Spam Link Building Discovered - What would you do?
-
Hi Mozers,
After investigating our no 1 competitor we have discovered their 87k back links comparing to ours 1k. After dipper investigations we discovered that all the back links are gained by the websites created by themselves.
So what they did is - they had purchased 10+ domains and created 10+ new websites that are identical as their original .com version. EVERY SINGLE LINK on these 'new' websites link to their .com version. The 'New' websites are not indexed.
Literally each of us can do the same and gain thousands of back links, but isn't it violating google's policy?
What are your thought on it?
(What is the best practice to report the violation of google's policy to Google?)
Best regards,
Lana
-
Thank you for your time Egol. According to Moz our website is outranking my competitor's website in all other metrics other than total external links. Hope we will outrank them on google as well
And thank you Josh and Highland for sharing your thoughts, it was really helpful.
-
I always remind people that Black Hat techniques like this can succeed in the short term but seldom produce the desired result in the long term. Google has a small army of highly paid smart people who want to catch things like this (see Panda, Penguin, etc). When Google does catch this (assuming they haven't already) they will almost certainly face some sort of penalty.
My bet is they're spending the newness of their sites on this technique (a new site has no rank but no penalties either). It probably gives some initial boost until Google catches on with their slower systems (Panda and Penguin are both slow in refreshing). A spam report to Google might draw a manual penalty to the main site but, as Egol said, this is a lot of wasted time and effort on their part.
-
I am more amused than bothered by competitors who do this. Those "manufactured websites" do not have any links into them from other legitimate sites, so they have no link power to pass to the competitor's main site. This activity has zero benefit in my opinion. If these competitors have good rankings, I believe that it must come from other things that they are doing.
I hope that all of my competitors spend at least 50% of their development budgets on this activity. I have no fear of it. In addition to being a waste of their time, I think that doing this can damage their main website's ability to rank.
-
Thank you for the respond Egol,
Right, but original .com version is not deindexed (!?) and that is the issue at the first place. They are manufacturing links and it works for a long time now. Their .com website still ranks high.
As you have said 'Google has been killing one of those pages or the entire site for a long time' - killing ONE of those pages or sites is not sufficient enough. What about the original page/site which still ranks? Nobody cares for their duplicate websites being deindexed.
Than you have said 'In the long run you still only have one site, sometimes it will be damaged by these efforts.' - well, the one website which ranks is all they need :). If 'sometimes' will be damaged, than it still means that it is OK to manufacture links by duplicating website, and take the risk to 'maybe' become deindexed.
Theoretically every website owner can create duplicate websites and manufacture tons of back links. It makes the white hat link building pointless. If you ask me this is very much violating google's policy and they should be reported. Otherwise, why don't all of us do the same!?
It is irritating to see someone acting spammy getting better rankings...
-
"Manufactured links" on "duplicate websites" have been discounted by Google for at least 15 years. If you build an identical website and link from Identical Page A to Identical Page B, Google has been killing one of those pages or the entire site for a long time. In the long run you still only have one site, sometimes it will be damaged by these efforts.
If these people were competing against me, I would enjoy seeing them buy a few more domains and put time into tossing up identical sites. No need to report them. Google has deindexed these "New" websites.
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
-
Whats the Best Link Building Strategy for News Sites
Hello, I have a news portal and l am working with 3 editors, they are writing 3-5 daily unique news articles. I would like to know if whats the best link building strategy for news sites that l need to keep getting links from? What sort of sites l should find links for best link building? Please inform me. thanks.
Link Building | | rk19800 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Are Links/Resources pages considered spam?
I'm dabbling with link building in a non link-happy industry, traffic safety (IE Traffic cones, barricades, safety vests, etc...). We currently are doing #RCS in terms of giveaways for college students as well as discounts in a wider EDU Outreach campaign as well as legitimate guest posting. I have started to use Link Prospector, and got a list of links/resources pages that we can get info from. I found some great links through here, including ways to get links from higher-profile .gov domains, but was wondering if it is worth it to go after the high(er) quality links/resources pages. By higher quality, I usually set a floor of a DA 25-30 and have a limited amount of external links per page. These would be for branded keywords (IE the company name/domain) and not exact match anchor text. I'd really like to see how other SEOs feel about this. Thanks Zachary Russell President, ProTech Internet Group
Link Building | | Zachary_Russell1 -
Do I ditch the link building and risk the drop?
I am currently on top of SERPS but am worried about some of the links being built by my seo company. We add loads of content to the site which I think is fine. We have somebody working on the on page and tech side of things which I think is fine. However I am still paying an seo company which basically builds links for me. Because I am in top spot for many terms I am nervous to turn it off. However I am also nervous that one day I will wake up and we will have been penalized! They do not build many links and they are convinced that google still want to see a varied link profile. If I stop paying then some of the ‘better’ or higher PR sites will no longer have a link to my site and will therefore drop off. We do have a great site with great content so I think we do many things well but I am nervous that these paid for links will be the death of me if I am not careful. The question is do I get rid of the link building and risk the drop? Or is a small amount of links just to keep the link profile looking Ok and not overdoing it the right move? Thanks a lot. Dave
Link Building | | draeseo0 -
Link Building for relaunched & newly designed site
Hey all, Next week we are relaunching our brand spankin' new site. It's a major overhaul of our existing site from both a brand, design, and identity point of view. As part of the relaunch we will be reaching out to journalists in our niche with PR, and also doing a series of guest posts. But I'm wondering about other link building opportunities around newly redesigned websites. I have a list of about 2 dozen design + CSS galleries to submit to. Can you recommend other sources? I'm especially interested in sites that review web design, etc... Thanks. C.
Link Building | | cmoylan1 -
Link Building Speed
Hello everyone, This is my first day at SEOMOZ and I have already searched the forum for an answer to my question with no luck. How do I work out the pace at which I should be building links? Everyone talks about the importance of makling link building seem natural/organic, but how xactly do you go about this? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ups0 -
High Domain Authority Even Though It has spam links to it...?
I own a domain that can provide links to my website, but it seems to have picked up a lot of spammy links - 2000+ linking domains. SeoMoz toolbar still gives it a domain authority of 66. Should I use the domain to link to my site? Or will it have a negative impact?
Link Building | | barnst0 -
Link Building Features/Tutorials
I am previewing this software and am getting a little lost in its features. I am really looking for something that will help me identify link prospects, filter out the low-authority domains, and organize this information into an actionable list. Can anyone point me to resources (tutorials, etc.) on how to do that with this software? Which tools should I be using and how can I use them to reach these goals?
Link Building | | Falconberg0