Opinion regarding SEO Sabotage
-
Hello Mozcommunity,
I would like opinions regarding potential spammy inbound links from others .
In theory you would want excellent useful content on your site that other web properties would link to in a natural way..link bait.
But what if links were pointing to your site with malicious intent. For example a competitor bombs yours site with spammy/black hat links.
This is clearly a dilemma for search engines since anyone can link to your site...even though you can block incoming with .access I don't believe many smaller in-house seo teams (or do it yourself small business owners) use Google analytics to routinely monitor referring sources.
-
Hey Will,
Very cool to see you dropping by on the Q&A
Sha
-
Will thanks I was trying to give you the "good answer" tag but I guess i can only use three.
Can you name examples of "sadly, often it was the company itself"...just kidding.
-
Sha, great article thanks for posting...
-
There's been a lot of controversy back and forth on this. I have definitely seen sites get hurt by link profiles that competitors could have built (sadly, often it was the company itself). However - I have only seen this for pretty weak sites (as others have said). I have not yet seen a case where a strong site with a natural link profile got hurt by competitors. I wouldn't spend an awful lot of time worrying about it.
-
The less quality natural links you have the easier it is for a competitor to sabotage you. Brand new sites can definitely be sabotaged, but well established sites are almost impossible to take down because it's a good to bad incoming link ratio. Good SEO's always keep an eye on who is linking to them for this reason and vet their incoming links on a monthly or so basis.
-
Hi John,
I would suggest reading this recent post from Justin Briggs to understand how Search engines identify spammy links and why they will not hurt you if your site has a strong natural link profile. Better Understanding Link-Based Spam Analysis Techniques.
Sha
-
In this case you may want to shoot Google a note with some examples and see what they say. At the very least you'll have some documentation that it was something you were worried about.
-
It can't be that easy, otherwise everyone (well maybe not everyone) would be doing it. Google's official line on this has always been that inbound links from bad sites can't hurt you. I'd like to believe that, we all would. But this is still a grey area and there's enough contradictory evidence out there. Take this for example :
http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-notifications-for-bad-links-pointing-at-your-site-84265
Near the end of the Google notification it says "If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request".
How does Google know which of your inbound links you were "unable to control" ?
-
I wondered about this too, we have noticed tragic coming from some very spammy websites, and have no idea why they linked to us.
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
-
Link building | SEO Agency Cardiff
Hello, we have been link-building to the home page for some time now. We believe that we have better on-page SEO than some of our direct competitors. We want to rank for “SEO Agency Cardiff,” but despite building backlinks, building Nap, and writing content marketing, it will not get onto the first page of Google. Despite hundreds of hours spent on it, and all SEO reports saying we are better than some of the companies on there, are there suggestions as to what our agency could be missing? We would be grateful for any SEO advice, as we cant get it onto the first page of Google, despite hundreds of hours, trying get on Google for this keyword "SEO agency Cardiff".
Link Building | | sarahwalsh0 -
Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency
Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
Link Building | | wonderd24
Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃
"1 -
How to choose a third party agency to help with linking building / SEO strategy?
Hi all, we've not been link building for some time now as we are a small team and been concentrating on other things, such as getting our new look site built and implementing Magento etc. We've historically used external companies to help with link building & SEO... some experience has been good, some bad. Does any one have any suggestions on how a small company can try to choose a decent external company that can help with SEO strategies? There are a lot of options, a LOT of rubbish and a lot of very expensive large agencies that are well out side of our budget (or for a "small" fee simply produce a standardised report on "how to improve your SEO" that can basically be read on the net). We've tried local, smaller companies in order to limit our options .... but that didn't go well either. Any suggestions welcomed. Next is where / how to weight our expenditure and / or our SEO time. Should it be 50% gaining external links (be it by what ever means such as social, checking out where competitiors have links and chasing those possibilities etc) and then 50% internal page SEO, blog content creation, internal linking etc? Thanks again.
Link Building | | jasef0 -
Seo industry for seasonal items
Just wondering what type of link building people do for seasonal sites take http://www.sukkahworld.com or http://www.wreathsgalore.com as an example Out of season nobody wants to talk about a Christmas wreath. Do you just a get links off topic or focus on on site content and then get all your links during your season?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
SEO Drop rename pages
Some of key product pages have dropped due to what I think is overused anchor text. Can we rename them, and start again?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Google Webmaster Tools Message regarding unnatural links - how to respond
I acquired a small website which was subsequently hit by Google Panda for unnatural links. Since the previous owner was involved in the link building, I'm not sure what to look for. Here's the message I received from Google: ** Message from Google ** "We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass pagerank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. ** End Message from Google ** I'm not sure how to locate "unnatural links" when there are so many pointing to the site. For example, are there specific domains I should look for that are known offenders? Or, should I look for sites that are using obvious anchor text that seems orchestrated? Any insights would be appreciated on creating an action plan. Jerry
Link Building | | JerryCharles0 -
LinkedIn SEO boost?
Should I create a LinkedIn page for my website? We teach english lessons by skype and I am not sure if it is worth it to create a company on LinkedIn and link to it from my site? Will that get me some good SEO points? Additionally I don't want to fork over 20$ to LinkedIn if I don't have to. Thank you dudes!
Link Building | | Blobe0 -
What are the best tactics for SEO on a brand new site?
What is on everyones to do list when starting SEO work on a brand new site that has had no SEO work done in the past?
Link Building | | MediaBazooka0