I don't get it

[ldnwickless]

Hi...I'm new here....not a professional SEO at all....just been teaching myself as much as I can about SEO on my own as I'm a small business owner desperately trying to make something out of herself. Could use your thoughts on this...please forgive me if this isn't your usual type of question you get here:

so...I've been going through all the suggestions for on page optimisation and researching competitors links given through this lovely SEO Moz pro account .  One competitor in particular....has spammed A LOT of sites...I think she's hired some company to do it for her.  There's article submissions that don't even sound like they are written by someone who speaks English and very low quality sites for back links including some with adult content...however she's got thousands of these links so she ranks extremely high on all keywords.  All her pages have very high keyword density and could be accused of keyword stuffing big time.  I put her website through the SEOmoz grader....she's got a C and I've got an A.  She's completely catered her site to Google not the customer and its obvious.  But other competitors in my product have started doing the same thing as this gal and low and behold their sites are popping up in google searches also.

Beginning to feel frustrated with my hours of efforts and wondering how I can compete with people like this when I'm trying to be a good girl with Google and focus on creating a great site.  My hits per day are increasing slowly, my Alexa rank (hoping this matters) is improving rapidly and you can actually find me on the google search when I couldn't before (I'm page 10 now yay)  so I don't feel like a total failure but still am wondering if hitting page 1 for my keywords will happen this lifetime.

Why does Google seem to reward people who go against all these countless books and resources on SEO I'm reading?   Could use any thoughts/suggestions you might have on this matter.

Thanks for your help. x

[EGOL]

EGOL----you mention a lot of your spammy links are gifts from blackhat....is there a way I can prevent this from happening to my site or is this unavoidable?

I don't know of any way to prevent that.  I know some people who try to block all robots except the good ones but that is only partially successful and still does not block other types of link hunters.

I do not believe that these links are harmful.  Instead they are natural and almost every busy site has a lot of them.  Google knows this and I don't think that they will penalize you for it.  Some of these links might be very slighly helpful.

[ldnwickless]

Thank you for your kindness in your responses...I was a bit apprehensive about posting in here as I'm not a pro and you guys have taken the fear out of asking for help another time...so thank you.  You've all earned major brownie points in my book.

Despite feeling frustrated yesterday....feeling hopeful today and wanting to move forward and kick some butt in internet land.  Going to use this as an opportunity to learn as much as I can....to learn from mistakes and make a great site.

I'd rather not post the competitor links just in case they happen to actually be on here---really doubt they are but just being careful of mentioning them just in case....but my link is www.ldnwicklesscandles.com.  I did everything myself like most of us do with this particular business (I told ya I was small business!) ...just used a blogging platform--squarespace.  If you type in the main product name into google you'll see my top 3-5 competitors.  Yep have set up a campaign, attached google analytics and working through everything trying to fix things that it has flagged and whatnot and teaching myself everything its saying so I understand and can move forward.

EGOL----you mention a lot of your spammy links are gifts from blackhat....is there a way I can prevent this from happening to my site or is this unavoidable?

Thanks again guys for the responses.....some lovely people in here!

[AWCthreads]

You've heard from two of the most knowledgeable and good men in Pro. One of the things I like most about this membership is not only the knowledge shared, but the character of the people who share.

My takeaway is this: keep doing what is best practice. Keep doing what is best in principle.

Along my journey I spent 11 years in the television news business. One evening during a news meeting one of the senior anchors said we need to spend less time worrying about what the other guy is doing and spend more time worrying about  what we are doing.

Do your research. Do your competitive analysis. Do best practice. Do what is best in principle and you'll have success.

[EGOL]

I bet you are looking at one of my sites.

When I go into Google webmaster tools it has over two million links!

Guess how many of them are spammy?  About two million.  Honest.

These are gifts from the blackhats.

You can't always assume that the links to a site are intentional.  In fact most of the links to all of my sites are junk links that I have had nothing to do with.

I'm trying to be a good girl with Google and focus on creating a great site.  My hits per day are increasing slowly

You are on the right track.  Hang in there!

[RobertFisher]

Christine,

First, don't allow frustration to get in the way of moving ahead. Mainly, because you don't know why they are ahead, yet. Don't assume it is due to spammy backlinks from spun articles. Now, if you are open to sharing some urls, that would make it easier for some of the mozzers to assist you. Short of that, I will give it a go:

Remember that you have a competitive advantage over your competitors........

Great, your on page is ahead of the competitor on page. That is a good start. Now, to get a feel for where you are and need to go, are you running a campaign in your pro account and have you picked out your top competitors to look at? Make sure you put in three as you will learn more.  
Have you attached Google Analytics to the campaign so that you can derive more actionable data? This can assist you a lot of ways, and one is in exploring different keywords, etc.

Next, go to this link and do not leave until you understand it Best Kept SEO Secret-SEOMoz toolset.

Remember, you don't know why they are ranking until you dig really deep. It is human nature (OK it is my nature) to look at where I am excelling over a competitor as opposed to what I need to do to improve myself and get ahead of them...forever.

Next, SEO is not a billboard ad on the freeway at rush hour. Single, call 800-find-Luv. Where once the billboard is up you will know if it works in a short amount of time. SEO is a labor that pays off incrementally. Those of us who do it for a living see everyday where a client is used to TV spending, print spending, PPC spending, etc. and having an instant result (unfortunately, they typically remember the good and forget the bad). Those clients want the same from SEO and must be managed if they are to win. Treat yourself as your client and manage the desire to want it now. Focus on building a foundation that will be strong. Good on page, good content, quality links, etc. You can get ahead.

Oh, yeah, the competitive advantage.....you are a mozzer, you are on the team. We will smoke 'em.

Best