Competitor seo
-
This might be a really obvious question but... If building bad links (spam links) negatively impacts and even sometimes draws penalties, what is there to prevent others from building links like to my site to try and strip me of my rankings (like from my competitors)? I ran a quick link analysis and noticed a bunch of spam links pointing to my site the other day. I haven't been affected yet but it was only like two days ago that I saw those. Just curious. Is hostile seo going to be an emerging trend? If so it will be a really easy job. Just go to fiverr and buy 20 bucks worth of links...
-
Based on the industry or competition and the value of top rankings, I would be worried that a site could implement bad link building for competitor sites along with their normal good link building practice for their website. The goal is to get to the top spot.
-
I think the reason that it doesn't happen more often isn't so much that it can't work, but that:
(1) Doing it right takes a lot of time, money, and skill. If you don't want to leave a trail, it takes even more. Usually, the money is better spent elsewhere.
(2) It usually doesn't work. So, you're betting a lot on a small chance.
(3) Whether or not it works long-term, building links to your competitor will almost always give them a short-term ranking boost. So, it's not just time and money - it's likely to backfire.
Here's an analogy I just made up - let's say I don't like you, and I want to get you into trouble (for example - I don't actually dislike you
). I craft a plan to stuff your pockets full of counterfeit bills at the airport. IF TSA checks your pockets and IF they notice the money is counterfeit (two big ifs), you could go to jail. In the 99% likely chance they don't notice, though, I just gave my sworn enemy a few-hundred bucks. That's basically (3).
-
Very helpful info thanks! Not to delve into the dark side of the force, but if it was possible to knock somebody off for even a few days or weeks there are some companies that could really suffer. It sounds, however, like you are talking about reason #356473 for why building "good" links are so important. (not that we needed any more) Thanks, Mike
-
If I had more than just a few datapoints, I'd offer them up. To really prove something like this though you'd almost need to do a controlled study. And because there'd be some seriously qualitative judgments made, data alone couldn't prove the point.
-
Very interesting. This would be a very interesting post to read if someone was able to get some decent data. Only thing is, who is gonna give up rankings for some data?
-
It's really tough to prove, but I've seen 2 cases in the past few months where I'm pretty sure this tactic did work for a while. As other commenters have said, it's rare and Google generally won't penalize you for a few spammy links or an obvious attack, but it's not impossible.
I think it depends a lot on your base profile and authority, too. If you've got a solid set of links and decent trust, it's very tough for a competitor to just hit you with a few bad links and cause problems. If you're borderline and have been pushing the limits, a big influx of spammy links could push you over the edge. I've had SEOs actually suggest this tactic to me.
Typically, these efforts are half-assed, for lack of a better word. It's good to monitor and be aware of the problem, but you'll often find these are low-quality links that just get devalued, and the competitor stops building them after a couple of days. In that case, you're 98%+ likely to be fine. If you see a concerted effort, though, over a period of time, you may want to dig deeper.
-
I've noticed that practice with one of my clients however although their was a very brief glitch in their rankings it soon returned to normal. I'd have to agree with Brent that they would need to create a huge number of links that swamp your links to really make any long term difference, and if they are prepared to do that they would be better off spending the time focusing on building quality links for their own site / client.
-
It would have to be a significant amount of bad links coming in. And this would have to be an ongoing practice from the competition to do something like this.
-
Well... if you build more junk links than quality links to your competitor they will eventually lose rank and there is not much they can do about that. It's really not that hard to game Google after all.
-
Hello Michael,
Once I watched Rand talking about this, that maybe spam is not the worst thing that happens.
People sending bad links to you doesn't get your site in bad sheets!
Why? Because Google threats them giving a low value, like a nofollow link.
Exactly for this kind of anti-ethical things.
In fact, the competitor could be making for you a low value link building!
So you should concern about building good links, to make it right.
Check this really good Whiteboard Friday!
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/im-being-outranked-by-a-spammer-whiteboard-friday
Hope it helped!
=]
-
I believe the practice of pointing negative backlinks to a site has been in use for quite some time now. The prevalence has remained somewhat low, however, due to the relative difficulty of obtaining the quantity of links required to sufficiently negatively impact rank of a competitor. I've seen this practice used as a form of ORM to decrease rank of negative press.
As it gets easier to game this system, I'd anticipate Google making an algorithmic change to consider the sudden building of low-quality or spam-identified links. I'd expect that they'd be ignored rather than used to determine rank or quality. How this would effect IP neighborhood metrics, however, I don't know.
While I can't substantiate anything meaningful with the data I've seen thusfar, I will go as far as to say I'm pretty sure Google already takes this into account on some level, negating any negative passed. Almost like automatically assigning a nofollow. It's just gut though.
-
Generally speaking if you have some sapm links it will not hurt you, google may just discount them. The only time it will hurt you in my opinion is if that is the main tactic you are using and its in alot of links and your not doing quality work as well.
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
-
SEO Consulting Agency for Strategy and Link Removal
We need your guidance on SEO Agency we can consult for strategy planning for our websites. We received manual Partial penalty on both domain few months back and since then have seen tremendous fall in rankings for both of the domains. Have been trying to remove all spam links we found out of links we got from webmasters and disavow one's we were not able to get removed. But yet request for penalty removal not accepted. Would appreciate your concern on helping us out if we can take help of some agency for aggressively getting our spam links removed and plan for a better strategy to improve our rankings. Please suggest one of the best in this domain we could reach.
Link Building | | amitjain0 -
Negative SEO
I have a client who is being spammed really bad with links. Using porn keywords and keyword with porn in anchor text with the site URL. Anyone had experience with this?
Link Building | | ToddFosterSEO0 -
Article submission web-sites and SEO
Does article submission web-sites have any impact to SEO in these days? There are a lot of good/not so good article submission databases, but does it really matter if you spend a time to write unique articles for them? I mean, is it a good way for link-building, or should I spend more time for other parts of SEO? There are also a special websites (for example SubmitYourArticle) which automate this process, does it make sense to use this services? Alternates? Lots of questions… Update Sorry, I found some good answers only after that I posted this question.
Link Building | | ditoroin0 -
How do you use a blog to help SEO.
Hi, So you launch a blog on your website, fill it with lots of great content and update weekly with more great content. From what I know your looking to gain 2 things! 1. Users linking back to your blog and 2. Sharing the content on social networks. Building up social lists on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc so when you do post something new you have a hub of users to help push your post by sharing it on social networks which should also help to generate more backlinks. Is this the main purpose of a blog for SEO? Would anything else apart from the above effect the SEO for the site? Maybe the freshness of content also has a positive impact! Also if your blog is picking up lots of links, for this example lets say 100 links a month and the rest of the site outside of the blog is picking up 10 a month will the blogs power of picking up links effect the rest of the sites rankings, would you need to anchor text link out of the posts in the blog to make the most out of it? Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Finding competitor's 301's
Is there a way to find out what domains a competitor has 301'd to their main site? I am wondering if a competitor has hidden back links using a 301'd site.
Link Building | | EugeneF0 -
Press Releases for seo links?
With panda etc is publishing Press Releases with prweb etc a strong seo method of getting good links form strong domains?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Which is better for SEO Facebook or Twitter?
If you could choose between a tweet from an influencer or a post from a Facebook fan "influencer"? Which would you choose?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline0 -
Is there a way to leverage paid advertisements placed in industry specific publications to get SEO benefits?
Is there a way to leverage paid advertisements placed in industry specific publications to get SEO benefits? I am looking to advertise in publications like trade journals or magazines, but want to also reap SEO benefits by getting a link. So I am avoiding buying banner ads, but instead trying to find opportunities for links from editorial mentions, quality article or editorial submissions, etc. Advice on the link proposition, or best way to approach editors, please? Many of these publications are traditional print publications, and their sites are really seo'd. Thanks.
Link Building | | larahill0