Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
-
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside?
By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998.
But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe.
Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords.
So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too?
Or is that too simple?
-
Actually, they're pretty easy to copy. Just a bunch of open blog posts and forum profile spam.
-
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
With most competitors this is not possible because: 1) they control the sources of those links, or, 2) those links were awarded on the basis of merit and you probably don't merit.
You rarely win by mimicking a competitor. You win by doing something superior.
-
Yep. Direct message. I'll send you one now.
-
I am unsure what DM is, but based on the context I am guessing Private Message? If so you are welcome to do such.
-
Do you do any guest blogging to obtain links, I have found this to be effective for link building and it has increased my search engine results.
-
Thanks for the advice. I do have to say, all the spammy blog comment links are surrounded by like 200 others spammy links to other sites. Very rarely are they there all by themselves, except for when they've joined a forum to put a link in their profile page.
You willing to DM? Unsure if I want to publicly share URLs.
-
The best practice would be to be aware of your competitor's links and look for opportunities. Look for high quality pages where the competitor earned links.
Most blog commenting is very low value from a SEO perspective. If you are an authoritative member of the community which offers the blog, you are one of the first commenters and you share a quality reply with a link then it can have value IF the link is followed and the page is not stuffed with 100 other links. Most blogs which don't nofollow their links have almost no value as they are filled with spam and links.
You are presuming the site's links are the reason why they are outranking you and it is entirely possible the links are not the reason at all. If you would like more detailed feedback please share your site URL, your competitor's URL and a couple sample keywords where you are being outranked.
-
I know the usuals about creating valuable content. We've done that. That's how we've gotten where we are.
And actually, I can see in open site explorer which of the links are follow vs. nofollow. That's what I'm saying... they're very, very good at this. They've built literally hundreds of back links on random blogs with open commenting and follow links.
This is exactly the question I'm asking: I KNOW this is spammy link building, but I'm in the position of asking, since I can't beat them, why not join them?
-
Widgets.com was a generic example of our site. I didn't mean our site is literally Widgets.com. It was an analogy.
-
When I visit widgets.com the only thing I saw were advertisements... so I thought Content would be your main issue because with only a domain name you're not going to make it to the top of Google search results.
Then I went to your competitors website, but that just gave me an error page... maybe they block European traffic, but I doubt that..
Being a copycat can get you some results... maybe... but commenting on blog posts to get backlinks isn't the best technique to really get quality. If you use open site explorer, try to understand the metrics of a good backlink and only go after those. That's what I recommend, and then go on to build quality links yourselve, and not only on places where your competition is...
-
Hi Brian
This is an easy question to answer; "absolutely not". Please don't copy them, you'll end up regretting it.
How you've described your competitors' links makes them fall into the 'worthless spam' category; their efforts would have been for little gain, especially any long term gain, plus they've risked getting penalised for link spamming.
Links from blog posts are usually nofollow so will hold zero SEO value, there is only a small percentage of decent blogs out there.
To acquire some links that will actually be of benefit to your website, create some unique relevant interesting valuable Content for your visitors and Distribute this well. In turn, you'll likely be rewarded with some great natural links. Infographics with a text link built in can really help.
I hope this has been of some help to you.
Regards
Simon
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
-
How to get rid of bad backlinks
So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png
Link Building | | landlwoof40 -
Should I worry about backlinks like this?
So I am going through my backlink profile and of course those random backlinks popup from spammy type sites like this which are useless. Should I worry about links that come from sites like these? http://ppfinder.com/camy/shelvy
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
SEO value of a 'Most Popular Stories' widget?
Hi there, I work for a theater and live performances publishing site. We write 15-20 quality articles per day on the New York City and national theater community. We show a "Most Read" stories widget on all of our pages, but click rates for these are really low - 1% of readers click to read a story from this. As such we're considering replacing this with higher-value content. My question, however, is this: Is there any SEO value in keeping this widget? I want to make sure we're taking this aspect into consideration. Thank you!
Link Building | | TheaterMania1 -
Good or Bad Backlinks
Hi All We are trying to go through all of our backlinks to see which links are good and which are bad. We are using two paid for tools to find our backlinks and sort them out, either good or bad. I have found that both tools have returned links as being good even though the links are not indexed by Google and have no page rank. Also we have found that both tools returns some links as good even though the links are pointing to a 404 page. Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Palmbourne0 -
Competitor spamming and winning
Using Google UK search for web design bristol the** #1 and #2 **spot are populated by companies that are ranked with footer links, directory spam, suspect links and other tactics. The #2 spot is even using cloaked anchor text in most of his footer links. The rest of the first page do not fair much better, it is generally a bit of a mess! The problem is you guys are going to tell me that they will lose in the end, that I should ignore it and carry on, but the problem is these sites have been there for years, those links and those tactics are standing the test of time and in a competitive B2B niche it is hard work to push forward with quality content and valuable information when people can just spam and cloak year after year and outrank you... I know for a fact that if you search for SEO Bristol that several of the top five guys are using private blog networks, not even very clearly ones at that...seriously, how can we all sit here with a straight face adviding people that content is king while it clearly is not! That became more of a rant than I intended it to 🙂
Link Building | | wattlebristol1 -
How important are different class c subnets and ip's
We're thinking of launching several blogs in our niche and 'building them up' organically, and then linking naturally from them to our sites (very conservatively). I was wondering if we should buy entirely separate hosting for these blogs and how important are separate ip addresses and class c subnets (shown on majestic SEO tools for instance). Is it possible to create a set of authoritative blogs in a niche and have them be a little 'neighborhood' within the same shared hosting provider (obv similiar class c or even same ip).
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Do NOFOLLOW backlinks have ANY value? or did I waste money?
So, I hired a helping hand to create some back-links for me (in form of comments on some blogs and forums etc) About 60% of those links created are using "nofollow" attribute in the link. Is there ANY - ANY! value in creating such links? or is just wasted time and money and Google will absolutely not give any love for NOFOLLOW links? please share you insight. thnak you.
Link Building | | limens0 -
Which backlink will be more useful?
Which bacllink will be most useful and gives me most juice? -link from all pages on the website (in footer), such as menu
Link Building | | ATCnik
-link from all pages on the website (in footer, display:none;), such as menu
-link from home page (footer)
-link from the page which have highest PR (PA) (footer)
-contextual-link from most relevant page on the site0