Has your site ever been targeted by malicious link building executed by a competitor?
-
I'm pretty sure one of my client's sites has been targeted by malicious black hat link building tactics employed by a competitor site. Over the last few weeks we've gotten 100s of super low quality spammy backlinks. No one has been doing link building, so the only thing I can think of is that competitor entered our URL into some spammy backlink building sites.
Has anyone else experienced this?
It's the real estate industry, so I wouldn't be surprised considering how competitive it is, but I'd love to hear your experiences.
-
As I understand it Penguin is no longer penalizing sites for bad links but just devalues them/don't count them. So I imagine getting targeted by such methods by a competitor, or even acquiring questionable links from PBNs can't hurt you anymore, but just return 0 value?
-
Hi Justin,
Happy I could be of help. My personal favorite crawling tool is https://www.deepcrawl.com/ I know you can try it for free right now.
Screaming Frog is also an excellent tool I personally prefer the interface and capabilities on deepcrawl.
Monitoring backlinks via Ahrefs is a very comprehensive and good way to detect spam. Majestic is really the only one with the same reach but the most important is Google search console/Google Webmaster tools which is surprisingly very close to Moz OSE.
Ahrefs will definitely do the job.
One tool I should have also included is https://www.distilnetworks.com/ ( unparalleled bot detection) & https://www.stackpath.com/ a new WAF that starts at only $19 and offers MaxCDN's enterprise features like edge rules its price will probably go up but right now it's a steal.
I agree reading the disavow using Ahrefs is never a bad way to go however I've always submitted using Webmaster tools.
All the best,
Tom
-
Thanks!
-
Hi Justin,
I wouldn't be very concerned about a manual action tbh. If these links do fall under manual review, I am confident that the Webspam team will be able to identify these as a spam tactic against your website. I believe the manual action my old client experienced was more of an uncommon occurrence.
Normally, you would respond to the Webspam team via a reconsideration request after they have applied a manual action penalty (will receive message through Google Search Console). In terms of proactive options, you can report these as webspam to the Webspam Team through Google Search Console here. Unfortunately, doing so will not prevent new links such as these from being created.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Tom -
Thanks so much for your insight - and the tools you've recommended. I also experienced a hacked site in the past where new URLs were created on the client site for nike shoes and what not.
I will disavow for now, but agree - I need to add a crawl with the intention of uncovering those spam URLs in my technical audit process moving forward.
I detected the "attack" simply by monitoring backlinks via Ahrefs. I will disavow using same tool.
Again - your insight is appreciated!
-
Hi Joe -
Thanks for the insight. I agree that disavow is the best course forward, even if Google is devaluing them. A manual penalty is what I'm worried about. How do you directly let the Web Spam team know? I can monitor and continue to disavow, but this could continue to go on indefinitely.
-
I too have seen many clients, unfortunately.
They are targeted by competitors (most likely) sending both fake links for instance in one case a client has a travel site many of the backlinks that were clearly targeted to hurt the site, for instance, the competition / spammers would use the name of an authoritative travel site all they would do is change the TLD so example.com becomes example.co, even though they were tracking their backlinks they were simply looking at the URLs, not the authority of the URL or domain sadly, this is spam, was not detected immediately by the client until they were hit with a manual penalty.
That is when I was brought on and ran a check using Link Research Tools, Ahrefs, Majestic & Moz OSE. Checking for hacks sitecheck.sucuri.net is great & https://sucuri.net/website-security-platform/ to clean and protect.
The worse thing in their case they were not getting a lot of the clear spam that as Joe states above Google does not think anybody is crazy enough to include help their site. mainly Viagra/pornography URLs which I agree with him take Google devalues quickly however you should disavow them. in my experience, Viagra-style spam attacks are the work of a combination of both competitors & black hat SEO spam/hacks in the form of Link injection on hack's, database hack's, content injections and BlackHat SEO that spread the pornography URLs. Like if you look Fiverr at https://www.fiverr.com/gopo2k/provide-you-1-unregistered-domain-for-pbn-with-link-from-nytimes
In cases where the site is seemingly hit over and over again or use a tool like deepcrawl.com or screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider and find out that your database is full of URLs that have been created to spread for promote the spammers site. I always suggest using a web application firewall incapsula.com or sucuri.net ( CloudFare is really not as good until you hit the Pro plan)
- https://blog.sucuri.net/2016/08/cleaning-hijacked-google-seo-spam-results.html
- https://blog.sucuri.net/2011/04/link-injection-on-hacked-wordpress-sites-blackhat-seo-spam.html
- https://digwp.com/2009/06/spam-link-injection-hacked/
if you're on WordPress you can also save money by having a faster site on a managed wordpress host monitor and you will not have to pay to the fix hacks.
Hope this helps,
Tom
-
Hi Justin!
Yes, I have seen this with multiple clients before. One of my older clients (about 4 years ago now) actually received a manual action as a result. We were working with product reviewers at the time that would include a disclaimer and occasionally leave a link dofollow but we decided to focus on the low quality spam links first. Let the Web Spam team know that these were not our work and that we had no way to contact the webmasters to have them removed. The manual action was lifted a few days later.
I have a client now that also gets links such as these, someone is building thousands of spam links to their site using generic prescription 'pill' anchor text ("buy hydrocodone online", "generic viagra" etc). I have no idea who is doing it. I don't think it is having an impact and frankly shouldn't according to Google's claims with Penguin 4.0 being able to devalue such links. I do still add them to the disavow file to cover all bases though.
Do you feel this is impacting your organic performance?
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
-
link building
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
Link Building | | Tv2.ro
https://m.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://t.me/iv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://cr.naver.com/redirect-notification?u=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://panchodeaonori.sakura.ne.jp/feed/aonori/feed2js.php?src=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/no_outbounds.php?o=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://optimize.viglink.com/page/pmv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://hobby.idnes.cz/peruanske-palive-papricky-rocoto-dlz-/redir.aspx?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://redirects.tradedoubler.com/utm/td_redirect.php?td_keep_old_utm_value=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.kaskus.co.id/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://salesevents.madison.com/go.php?article_id=108164&dealer_id=60&ga_id&promo_id=25&source=promotion&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/jump-to.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://feeds.hanselman.com/~/t/0/0/scotthanselman/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://guru.sanook.com/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://keyscan.cn.edu/AuroraWeb/Account/SwitchView?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bukkit.org/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://nou-rau.uem.br/nou-rau/zeus/auth.php?back=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&go=x&code=x&unit=x
https://redirect.camfrog.com/redirect/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://auth.she.com/logout/?callback=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro&client_id=8
https://bugcrowd.com/external_redirect?site=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wikimapia.org/external_link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.earth-policy.org/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=hdorrh%2BHcDlQ%2BzUEnZU5qlfKZ1Cl53X6&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.fuzokubk.com/cgi-bin/LinkO.cgi?u=antena24.ro
https://ipv4.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://ditu.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://m.verywed.com/redirect.php?url=https://antena24.ro/
https://www.projekt-office.ch/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://mobile.myprice74.ru/redirect.php?url=antena24.ro
https://www.libenar.it/?URL=https://antena24.ro/
https://feeds.osce.org/~/t/0/0/osceofficetajikistan/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.gty.org/~/t/0/0/gtyblog/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.marinsoftware.com/~/t/0/0/marininsights/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=60610D15439B4103A0BF4E1051EDCF8B&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&c=12807976268214810202&mkt=en-us
https://maps.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.htcdev.com/?URL=antena24.ro
https://maps.google.mu/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/ebina/redirect.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://images.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://maps.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://results.dogpile.com/search/web?q=antena24.ro
https://www.ask.com/web?q=antena24.ro
https://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_chn=prt_bon&q=antena24.ro
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antena24.ro&ia=web
https://www.bing.com/search?q=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=antena24.ro1 -
link building
I want to know is there any way of increasing DA/PA of the website? Is there any benefit in ranking if we increase PA of specific page? Recently my website DA is 6 i want to increase it 30.
Link Building | | hfameraya1980 -
At What Point Are We Doing Too Much Link Building?
Hello Mozzers! This is a question that has been gnawing at the back of my mind as I learn more and more about link building. Historically, we have offered scaling package sizes with larger numbers of backlinks hand-built each month. We do this so our packages are very tangible for our clients. Our packages range from 15-100 backlinks each month. As I learn more about how to build links PROPERLY I am finding it next to impossible to keep up. I feel like we are definitely going the wrong direction in that regard. What are some of your thoughts on this? Thank you in advance for your valuable advice and support, Moz community!
Link Building | | ChoChauRice0 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
Reputable Link Building Company
We are looking for a company who can build high quality links, from high quality domains to specific pages of our website. We are not looking for companies who create content or add to directories or post on blog rolls. Has anyone had any experience and can anyone recommend a link building company who can build high quality links to specific pages of a website? Thanks!
Link Building | | torontojon0 -
Mobile sites link strategies
Hi, I am working for a large mobil-site (+200.000 pages), to improve their SEO, and am trying to figure out the best way to set up a linkbuilding strategy for the site. The urls are very dynamic and often rather long so deep linking is difficult. Any input/ideas would be welcome 🙂 Jens Peter
Link Building | | jpndk0 -
Link Building: No linked to content in industry
Hello, I'm doing link buidling for a small ecommerce niche. There's no resource content in the niche (looking at OSE Top Content) that has attracted backlinks (on any sites) How should this effect what resource content I should create. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Supplementary outsourced link building
Can anyone recommend an outsourced link building service they have used with success in addition to their own higher effort link building? (I'm not talking about 1,000 automated directory link submission services.) Thanks.
Link Building | | WCR0