Competitors buying dodgy backlinks

[aflat9]

I have noticed one of my competitors comes up for the keywords I am planning to target so I checked their backlinks and they have thousands from dodgy sites (obviously not done properly).

They are from Russian gambling sites, sites about men's health and various other weird, albeit strangely authoritative websites (but they're conveyancers - this would never happen).

I have reported them to Google, but does anyone have any experience of reporting obviously dodgy backlinks? Will Google look into it properly?

 

[fisicx]

Google will just be ignoring these links anyway so just let them get on with it. If Googlev decides enough is enough their ranking will tank and you can take over the top spot. But you need to fix the site first, Google isn't going to reward you until you have the right content and internal linking in place.

 

[webgeek]

I would not bet my website success on Google ignoring paid links and other WMT violating links.

If Google was ignoring links then why would they tag inbound links to your site with the 'disavow' attribute? That attribute would only make sense in a world where links can carry negative weight. After all, if it carried positive or neutral only, then it would be redundant and have 0 value whatsoever. Google would not invest in tagging/storing/scoring links for no reason - they're not that dumb/wasteful.

Read the below and check out the podcast. These came after Penguin 4.0/real-time....

http://searchengineland.com/googles-link-labels-260892


IMHO, reporting them a couple of times from 1+ accounts is one way to draw a manual review to the site. With those kind of backlinks in their profile, unless it's viewed as a negative SEO attack by a competitor, they'd likely be drawing some fire.

However, you don't need to beat the site because of it's powerful paid links - you need to beat it because of its content and optimisation. Hopefully, you've abandoned the plan of tons of long tail pages which aren't linked in the main nav and are moving to using valuable, authoritative content, social mentions and an occasional quality backlink as your way forward instead.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Why focus on the negativity of reporting competitors and spend your energy on that? Focus on your own website - building a great user experience and creating fantastic content.

 

[Elliottc26]

You also have to be careful in assuming that these links were intentionally sought. I have 16,000+ links to my site courtesy of UK Business Forums getting scraped and my signature here being placed on random sites by hackers - so you disavow. Google ignores these also.

 

[Clinton]

I would advise to not bother with disavow. Google is so full of bullsh*t you should ignore most of what they say.

@aflat9 , if your competitor has bought dodgy links, and that's working, buy more dodgy links than he has. Simple!

I'm struggling to understand your problem.

 

[webgeek]

You also have to be careful in assuming that these links were intentionally sought.

I'd be willing to wager that those are intentional paid links, based on the specifics given by the OP.

 

[StevePoster]

Too much focus on competitors will only waste your time because most of the time their method sucks and you'll find out that tailing them only ruin your effort instead of thinking on how you can provide more for your target users.

 

[Dmitri Fantastic]

I hate to oppose guys, but for what I've read many of you are blinded by Google propaganda.. Truth is, even dodgy links can work. I myself work in some really competitive niches and I can tell you for sure that there are people ranking with hundreds of Brasil, Congo, Afghanistan, Russian and etc PBN links within top 4 results for quite a few juicy keywords... Like it or not - #realitycheck. Will such SPAM hold in the long term? Well, in theory, it shouldn't, but in reality...

Is it worth reporting - in my humble opinion YES.
Will anybody at Google review your report? - Well.. no guarantees there.

The best way would be to be persistent (as with everything else) and try to report with more than one account.

 

[TODonnell]

@aflat9 , if your competitor has bought dodgy links, and that's working, buy more dodgy links than he has. Simple!

Aieee, no! Google may not penalise for dodgy links now. It may give a boost for dodgy links now. But it may not do so in the future.

i.e. What works today may be penalised tomorrow, and your labour of 4 years goes to page 899 of the SERPs.

Do these tricks if you don't mind the site tanking and you've got 20 others in the bag. Google penalties are not a nice thing to wake up to on a Monday morning.

 

[Clinton]

Every webmaster has, essentially, two choices.

Follow, sheepishly, whatever manipulative instructions the Gorg issue ...and keep your fingers crossed that the Google gods will smile on you.

Or do what works.

Do the former and you could continue languishing at page 899 for the rest of your life.

Do the latter and it may be years before Google actually do what they claim to be currently doing (i.e. penalising your competitors' "bad" links).

There are a lot of muppets doing the former, never getting anywhere with their SEO and wondering why on earth they aren't getting to page one despite following Google's guides to the letter. All the while their competitors are laughing their heads off.

Get one thing straight - Google's SEO guides and tips and advice all exist to help Google, not you!

 

[TODonnell]

My point wasn't to say that Google guidelines are holy writ. The gamekeeper is going to give zero help to the poacher. However, they get a ton of screeches from webmasters, so, to stop the noise, they tell you the basics:

1. How to make your site attractive to us.
2. How to cheese us off.

My point is that cheesy backlinks from unrelated sites look duff to a human and may in time look duff to a bot.

A bot is dumb but the human tweaking it is not. It's in Google's interest to filter out tricks.

A typical scenario is an entrepreneur has a site that's doing nicely, he's getting some biz because he listed his site in obvious places, got some backlinks from genuine enthusiasts, lucked in with his onsite SEO and sees the money coming in and then thinks: how can I get more?

Enter the Indian spammer or the half-clued-in UK one. SEO for £100 a month. You get 500 pyramid links from 3rd world sites and your backlink profile gets distorted.

If you get real successful in SERPs in a competitive niche, with a site that doesn't look like it belongs on page 1, the clock is ticking. Google cares about its SERPs. Your competitors care about beating you. If you get called out in a popular forum, I think it's bye-bye time.

Google controls Google.co.uk. It's an elephant the fleas think they can manipulate. They should just hang on for the ride and not be too irritating.

SEO is simple, really: How can I make a remarkable offer, and do the basic things to project that online, so a human, and a bot, can agree that it's worth promoting that offer to interested parties?

If in doubt, copy other successful offerings, which you'd be happy to recommend to a pal, by filleting their sites and their marketing. Make a list of tips and keep adding to it as you go along.

Is your product pedestrian and you're in a competitive niche? Go grey-hat with 20 different sites, 20 different grey-hat SEOs, and if the sites tank, laugh and walk on.

- Don't do black hat on your one money-maker then whine on a forum about the result.

(Not directed at the OP

Q: Is it the case that most entrepreneurs that whine about their site rankings have a cr*p, me-too website with 10 backlinks? Discuss.

 

[webgeek]

A bot is dumb but the human tweaking it is not. It's in Google's interest to filter out tricks.

It's in Google's interest to keep the SERP's in a state of flux. That way if you want a dependable income, you can buy some PPC clicks via Adwords.

They do this by changing the algorithm, not publishing the rules and by moving people the wrong direction in the SERPs (rank-modifying spammers patent) temporarily.

A lot of disinformation, misleading results and newsworthy headline events keeps them appearing heroes, SEO practitioners as villains, and organic SEO clients having such doubt that they turn to PPC for a regular income.

They've waged a brilliant war via media, technology and anti-competitive practices. That's Google's intent!

 

[Clinton]

Google cares about its SERPs. Your competitors care about beating you. If you get called out in a popular forum, I think it's bye-bye time.

There are probably thousands of examples of sites getting "called out" ... and nothing happening.

You're kidding yourself if you think Google has a team going through forum posts to find sites on which to impose manual penalties.

If there's an exploit that's working well Google will not and I repeat will not ban an individual site (unless it's a big 'un like BMW or hubpages). They will let the site sit there corrupting the SERPs till they can figure out an algorithmic solution to preventing the "exploit" from working. Sometimes, as with the PageRank manipulation of the 301/302 redirects of expired domains some while ago, it takes years before Google implements an effective algo tweak.

@webgeek is spot on. If you were there at the start, and a player, you'll know that Google resisted dealing with or talking with webmasters. They considered us a nuisance because we were trying to manipulate their results. They absolutely hated us!

Then they had a Eureka moment - you can attract more flies with honey. So they let Googleguy post some comments in webmasterworld.com (the top webmaster forum at the time). He found that he could manipulate what webmasters did by dropping hints as to what Google liked and didn't like.

Some of us called it out as FUD at the time, but the average bloke on the street fell for the BS that Google was interested in helping them rank.

Googleguy then went public, revealed his name as Matt Cutts and started a blog to make that FUD his full time job.

Everything Google pumps out is PR. It's designed to manipulate you, not get you the top rank!

Why?

Because Google was desperate. They relied so heavily on citations and once webmasters realised this weakness they piled into a million different ways of getting links. This made life very difficult at the Gorg! Google "guidelines" are a way of salvaging the signals Google so desperately needs. Follow the guidelines and you're simply helping the Gorg, any benefit to your business is incidental and, probably, going to be shortlived anyway.

Break the "rules" and your rankings will be temporary, you'll eventually lose them in algo tweaks. Follow the rules and your rankings will be temporary, you'll eventually lose them in algo tweaks.

What's the difference?

The difference is that clueless SEOs want a nice easy set of guidelines to follow ... and Google provides those guidelines. The smart SEOs, OTOH, research and experiment and tweak and they work out for themselves the techniques that result in organic traffic.

 

[Elliottc26]

Bearing in mind that rankings are different to positioning. Follow the guidelines and your site will be ranked for multiple keywords - anywhere, for instance, from position #1 to #500 depending on the keyword groups targeted.

But getting your average position down to a point that'll get you clicks across enough of your 300 targeted keywords, for arguments sake, is where the real work begins.

So these two SEO aspects are separate to the other. One will rank and one will position.

It's the latter that many cannot do well. Those who can, win.

 

[Eco steam clean]

I agree with most of the members here, Google is very smart! if your competitor is seeking back-links that are not site-specific to the target industry then Google will be on it like a flash, for instance a Men's health forum based in Florida wouldn't be discussing a PPI Solicitor in Dagenham......and so on, just sit tight and please don't get the urge to do a "monkey see, monkey do" concentrate on more quality content about the products your selling if you want to see your website improve in the rankings!

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I still think links are a red herring run by Google

In the past the Link idea would work with high value links benefiting a site, but its unrealistic that in thei day and age with all the other data Google has that it would give any credence to something as crude as links knowing full well that they can be so easily forged

We started in 2003 and did at that time establish about 10 links and have never done anything since than yet on first page for many of our items

No company the size of Google would realistically allow anyone to fool it in such a simple way

 

[TheConsulter]

I don't think that the right way is to emulate the competitor, who buy dodgy backlinks. An example of what you can do is to run a blog on your website with educational and interesting content related to your business and industry. It will certainly give you the much needed traffic. Then it's up to you if you want to report the obviously dodgy backlinks. Google has stated that they go against the type of behavior your competitor has, but it might take a long time until they take action against the competitor. You should use your time and energy to create a strategy, to effectively beat the competitor.

 

[justinaldridge]

@aflat9 I really wouldn't worry about your competitor's bad links. Most of them will just be ignored by Google.

Things have moved on quite a lot and you should focus more on making your pages significantly better than your competitors. Google's artificial intelligence is having a significant effect on rankings and we are getting astonishing results just focusing on the UX and page value.

Just make your site better (content, images, videos, data, facts, etc) that the competition. Spend your time on that instead of reporting them to Google

 

[BREAKLINE UK]

I have noticed one of my competitors comes up for the keywords I am planning to target so I checked their backlinks and they have thousands from dodgy sites (obviously not done properly).

They are from Russian gambling sites, sites about men's health and various other weird, albeit strangely authoritative websites (but they're conveyancers - this would never happen).

I have reported them to Google, but does anyone have any experience of reporting obviously dodgy backlinks? Will Google look into it properly?

Backlinks are difficult to control unless you can control the websites that are coming from. Your best option here is to use something like Ahrefs and find the dodgy ones and file a disavow. You can file for an entire domain or individual pages. Nobody really knows if the disavow works but it's worth a try. Also, the backlinks don't give you all the ranking factors, your website must be of high quality as well.

 

[fisicx]

It's a competitor that has the dodgy links not @aflat9. So disavow isn't really appropriate.

In any case, people using disavow have got themselves into all sorts of trouble, sometimes it's best to just leave things alone and let Google ignore the dross.

 

[BREAKLINE UK]

It's a competitor that has the dodgy links not @aflat9. So disavow isn't really appropriate.

In any case, people using disavow have got themselves into all sorts of trouble, sometimes it's best to just leave things alone and let Google ignore the dross.

Alright, I got that really backwards. There's no reason to be worried than, Google will penalise them eventually. You do things properly and you will rank higher than sites with dodgy links.