Article Submission, is it Spam?
-
When looking at my competitors in Open Site Explorer, I see that most of them have hundreds of links from articles that are meaningless to a human with one or two links to their site using keywords in the last paragraph.
My guess is that these companies used an article creation/submission service since the article isn't 100% related to the link, but it is close.
Should I do this as well? Is it spam?
All of these sites rank higher than me for all terms and have higher scores in the competitive analysis.
-
I agree with dvtruong and Erica; doing guest posts on relevant sites is a good way to get links. It seems as if your competitors are doing a little black hat, which is never good and Google will catch up with them.
-
If it's meaningless for humans, it's spam to get them to rank higher. And I would suggest not using services like they have simply because Google has been going after sites who employ content farms for links. Instead, create quality, for-human content that promotes your niche. As dvtruong pointed out, doing guests posts on other quality sites is a great way to get links. You can also work partnerships out with other sites. Or use other 'white hat' ways to build your links. Eventually, your links will be of higher quality and thus, higher value to Google compared to your competitors. They will eventually get stung for using content farms.
-
I think that you can get a bigger boost to your site's authority if you focus on getting links from guest posts on relevant blogs with good domain authority than if you get links from a lot of low quality irrelevant sites. I believe that Google discounts links from article submission sites that have been abused in the past.
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
-
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Getting Spam Links
Hi There, I am planning to Disavow one spam domain but when check Google cache it shows my client domain name. So if I disavow this spam domain which link Google considered? Please help me. Thanks Satla
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
Is article syndication still a safe & effective method of link building?
Hello, We have an SEO agency pushing to implement article syndication as a method of link building. They claim to only target industry-relevant, high authority sources. I am very skeptical of this tactic but they are a fairly reputable agency and claim this is safe and works for their other clients. They sent a broadly written (but not trash) article, as well as a short list of places they would syndicate the article on, such as issuu.com and scribd.com. These are high authority sites and I don't believe I've heard of any algo updates targeting them. Regarding linking, they said they usually put them in article descriptions and company bylines, using branded exact and partial matches; so the anchor text contains exact or partial keywords but also contains our brand name. Lately, I have been under the impression that the only "safe" links that have been manually built, such as these, should be either branded or simply your site's URL. Does anyone still use article syndication as a form of link building with success? Do you see any red flags here? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Veldt0 -
Corporate Spam - How do you deal with them?
Seeklearning.com.au - I don't see why they should be dominating the SERPs here in Australia, except for the fact that the have 1 million+ links from 4 or 5 corporate affiliates (Yahoo, MSN, etc). But i thought Google caps the amount of sidewide links from one domain? Or do they make an exception in some cases? Note: if you're looking at their profile with Majestic, you need to see their backlink history. There was a massive spike in linking root domains recently from spam. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andrep0 -
Commenting on blogs articles
Hi All, I have joined a new company and I am supposed to post relevant comments to blog articles. In the comment I want to provide them the source like www.example.com example.com example which of the above 3 will give me the maximum benefit with the backlinking.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TranswebGlobal0 -
Old SPAM tactic still works and gets TOP 3 in SERP?
Hi Mozers, Below you can see some examples of spam ( hidden text and sneaky redirects) which are in SERP for our branded keywords during last 3 months. Some of them occupy very high position in SERP (top 3/top5). https://www.google.com/search?num=100&newwindow=1&safe=off&biw=1883&bih=1028&q=%22your+mac+-%22%2B%22cleanmymac%22 I sent spam reports and I’m going to continue doing so. (~500 spam reports from personal and work google account) I contacting directly with some of the hacked sites (web-masters) and tried to help them to fix this issue, but it takes a lot of my time. But 3 months!? Can you give me any advice, what doing next? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MacPaw0 -
Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
I get a lot of form submissions through my website that are clearly not actual people (unless they are insane . . ). It fills out stuff nonsensically, has an email address, and usually some stupid snippet of text that makes no sense. Does anyone know why people do this? Clearly there can't be any SEO benefit to submitting to someones web form. I guess if I added a "captcha" option it would put a stop to this . .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | damon12120 -
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Hi All, In relation to this thread http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-happend-to-my-ranks-began-dec-22-detailed-info-inside I'm still getting whipped hard from Google, this week for some reason all rankings have gone for the past few days. What I was wondering though is this, when Google says- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? I assume my site hits the nail on the head- [removed links at request of author] As you can see I target LG Optimus 3D Sim Free, LG Optimus 3D Contract and LG Optimus 3D Deals. Based on what Google has said, I know think there needs to be 1 page that covers it all instead of 3. What I'm wondering is the best way to deal with the situation? I think it should be something like this but please correct me along the way 🙂 1. Pick the strongest page out of the 3 2. Merge the content from the 2 weaker pages into the strongest 3. Update the title/meta info of the strongest page to include the KW variations of all 3 eg- LG Optimus 3D Contract Deals And Sim Free Pricing 4. Then scatter contract, deals and sim free throughout the text naturally 5. Then delete the weaker 2 pages and 301 redirect to the strongest page 6. Submit URL removal via webmastertools for the 2 weaker pages What would you do to correct this situation? Am I on the right track?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mwoody0