Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
-
Hi,
I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days?
According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL.
You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain.
So what are we supposed to do here?
-
Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...)
-
Do what they do?
Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
-
-
I agree. It is very hard to find a good writer. If we can't beat them with our content, then it's all fair anyway. At least you understand why you are outranked by them.
Thanks for your answers.
-
Good luck to you.
I think that it is very difficult to find an author who can write highly competitive content - no matter how much you pay them.
If you look at what is already on the web, ranking on the first two pages of google - that is what you need to beat. If the content can not beat that then I don't think that the "publish and forget it" method will work well.
-
Thanks for the answer again.
And it's great to hear it works in long term.
Something to stay positive...
We have a very decent team of writers and we do try to pay them higher than the industry average, as I am a writer myself and I try to make them happy and give them what they deserve. (instead of investing in (or purchasing) low quality links).
best,
-
We have got 1500 words + 15-20 high definition images + videos
Oh... thanks for adding that. It sounds like you deserve to be winning.
The articles that you are producing sound a lot like mine. They usually start out deep in the SERPs but over time they slowly climb the rankings. A year later, maybe two, they are at or near the top of google for their target keywords.
It is really slow progress, but instead of spending time/money on low quality links, I allow things to happen naturally and spend my time on another article.
-
No sir. Not like that
Sorry I forgot to -specifically- mention about our visuals but I was trying to compare the amount of unique text on the page.
We have got 1500 words + 15-20 high definition images + videos
anyway, thanks for the answer
-
hmmm...... you have fifteen hundred words...
They have two hundred words and six nice images and a video?
Imagine the contrast in the first impressions of a visitor...
Six juicy images and a video vs a block or black and white text.
I think just about anybody anywhere would rather watch a video and look at six nice images.
If I was you I would be buying a digital camera.
To be honest, I have the same frustrations as you do. I can't say if their satellite blogs are making an impact. But I think that you can make a better first impression if the visitors to your page see a big nice image above the fold and maybe more of them below. A digital camera will help a lot and if you don't have the topics needed you can license some really nice images from istockphoto for not a lot of money. I usually spend quite a bit of money getting props for images, paying someone for custom graphics. When I add them to an article the visitor stays a lot longer and I assume that it really helps with social sharing.
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
-
Lost Search Ranking - how to fix spammy backlinks
I have a health niche website ( grocare.com ) Recently I subscribed to ahrefs and moz and found out so many spammy backlinks to my site (which i didn't create). Someone told me this is a common competitor tactic. To create bad links for your website to drank it. My question is - in ahrefs now, there are a LOT of spammy anchors and it seems more backlinks are being created by spammy websites automatically. I have lost many rankings because of this. I tried diluting by creating more normal anchors but it doesnt seem to be working. How do I fix this ? Any help is apprecciated xVrvj1q
Competitive Research | | grocare2 -
2 Urls rank on page one, what should I do?
Hey Mozzers, I would like some input from you guys please. For keywords "car service dc" "dc car service" "car service washington dc" my site ranks in positions 7, 8 . My home page www.dcacar.com and also a landing page for washington dc: https://www.dcacar.com/washington-dc-car-service.html Is there something I can do to rank higher? Should I 301 redirect the landing page to the home page? If you have any suggestions and have experience in such cases your input will be greatly appreciated. Our home page also ranks for almost 20 other very important keywords that drive a lot of business to us. So I am a bit scared to touch the title tag on the home page. 2nd question. It's been almost 2 weeks that the local pack is showing 2 results for the same keywords. We are #3 lost our space from the result. Are you noticing any changes to your local packs? Why are there 2 results and not 3? When I search for similar keywords but in other cities I usually get 3packs even now. Any suggestions on making into the top two? We have 3 times more reviews than the other 2 companies the only thing I see that makes them rank above us is their company names are almost exact match with the keyword. Thanks in advance for your time and help.
Competitive Research | | Davit19850 -
(Need helps here!) Can homepage and other internal pages (services) rank high together on Google?
Hi Moz community, Recently I am working on our website's SEO. Our company is a marketing agency. We provide general marketing services and also web design. Here is the content of our homepage and internal pages (specific services). Homepage (marketing agency) Internal page #1 (XXX marketing service) Internal page #2 (YYY marketing service) Internal page #3 (web design) I suggest to my supervisor that we could make some improvement and optimize different keywords for these 4 pages, respectively (homepage, internal page #1 #2 #3). However, my supervisor holds a different point of view that homepage and internal page#3 cannot rank both high for their own keywords because web design is not as related to marketing. So I did some research and look for some top-ranking marketing agency guys who also offer web design. I found their internal pages about web design service rank pretty bad for their own web-design-related keywords. Here are my thoughts and guess (please correct me if I am wrong): Google takes everything into account and deems web design to be kind of irrelevant content to the website, so the internal page for web design will not rank high. The internal page has so much lower power than the homepage so it got outranked by the guys whose homepages are all about web design and development. My question is: In above case, can homepage and other internal pages (our services) all rank high together for their own keywords? I know what I wrote is kind of confusing...But I really need help here and want to solve this problem badly. Really appreciate any help!! Thank you in advance! Best, Raymond
Competitive Research | | Raymondlee0 -
Competitor Ranks Top Keywords Without Backlinks
One of my competitors is ranking very well for many different competitive keywords (1k+ searches per month). I'm trying to figure out how in the world he is ranking so well. I've signed up for MozPro and looked at his back-links. He has 1 branded site-wide back-link from a decent blog. He also has 1 contextual back-link from a decent blog. Other than these 2 back-links, the rest are garbage links unlikely to even count for anything (he has maybe 12 of these low quality back-links). My website on the other hand has more than 15 back-links from different (high quality) websites and does not rank anywhere near this competitor. This leads me to believe that either MozPro back-link reporting is inadequate or there is foul-play on the part of my competitor. As far as on-page SEO is considered, his website is far inferior. Therefore, I highly doubt this would play a role. What are some reasonable approaches I can take to better understand the cause of this discrepancy. Clearly the back-link reporting has not revealed any answers.
Competitive Research | | poke10 -
How to understand a site's current ranking
I know this is basic stuff, so sorry for the beginners post... I offer primarily web design services, and I need to know when taking on a new client, how can I assess the current 'lay of the land' for their site in terms of their SEO? I have had some issues in the past where launching a new design negatively affected their performance for their keywords, and obviously I would like to avoid this in future without having to go to 3rd parties. In particular I have an issue where the client themselves are very bad at giving information about what keywords they currently rank for, and what SEO activities they may have done in the past. How can I make these assessments myself? thanks for any help p
Competitive Research | | panamandm0 -
Ranking for long tailed keyword vs shorter keyword phrase?
I have a webpage http://freightmonster.com/free-freight-quote that currently ranks 19th in the Google SERP's for the keyword free freight quote. The keyword gets 59 exact match searches a month. Competition is high for this keyword. The keyword freight quote gets 8625 exact match searches a month and my home page http://freightmonster.com/ ranks 26th in the Google SERP for it. Competition is high for this keyword. Would I be better off creating another page http://freightmonster.com/freight-quote and doing a better job of on SEO optimization for it in the hopes of getting on page one, or given the fact that freight quote is such a highly competitive term should I just go after other long tailed keywords in my market like flatbed trucking freight quote, heavy haul trucking freight quote, RGN freight quote, etc? We have just started on SEO for organic keywords after spending over $500,000 on PPC in the last 5 years, which in our market niche is the norm. Thank you in advance!
Competitive Research | | FreightBoy0 -
Sites With Duplicate Content Ranking Way Higher
The site I am writing about is easendtorontohomes.com I don't get it. I see that some of my competitors have more inbound links and have been around longer. Their SEOmoz trust etc is also higher. But I don't get how many could possibly be ranking higher since they're sites are all template based site via Web Tech Design and the content is duplicated from one to the other. The other weird thing is that they do everything wrong - they stuff their keywords tag, some of them use the same keywords/meta data on every single page, some of them don't even have meta tags, some of them don't even have a blog with ANY original content. Apart from listings EastEndTorontoHomes.com has TONS of original, well-researched, and keyword rich content. I just don't get it. Is it possible that google has some sort of relationship with that company? Or am I totally missing something? Some of these sites include: tinasmith.ca, mikeclarke.com, teamkassen.com
Competitive Research | | annasus0 -
Ranking keyword VCA
We want to rank higher on the keyword VCA. Our direct competitor VCAnederland ranks one place higher and we want that place. If we look at some statics from the Open site explorer, we score better. PA: VCAdirect = 53 VS competitor = 46 DA: VCAdirect = 43 VS competitor = 39 Total links = VCAdirect = 8415 VS competitor = 3051 External followed links = VCAdirect = 8178 VS competitor = 1059 Linking root domains = VCAdirect = 146 VS competitor = 105 SEOmoz competitive Domain Analysis (gives other numbers) DA: VCAdirect = 44 VS competitor = 40 DMozrank: VCAdirect = 4.30 VS competitor = 4.50 DMozTrust: VCAdirect = 4.00 VS competitor = 4.18 when I analyze the site with the SEOmoz tool. We see this figures: VCAdirect: PA: 53 / MozR: 5.89 / MozT: 5.89 / Tot links 8415 VCAnederland: PA: 46 / MozR: 6.95 / MozT: 6.16 / Tot links 3051 On the on page Report card we score both an A. Where should we focus on to win the position?
Competitive Research | | PlusPort0