Does Google Reward Bad Links in Some Industries?
-
This week I've been diving into competitive research again for several clients in different industries, and unless the data in Open Site Explorer is wrong, it really does appear that Google continues to reward sites with unnatural links in certain industries, especially industries that are less tech-savvy (agriculture, finance, manual labor).
I've combed through all the links carefully, to ensure there aren't some secret high-quality links lurking, and for some of these sites that are showing up in the top ten for search they do not even one real, high-quality link.
Also, their onsite optimization is often way over the top and the user experience is nothing less than nauseating.
Could it be a MozScape issue, or does Google continue to reward terrible sites and link structures in certain industries?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
-
This is my opinion too. There was a time when this was acceptable and essentially their black hat methods have been grandfathered into the system. However if you tried to it in the present you would be held back. I have a competitor that was hit on long tail terms but still ranks for the most competitive phrases. Needless to say he upped his PPC in order to make up for frivolous phrases but his traffic is still besting me because he has the most obvious search phrases at number one.
-
That's definitely true, and then there all those people who got their livelihoods destroyed by Panda & Penguin because of the shady techniques that were working for "years". It's up to each individual to make whatever choice they want, so long as they understand the risks.
-
Your response is, strictly speaking, the right one.
But I've seen people in my industry "black hat" their way to the top spots and stay there for years.
It's difficult telling people to play it by the book when lower rankings equal lower revenue equals people's livelihoods at stake. Just my two pennies' worth.
-
Just point them to all the business owners posting horror stories about Penguin, how their rankings have dropped and their businesses are dying, how they are now paying money to remove links that they originally paid to build, the long wait for reconsideration requests while their profits are shrinking...
It's a long term vs short term strategy. If your clients want black hat links, make sure they understand the risks, and get it in writing in case the sh*t hits the fan
-
Yeah, Google isn't perfect, it doesn't always detect all the spam sites. And spam can rank well for YEARS before Google catches onto it, that's what it was like before Panda & Penguin rolled out. But if it's a keyword that gets a lot of searches, Google will eventually figure it out.
One strategy that can work is to use grey hat tactics to get good rankings in Google, and then leverage that ranking position & traffic to get higher quality links. This can help cement your rankings so that once the low value links get devalued, you still rank well because of all the quality links you acquired afterwards.
Another tactic is to build an intermediary layer between the spam links and your main site. This way, even if the sites you link to get penalized, you have a buffer site insulating your main one. You can also create multiple layers of buffers to reduce your risk of being penalized.
Anyway, these are all things I would never do with a client site, but you should give it a try if you want to learn more about greyhat/blackhat tactics
-
We're not planning on mimicking these strategies at all, it's just difficult to explain to a client why their competitors, with terrible sites and spammy link profiles, are at the top of the SERPs. And, as I mention below, many of these sites have risen to the top after Penguin with no apparent redeeming qualities. We'll keep doing what we do and keep our fingers crossed that white-hat SEO really will prevail!
-
I agree that it's worth the long-term investment, but we've actually seen that some sites, that fairly recently have dumped a ton of effort into link spam, suddenly surge in the rankings. Needless to say, our clients begin to doubt our white-hat strategies!
-
I'm in real estate. I've seen sites get to No1 (and stay there) with some of the spammiest link profiles imaginable -- low-rent directories, blog comments, paid links from obvious link-brokers, you name it. It's frustrating, to say the least.
-
Great answer as usual Takeshi.
The only thing I might add, is you should also evaluate the industry leaders. If they are using grey / black hat tricks then you maybe in an industry that needs a real seo leader. Recently I have seen this problem with certain industries like payday loans. There maybe an opportunity here for somebody with strong seo skills and white hat knowledge backed by solid content and great developers to produce a site that crushes it. Thus causing the industry to follow suit and clean up its act, when that happens those using black / grey hat ticks will be decimated.
-
First of all, OSE and other link crawlers provide an incomplete picture of a site's backlinks because no site has the resources that Google does. So OSE could be missing some high quality backlinks, although it's unlikely. You could try comparing data sets with other crawlers such as MajesticSEO and AHREFS.
As far as low quality links helping rankings, yes, black hat and grey hat tactics still work. Many tactics are more difficult to pull off thanks to updates like Penguin, and black hat sites tend to get burned once Google catches onto them, but they can definitely work in the short term.
I would caution against copying low quality links from a competitor, because they can burn you in the long run. Only expose your client to as much risk as they are willing to take on. You should be able to outrank them using other methods.
Here is a great list: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
-
I think they got their rankings from doing old SEO techniques back in the days were some practices weren't penalized. I'm sure there will be a time when Google bot finds out they have unnatural/low quality links and penalize them and lose ranking.
Don't let that discourage you. I'm sure many of us come across this scenario very frequently. All I can say to you is don't join the dark side, be patient and continue working on your white hat SEO and creating great content and high quality backlinks. It's worth it and your effort will be rewarded eventually.
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
-
I have 702 'No-Index' warnings. Is this bad?
Moz has giving me 702 'No-Indexed Meta-descriptions' warnings. My page has quite a bit of product pages as it is a commercial chemical company which sells cleaning products for restaurants, hospitals, etc. Im wondering if this is effecting my site negatively?
Moz Pro | | ACSmt0 -
Report not showing all links
I am trying to pull the back link report for the following URL www.hotscripts.com/category/scripts/php/scripts-programs/image-galleries/ OSE shows a total of 589 back links. When i download the report all I get in excel is 207. Why?
Moz Pro | | inetteam1 -
Google Hiding Indexed Pages from SERPS?
Trying to troubleshoot an issue with one of our websites and noticed a weird discrepancy. Our site should only have 3 pages in the index. The main landing page with a contact form and two policy pages, yet google reports over 1,100 pages (that part is not a mystery, I know where they are coming from.....multi site installations of popular CMS's leave much to be desired in actually separating websites) Here is a screen shot showing the results of the site command: http://www.diigo.com/item/image/2jing/oseh I have set my search settings to show 100 (the max number of results) results per page. Everything is fine until I get to page three where I get the standard "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 122 already displayed." But wait a second, I clicked on page three, now there are only two pages of results and the number of results reported has dropped to 122 http://www.diigo.com/item/image/2jing/r8c9 When I click on the "show omitted results" I do get some more results, and the returned results jumps back up to 1,100. However I only get three pages of results. And when I click on the last page the number of results returned changes to 205 http://www.diigo.com/item/image/2jing/jd4h Is this a difference between indexes (same thing happens when I turn instant search back on, Shows over 1,100 results but when I get to the last page of results it changes to 205). Any other way of getting this info? I am trying to go in and identify how these pages are being generated, but I have to know what ones are showing up in the index for that to happen. Only being able to access 1/5th of the pages indexed is not cool. Anyone have any idea about this or experience with it? For reference I was going through with SEOmoz's excellent toolbar and exporting the results to csv (using the Mozilla plugin). I guess google doesn't like people doing that so maybe this is a way to protect against scraping by only showing limited results in the Site: command. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | prima-2535090 -
Competitive Link Finder
Hi, just wondering if I am the only one who is not having much luck lately using the Competitive Link Finder . In the past it has worked pretty well. But as of the past week or so, it has only returned on link. I know there are many of them which should be found. Anyway, just curious if I am solo with this issue.
Moz Pro | | APICDA0 -
Competitive Link finder tool
I tried to use competitive link finder tool. it says that it will identify 10 most important links that my competitor get that I do not. The results that I get are inconsistent with linkscape tool. For example my competitor has a link on www lawyer-links dot info Google rank of that site is 1. Is that really one of their most important links?
Moz Pro | | SirMax0 -
How does moztrust compare with google page rank?
I have a trial Seomoz membership. I've been comparing my site to some of the competitor websites and Im confused about the moztrust vs google page rank. For instance some of my competitors have higher moztrust but my site has a higher google page rank. Isn't moztrust meant to duplicate google pagerank?? Why would these vary so much?
Moz Pro | | blac67890 -
Will SEOmoz improve my google ranking?
I want to know iwll SEOmoz improve my google ranking. will they improve my keywords.
Moz Pro | | imusmanbutt0 -
Forum posting link building
Is answering questions on yahoo answers and forums genuine link building opportunity? I dont mean spamming much, but being a genuine member of the forums
Moz Pro | | CompleteOffice0