Links in the independent.co.uk
-
So I was doing some research in OSE and come across links in different articles on the independent.co.uk. There are more than three but I have included three below. Do a find for "blinds" on the articles.
What I find interesting is that each article has a different author. Which probably rules out a friend doing a favour. As far as I can see, of all the many different types of advertising programmes the Independent has, this is not one of them. Which begs the question, how are they getting these links?
What do you think?
-
Thanks Ryan, my "conspiracy theory radar" lit up when I come across those links.
I think i'll call the newspaper today.
-
Kevin,
It took me a bit but now I understand your concern. Each of the three listed articles uses "blinds" as anchor text to provide a link to http://www.roller-blinds-direct.co.uk/.
It is definitely odd. As you mentioned, the articles are written by different authors. I did a search of the site and found other articles with the term "blinds" used where there is no link involved. I was curious to determine if a site wide replacement was being used for the term. That is not the case.
What is also odd is the context is not related to window blinds in each case.
Use #1 "The blinds were down at the Ashcroft home" - In this instance at least the reference is to window blinds.
Use #2 "the elegance of the crinum's swan-necked trumpet flowers blinds you to any fault in the foliage department." - The reference has nothing to do with window blinds and is clearly an inappropriate use of text linking.
To answer your question, yes it is suspicious. It is possible, but unlikely, the site is selling links in this manner intentionally. It is far more likely that a single employee with access has made these changes under the table.
If this is a competitor you can proceed by notifying Google you suspect the site of buying links and offer the evidence. I would suggest making it a bit clearer by stating specifically the term "blinds" is being used as anchor text within the following articles even when the usage has no relation to window blocks and is taken out of context. Google may find other similar issues on the site and penalize the site's links.
Another approach you can take is to contact the newspaper directly. I would suggest not using the website as the person who receives your report may also be the one selling the links.
The above is all based on adopting the belief that your view is correct. Personally I do agree with you completely. Others may view us as conspiracy theorists
Good luck.
-
It's the website of a major UK national broadsheet newspaper Ryan. I'm not doubting the quality of the website.
The links are not relevant to the discussion, it would not be classed as a further reading resource.
Am I the only one who finds these links strange?
-
The site seems quite respectable with an impressive DA of 90, and over 55k facebook fans.
I looked at the first article. It is an in depth article written 2 years ago by an award-winning author who seems to have respectable credentials. This particular page has 19 likes, 9 tweets and OSE shows a total of 5 links which share identical anchor text, apparently from the article's title.
The second and third article only show 1 linking domain each.
The main site is alexa ranked in the top 1000 of all site world wide. At a glance these links appear completely natural to me.
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
-
Why are my paid vendors not showing on our links?
We pay a hefty amount to site that claim to bring in leads. ie... Cars.com, Edmunds.com, Cargurus, and I also have my dCard (digital business cards) with links to our URL. Why aren't they showing on our PA or DA? Could it be our web host? We have on;y 2 options for web hosts per Acura (a compliance thing) Please help with any thoughts or answers to this. I see many other dealers with strong links who use the same companies. Our site is http://findlayacura.com and thank you for any help. We appreciate it greatly.
Competitive Research | | ModernPallets0 -
Decent domain authority score with no links other than their own linking back to them. How is that possible?
Hello everyone I just spotted the following 'abnormality' while doing a little link analysis with Open Search Explorer. I checked out a site that has a domain authority score of 35, when the only domain linking back to them is ''the site itself'. They happen to have a domain authority of 35 themselves, but no other links pointing back to them apart from their own and yet they have the same authority as other sites with twice the amount of content and an actual backlink profile. How is that possible? 🙂 Links and authority scores, stills baffles me...
Competitive Research | | Hermski0 -
Finding new links to site
Is there a way to find sites that linked to my site during a certain time period? Say in the past 2 weeks or from March 1-March 15th ?
Competitive Research | | priceseo0 -
C Block Links in Open Explorer
Hi there, Wondering if anyone can help me with understanding the advanced reports in Open Explorer. I'm looking to create a list of competitors links to go after but don't want to create loads of links from the same c blocks for blog posts, articles etc. In open explorer it says my competitor has 451 linking C Blocks but when i download csv's using advanced reports with the filter of 'links that come from the same C block', the csv only has 26 links. The same happened with the filter 'from the same ip address'. How can i download and analyse the links so I can see all the linking C blocks and know which sites I want to use and which ones I want to avoid? Thanks, Ross
Competitive Research | | Will_Craig1 -
Page Linking Root Domains vs Root Domain Linking Root Domains
Hi all, I am new on seomoz and I am not getting which is the difference between "Page Linking Root Domains" and "Root Domain Linking Root Domains". Could anyone please give me a clear explanation? An example would be excellent. Thank you Christine.
Competitive Research | | Cristina-Candin0 -
Search shows site links, but not hyperlinked?
2 of our competitors on Google have site links show in their results which brings you to that specific page. In our listing we show up with the same results a few spots behind them with our site links visible showing very similar content, but are not actually hyper linked. Is there a way to fix the issue and let people actually be able to click on our site links instead of just reading them?
Competitive Research | | sknott0 -
Link Attack
Here is an interesting situation. Overnight SEOMoz is now reporting about 1.1 million new backlinks to my site. The links look like they were added in March of 2011 and they are all on porn sites and link back to me with the words like "Indian Sex", "Sex Bathe", and "insex." This appears to be yet another attack on my site and it looks like it happened right before the April Panda update that hosed me. As an example of one of the pages you can look at seapotentialdifference.com/inurlife/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3081 and look for the link for Indian Sex. They linked to my forum and not the home page. At the same time SEOMoz discovered these links my DA dropped from 62 to 58. I'm wondering if anyone thinks these issues are connected. More importantly, does anyone have a suggestion on how to deal with this? For some reason the PA and DA of the porn site pages is above 70. This will probably be an ongoing battle for me since I am a journalist that covers the debt relief world and scammers don't like for me to expose them in an effort to protect consumers.
Competitive Research | | rockpaper0 -
My client has shown me a similar site, though not a competitor. He wants to know what sites they are linked from that give them such a good Google rank for certain kewords. Can SEOMoz tell me this?
When using google.com.au and searching for "travel to france", www.frenchtravel.com.au is the 3rd organic result. (the 1st two are not travel businesses, they are non profit travel guides) My client, who runs www.visituk.com.au, an Australian site that organises tours of the UK, said "so we just need to add these sort of words to the site?" I said, yes, but it doesn't end there. The real task is to have a link to your site on other sites surrounded with the words "travel" and "UK". He asked if he could see a list of the sites the french site was being referred by relevant to the search phrase. Is there an SEOmoz tool for this? Or is there another way I can generate that list? Thanks Simon
Competitive Research | | electrik0