Your SEO Will Be Assimilated & Your Backlinks Added To Our Own
So i got up this morning and looked at one the Google serps I was interested in and spotted a new competitor had came from nowhere to grab a few decent positions. Curious as to how they had achieved it (!), I thought I would have a look at their back-link profile.
My first destination these days is usually Majestic SEO as it’s so easy to pick out the info I need (although Link Research Tools is still a great tool to go deeper into link analysis – especially when reporting).
Only two tactics where employed.
- VERY, VERY, VERY low quality article marketing. I mean – this stuff would depress even Paul Madden. 100% Irrelevant, auto-generated articles that didn’t make an ounce of sense – with a link – just bolted on – at the bottom of the page… just sort of floating there. Sigh….oh well.
- The second tactic was blog commenting.
- Not a quality link in the entire backlink profile.
Not exactly the most defensible strategy – even though it is currently WORKING as a strategy.
I will now sit back for a few weeks and see how Google responds to this type of linkbuilding in this vertical, aim to do it better, and if I want – go and drop a link on the 300 unmoderated blog posts this seo has pointed out (thank you) and immediatley compete in this vertical – especially if we implement a more traditional quality link outreach campaign (via the media etc).
The lesson here, probably, is to mix it up! If you are at the top of Google on ONLY one or two link-building tactics that can EASILY be duplicated by a competitor – it’s not long before someone comes along and copies it and/or does it better.
This competitive backlink analysis by Jane Copland goes into this tactic – though acutally recommends caution with it, obviously – and a few other tactics are investigated – and is worth a read if you are new to this sort of thing……
Written by Shaun Anderson
Thanks, I’m always looking for better SEO strategies
A good on-site optimization and a mix of quality backlinks and mass netlinking is the way of success to increase rankings.
It is.
Thanks for checking in to this. It’s nice to know what I suspect: spam works, at least for a while. Not going to do it myself, no way.
Would you say that if your mortgage was on the line…. and you had to get to number one, but the guy at number one was spamming silly? Of course… if you were that desperate, you could always publicly out folk doing questionable tactics. I don’t think a professional seo should be involved in such tactics though.
Yes are right, as if any one use just 1, 2 tickets and mix style then their competitors will easy find and try those and come to next positions so always try multiple seo work to get top ranking.
Very easy way to find links for any competitors is http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ simple and easy way, which any one can understand.
That is closing down shortly. Majestic SEO is now more valuable that Yahoo in my opinion…. but yes, sometimes I have a look at that these days. IN fact, not that long ago, us SEO had ONLY Yahoo to use for this sort of thing… well, just about.
Me too Mr Courtney, me too… and as tempting as it is to finish there as a bit of anti spam irony… I actually have a comment to make.
I just bought an SEO strategy, probably one you’ve already assimilated, called ‘FastAttackSEO – backlinking Master guide’ and was pretty dissapointed to discover that it’s a link hub/spun article type strategy with a very specific structure that I’m supposed to copy exactly. I have no doubt it worked when the PDF was published, maybe it still works but like the example in your article, it’s not what I would consider a resilient backlink profile IMO.
So, back to trying to get better at getting ‘real’ links.
…. never done me any good with the Hobo site, for instance. A lot of key terms in the seo industry are held by companies employing what some reading this post would call…. questionable. One man’s spam is another man’s seo and all that…. if I was that worried about what others do…. I can always copy it when I see it working.
Strange, i was thinking that this “link building” strategy is assimilated as SPAM by Google.
You must be from a Galaxy far, far away…. Radu
Only got to this Star Wars reference after posting my comment. But… Star Wars trumps Star Trek every time.
Interesting, Shaun. I can only imagine some of your muttering when you saw how they’d done it.
I hope you post back again in a few weeks… one would like to think that Google will detect and devalue…
and no… I don’t still believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Some of my best mates are spammers Doc
It’s not them I blame for taking advantage of an algo that seems to reward a particularly unsexy tactic. People have bills to pay you know…. 
No doubt article marketing still works, lots of ppl still doing it.
No Doubt indeed. I have nothing with with ‘article marketing’ per say…. but this stuff is kind of shockingly low grade stuff which would not pass a manual inspection any day of the week.
Thanks Shaun, love your posts.
Please keep us posted about the results “in few weeks”
THanks
I will
Shaun, do you think that it is sort of a honey moon effect or a rankings flux scenario?
Hope you can update if you have some news.
Shaun, do you think that it is sort of a honey moon effect or a rankings flux scenario?
I’d like to think so – but I have seen plenty of this work for a long time. Just check out the backlinks of most seo companies at the top for a lot o terms.
There is always a trade-off between wanting to get fast SERPs and sustainable SERPs. THis is especaily ture if a client is not willing to be led by an experienced SEO but just wants to see some action.
Yes…. I think there is a tipping point. Not being the spammiest site winning in the vertical, for instance…
@Andrew – Much of why I pay attention here on Hobo is that I perceive a slant toward the sustainable. Maybe that’s me reading more into the material than is warranted, but it’s my perception, and I’m happy with it.
Sometimes it is a 100 metre sprint, sometimes it is a marathon. Wether or not a seo strategy is sustainable or not is irrelevant if the site in question does not need to around this time next year.
Hi! Thanks for sharing your recources for checking backlinks. We are using Link Research tools but we didn’t know about Majestic SEO. We will give it a try!
For how long your competitor was implementing this strategy before it came out in the search results? Just asking from curiosity.
Thanks again!
Milena Boehm,
I DESIGN STUDIO
I’m looking into this exact question now….
Good Borg reference if I’ve understood it to be one
I thought this was an interesting comment:
“how Google responds to this type of linkbuilding in this vertical”
Are you at liberty to say what this vertical is or would that give away too much?
Does the success you’ve identified in this competitor’s activity mean there are weak verticals in general (or maybe we are talking about a smaller niche where this sort of linkbuilding is the best on offer), or is there another post-”Panda” reason why these tactics are still working?
Does the algorithm really know what vertical it is acting upon when certain tactics are allowed to work? If so, is there a way to “frame” our content into an easier vertical for a headstart?
None of the above is rhetorical, very interested to hear your thoughts!
Tom
Sorry I usually don’t discuss actual verticals I might operate in.
It’s quite common place.
PANDA had nothing to do with back-links per-se, in my opinion.
Good question. I don’t know…. I have thought about it though…. vertical specific algorithms? You never know…. I suppose it depends on tactics being deployed, for instance, in super-competitive verticals. Google is a set of algorithms, as opposed to one, as I understand it.
If you have massive domain authority – you can enter just about any vertical, any competitive phrase, with one post…..
Thanks Shaun!
Yet another case study to prove why we are constantly bombarded with spam… it works!
Actually been a round about tactic of mine for a while to seed a good handful of rubbish links, makes the backlink profile that little more diverse while allow me to focus those quality links all the better.
Yeah, I know, I hear Darth Vader calling me to join him on the dark side.
Wait a few weeks. I’ve seen this exact tactic work short term only for the target site to vanish after a few weeks.
Time will tell I suppose.
Genuinely illuminating many thanks, I presume your current audience would most likely want far more information such as this carry on the good work.
Mmm a little (or should that be a lot) naive to think that there is a single tool out there that will reveal a complete linking strategy. Also a single strategy can result in an unbeatable first place if you have more money/ more resource and a more detailed understanding of the ranking algorithm you are targeting.
I think this idea of snap-shotting very small samples of data is not at all accurate for trend analysis. But I guess if you folks are happy thinking that then enjoy.
I do OK Miguel
Perhaps you can tell us the websites’ names? so we can check them up.
I just wonder if these methods are really true..
I mean I’ve struggled to build my site’s PR but it IS NOT as easy as it seems
I don’t really ‘out’ people mate – sorry – not for the purposes of a pulp blog post.
It’s always depressing when spammy linkbuilding gits achieve strong rankings. Hopefully Google will crush them all sooner rather than later.
I have also seen this a couple of times. A brand new site in the first page of google doesn’t mean that they have built tons of backlinks. I think the website will start dropping soon.
This was a really interesting post, Shaun. Did the competitor just all of a sudden fill their link profile with a certain anchor text? In other words, is this a new site or just a new campaign.
Funny that it still works. I have seen sites that did that in 2008, 2009, still rank. Crappy but old links (and lots of them). On the other hand, I saw a site last year that did that kind of linkbuilding in a month’s span shoot to the first page for a competitive keyword, then disappear a month later.
Jane’s post is a keeper, thanks.
I can promise that it will be in no time before it is caught and the spamming catches up with them. The real winning tactic is link diversity, like you said mix it all up. Build profiles and make relevant comments on blogs in your niche and a few in others, bookmark, write real articles, and don’t fixate too much on high page ranks, mix that up too. If you want to comment on a good blog that has a PR of 0 or 1, comment on it anyway, even if it is nofollow.
great info Shawn! that’s why spam commenting still works (even some SEO sites do spammy comments)…