Links in the independent.co.uk
-
So I was doing some research in OSE and come across links in different articles on the independent.co.uk. There are more than three but I have included three below. Do a find for "blinds" on the articles.
What I find interesting is that each article has a different author. Which probably rules out a friend doing a favour. As far as I can see, of all the many different types of advertising programmes the Independent has, this is not one of them. Which begs the question, how are they getting these links?
What do you think?
-
Thanks Ryan, my "conspiracy theory radar" lit up when I come across those links.
I think i'll call the newspaper today.
-
Kevin,
It took me a bit but now I understand your concern. Each of the three listed articles uses "blinds" as anchor text to provide a link to http://www.roller-blinds-direct.co.uk/.
It is definitely odd. As you mentioned, the articles are written by different authors. I did a search of the site and found other articles with the term "blinds" used where there is no link involved. I was curious to determine if a site wide replacement was being used for the term. That is not the case.
What is also odd is the context is not related to window blinds in each case.
Use #1 "The blinds were down at the Ashcroft home" - In this instance at least the reference is to window blinds.
Use #2 "the elegance of the crinum's swan-necked trumpet flowers blinds you to any fault in the foliage department." - The reference has nothing to do with window blinds and is clearly an inappropriate use of text linking.
To answer your question, yes it is suspicious. It is possible, but unlikely, the site is selling links in this manner intentionally. It is far more likely that a single employee with access has made these changes under the table.
If this is a competitor you can proceed by notifying Google you suspect the site of buying links and offer the evidence. I would suggest making it a bit clearer by stating specifically the term "blinds" is being used as anchor text within the following articles even when the usage has no relation to window blocks and is taken out of context. Google may find other similar issues on the site and penalize the site's links.
Another approach you can take is to contact the newspaper directly. I would suggest not using the website as the person who receives your report may also be the one selling the links.
The above is all based on adopting the belief that your view is correct. Personally I do agree with you completely. Others may view us as conspiracy theorists
Good luck.
-
It's the website of a major UK national broadsheet newspaper Ryan. I'm not doubting the quality of the website.
The links are not relevant to the discussion, it would not be classed as a further reading resource.
Am I the only one who finds these links strange?
-
The site seems quite respectable with an impressive DA of 90, and over 55k facebook fans.
I looked at the first article. It is an in depth article written 2 years ago by an award-winning author who seems to have respectable credentials. This particular page has 19 likes, 9 tweets and OSE shows a total of 5 links which share identical anchor text, apparently from the article's title.
The second and third article only show 1 linking domain each.
The main site is alexa ranked in the top 1000 of all site world wide. At a glance these links appear completely natural to me.
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
-
Does link equity still count after an expired domain is purchased?
Hi guys, We've recently noticed a (very) minor competitor competing with us, as well as some of our industry's biggest names, in the Google SERPs - and the reason why has us absolutely stumped. Aside from an awful website from an aesthetic/UX point of view, their on-site content is horribly over-optimised, with keywords on the homepage even STRONG TAGGED for crying out loud! A backlink check using OSE and Ahrefs found 19 linking domains - most of which were just trash - but there were 5 that boasted some decent DA, the highest being 43. The thing is, these 5 sites are all very generic industry-relevant "blogs" that provide exceptionally poor quality content. The thing is, they have some very high quality backlinks (the BBC, the Guardian and CNN to name just three) acquired when the websites were something different entirely. The competitor has basically bought expired domains, turned them into basic websites related to our industry and linked them to their main domain. My question then is: is this competitor benefiting from the very high quality links that are pointing at sites that are then linked to their main domain? I found an article from 2009 that suggested old links stop counting after being purchased by someone else, but we are stumped as to why they could be otherwise. Thanks in advance everyone! John
Competitive Research | | NAHL-14300 -
Tool for discovering outbound links?
I want to find a tool where I can put in a url: www.site.com and it will tell me all the people that site links to. If this is in the Moz tool set, then I apologize. I couldn't find it. I can only find tools that tell me who links to a site, but not the other way around. Thanks, Ruben
Competitive Research | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Decent domain authority score with no links other than their own linking back to them. How is that possible?
Hello everyone I just spotted the following 'abnormality' while doing a little link analysis with Open Search Explorer. I checked out a site that has a domain authority score of 35, when the only domain linking back to them is ''the site itself'. They happen to have a domain authority of 35 themselves, but no other links pointing back to them apart from their own and yet they have the same authority as other sites with twice the amount of content and an actual backlink profile. How is that possible? 🙂 Links and authority scores, stills baffles me...
Competitive Research | | Hermski0 -
Internal/External link ratio
I have a client who ranked #3 for a very important and highly competitive keyword phrase. Using the 'Compare Pages' tool in open site explorer I could see that we were far better optimized than the two websites that were out ranking my client. Our PA was higher, the MozRank was higher, more internal and external links (and the external are all high quality) more linking C blocks etc.. etc... not just the page but the website, in general, was better optimized. The one thing I did notice was that although we had more internal and external links, our ratio was far heavier to the external side than the ratio of either competitor. So, at a loss of what else to do, I went through the website and beefed up the internal links to the specific page in question. I didn't over do it, just moved up from about 6% to about 12% (one competitor was at about 20% while the other was about 65%). Six days later we are number two rather than number three. Coincidence? Should I beef it up even more? Has anyone ever come across anything like this? Thank you for your comments in advance.
Competitive Research | | Vizergy0 -
How does OSE count Total Links?
I'm trying out Market Samurai & OSE for gauging SEO competition. When I try both the tools for giving backlink count for a specific page then I'm seeing remarkable difference. Hence I need to know how OSE calculates "Total Links" for a page & how can we be sure that it is true?
Competitive Research | | Notsy0 -
Important link building question for me!
Hi, When building backlinks how important is the location of where the website resides? For example, if I was targeting a search term in Google UK, will link building from websites hosted on UK servers have a higher positive impact on rankings then building links from websites hosted on US servers? Lets say in the above UK hosted is better, what if you have 2 websites hosted in the UK but one with .com and one with .co.uk, I take it from a domain point of view the .co.uk will have a better impact on SERP's then the .com. Now looking at the above from a more wider scale lets say I have the following: A .co.uk website aimed at a search term in Google UK. Example: 1. 100 backlinks from websites hosted in the US with .com extension. 2. 100 backlinks from websites hosted in the UK with .co.uk extension. Is it a FACT that number 2 will 100% be more beneficial in UK rankings? Cheers
Competitive Research | | activitysuper1 -
Competitive Link Finder blank screen
Hi. I am bran-new to the site so if I am asking a daft question I apoloise 😉 When I go to the Competitive Link Builder, enter some URLS and press GO I am taking to a blank screen with no info. I've tried on different browsers & same issues. Any advice? Thanks.Christoffa.
Competitive Research | | Christoffa0 -
Link to landing page or home page
Ok, so I've been doing a bit of link research and found that most of our competitors use anchor text to link to their homepage on their site and not a specific landing page. Our current strategy is to link to the correct landing page depending on the anchor to get these to rank, as opposed to getting our homepage to rank for different keywords. If that makes sense. The main reason I can think of to send all links to the homepage is that it would increase the domain authority of the site as a whole. Instead of spreading the links to certain pages depending on the anchor text. It would also give your one page a greater chance to rank for all keywords? Quick example I am a site that sells sports clothes. I have 2 main pages from my homepage: Homepage Football Rugby _Should I link to the football page for all links anchored with "football", and all linked anchored with "rugby" to the rugby page OR should I anchor all links including "rugby" and "football" to the homepage? _ What do you think is the best strategy? Thanks in advance.
Competitive Research | | esendex0