Our main competitor is/was doing some Black Hat tactics....
-
Our main competitor Royal Cases, a custom case manufacturer and designer, has some really shady links and some dummy domains with duplicate content, yet they are ranking #1 organically for some of the industry's top search terms. Let me give you some examples.
First off, they have multiple dummy domains with the same exact same content as their main website. One of these is casescasescases.net. They have a couple more that are just as bad.
Secondly, their link profile is so shockingly black hat, I can't figure out why/how they haven't been deindexed or hit with a filter. I'll give you some examples. I ran a link analysis through Moz, and found multiple links from many websites that have absolutely NOTHING to do with custom cases. Here are a few of the linking domains: http://moneysourceonline.com/ ; www.lemons2lemonade.com/ ; http://jenaesboutique.com/ ; These are just a few. Now here is what I don't understand, when I go to explore the individual inbound links, I can't find the links to Royal anywhere on the pages. They have dozens from different pages on these obviously completely unrelated websites, but when you go to those pages, the links themselves are nowhere to be found. Yet, they are showing up as inbound links....I am lost.
Does anyone have any idea what in the world is going on here? Is there a way to report this to Google? Normally I wouldn't resort to this sort of "tattle-tailing" but this company has a history of scheming and just horrendous business practices, and they recently had to pay a large settlement for pirating software for their company.
-
Karma will Kome
-
We don't necessarily know what Google is "rewarding" them for. Organic rankings are sometimes not fair, but we just need to work at what believe will benefit us in the long-term. It's frustrating, labor-intensive and difficult. However, that is why it is also rewarding.
I see where Chris is coming from though, in the respect that (I believe) in focusing attention on creating sites with value as opposed to spending efforts elsewhere (he knows his stuff).
Good luck!
-
Now is there anything that can be done to report webmasters engaging in black hat seo? Would you guys even report it? Has anyone had any success reporting webspam to Google?
-
um–hum
-
??? I am confused by your response. I am not building links to my competitor, I am simply trying to figure out why Google has all of these golden rules of what not to do, but yet rewards the websites that use those black hat tactics with high organic rankings. I assure you, I take my job very seriously and I work very hard to make sure I am doing things the right way to get my business ahead of the competition. I reached out to the community of Moz for some insights, you don't need to be so condescending.
-
Further proof that black hat tactics work and work well. And they always will work. Google still can't really determine the quality of a link, whether it's natural, negative SEO, spam, etc.
-
So scheming and poor business practices makes your resorting to "tattle tailing" OK? I don't follow that logic. You're probably better off working on building new relationships for your own site than building links to your competitor.
-
"First off, they have multiple dummy domains with the same exact same content as their main website".
One of my competitors has been doing this exact thing and have been rewarded by ranking well in Google. I don't even think reporting web spam to Google even works. I can't understand how they haven't been deindexed or penalized for this.
-
Hahah I found that amusing as well. I guess they are just ranking because of their age...I just dont see why they are so high up with such a crappy website, bogus links, and so much duplicate content.
-
Am I the only one here that finds it hilarious that bsa.org gives companies that pirate software a followed link? Oh man, that is rich. The giggles keep coming.
It's an expensive link, but maybe your company should turn itself in for piracy?
They're only shooting themselves in the foot with the duplicate content.
The site's link profile doesn't look 'shockingly' black hat, though there are some shady spots. It looks like a lot of the newer links were made because the site was scraped. I've found quite a few, at random, that redirect to some Chinese ccTLD. That might be one of the reasons you can't find the link.
Besides, even crap links can possibly prop up a domain for a little while. (Not recommended) But a site may eventually get hit, or it will drop a bit after new low quality links ebb.
Maybe you just don't have the domain age... there's a bunch of things.
-
The links may have just been removed. Also, there rankings may/may not been influence by these tactics (they been around since 1998). As you know, many factors matter in organic ranking. You can make a report of webspam at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport.
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
-
What are Keywordbasket.com & Keyword-suggest-tool.com. Competitors have Tons of these
My client is in the Custom Scale Model industry. They build Custom Aircraft Models, Custom Ship Models and more. Their competitor's Backlinks reports have a Ton of metrics coming from: http://www.keywordbasket.com and https://www.keyword-suggest-tool.com There is line after line of these entries in the backlink report. As much as 50 line entries. what exactly is happening here? Are they manually using these tools to generate search entries and caching this data in the form of Backlinks? Please explain. is this a Gray Hat Tactic?
Moz Pro | | chachakhota0 -
/essions/essions keeps appending to 1 url on our website
Moz keeps giving us an error showing URL too long, when I investigate the offending url, I get this in the crawl. We can't work out what /essions is or why it's appending to the end of the url. Is this a Moz or website issue? <colgroup><col width="841"></colgroup>
Moz Pro | | NickWillWright
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |0 -
How can I see stats/reports from previous months
Hi, Simple question. Where can I see stats/reports from previous months from my campaigns? For example, I want to know if my Organic Traffic has improved in the last three months. Sorry, I'm new with this and couldn't find it anywhere :*( Thanks in advance. Cheers,
Moz Pro | | PacificFrank
Frank0 -
How to delete/redirect duplicate content
Hello, Our site thewealthymind(dot)com has a lot of duplicate content. How do you clear up duplicate content when there's a lot of it. The owners redid the site several times and didn't update the URLs. Thank you.
Moz Pro | | BobGW0 -
Are header directives such as X-Robots and Link supported by OSE/Linkscape/SEOMoz tools?
SEOMoz tool reports show lots of duplicate content where there are http header directives in place on pages to eliminate dupes. Googlebot obeys but Roger the robot doesn't. Are header directives such as X-Robots and Link (rel=canonical) supported by OSE/Linkscape? I'd like to put my mind and clients at ease. Thanks
Moz Pro | | Mediatorr0 -
Http://dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
Hello. http://dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com seems to be hanging all the pages. Most pages will not load for me. Even your contact page will not load. The forum seems OK. Alan
Moz Pro | | loopyal0 -
What is the difference between followed/no followed/ internal/ external links? And how do i improve them?
Am on a beginner level of SEO and as a pro member when i ran a report for my site i found some basic terms used. Can anyone please let me know what exactly is the difference between these terms and how important are they and how do i improve them?. or please let me know a source to find out.
Moz Pro | | NikhilM0 -
How are our competitors getting these inbound linking domains?
I'm currently managing SEO for my company's website, and I'm getting into link building for the first time. As part of the process, I'm using Open Site Explorer to see who's linking into our competitor sites, to get a better sense of what's available to us in our particular avenue of e-commerce. However, I'm finding that our competitors are getting inbound links from high-authority sites pretty far afield from selling jewelry - census.gov, parallels.com, warnerbros.com, and others. I try clicking through to these links, but each link starts a download of a file. I've seen .f4v, .7z, and .apk files listed as inbound links to our competitor. How is this happening? Again, I'm new to link building, so there may be a simple answer here, and if so I apologize for asking. However, this seems really strange to me, and a difficult situation to confront.
Moz Pro | | jozaksut0