainstorming and now are just doing all of the dirty work to get things ready to go live. We are devoting a lot of time on merchandising and developing the site, but currently do not have the resources to put together a good link building campaign in house. Does anyone have any recommendations for outsourcing the link building? The last thing we want is to hire someone that submits to bad neighborhoods and only directories. Is there a good, better, best scenario we should be looking at for pricing, ect? Obviously, like most who are starting a new site, cost is an issue at least until the site gives some sort of sign of life. Also, we are in the Pittsburgh area. We don't need to go local with this, but if there is someone particularly good in the area it would be nice. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Links and keywords
A rather simple question, If i have a paragraph and have the words cat, dog and bird would it be a good idea to have them all linking to the same url? or is better to have them all going to different urls?
Link Building | | Vetshopgroup0 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Link Farming
Are link farms still bad? I still am not sure about this question. I know that some people still do link farms. If they are bad, wouldn't a directory be considered a link farm? For instance I can get my site on a .EDU, but it will just be a list of links. Is that bad?
Link Building | | blackrino0