Seriously How do you compete against paid links?

[ZATIVA2000]

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

[ZATIVA2000]

Thanks Matthew, the long tail stuff was not on my mind. But will definitely look at it, a little closer.

[Sean_Dawes]

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

[UnderRugSwept]

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.

[Matthew_Edgar]

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.