When is it a link scheme?

[broccoli]

So I'm trying to figure out why the exact match domain site at the top of my niche is doing so well, and what I must be doing wrong. This year this site has taken a huge share of my traffic, and I frequently see it recommended in long tail searches it isn't even relevant for. So where is it getting its authority from?

They rank #1 on Bing and #2 on DuckDuckGo, so it isn't Google specific, though Google's reward is disproportionate as it gets shown for a huge number of long tail queries, despite much more relevant alternatives.

I don't believe their rankings are being governed by on-site factors, because the only written content on the site's pages are a couple of sentences, some form labels, and a keyword stuffed H2 tag. Seriously, it's like something from the early 2000s.

They have 350 backlinks in total, but they're beating several sites that have hundreds of thousands, and even millions of links.

I can't find evidence of a hidden PBN network.

The only thing I can see that they're doing differently is they own a network of about 10 sites of a similar quality, all within a similar topical field. The short tail keyword for my niche is a two word phrase – the other sites owned by this business cover digressions that include one word of that phrase. All the sites are interlinked to each other. They've actually used keyword manipulation to rank one of these other sites in my niche (which is has a much higher traffic volume than the others), even though it isn't on topic.

Could this tiny number of highly topical links really be causing the site to rank so well, by giving a false impression of authority?
I've always avoided doing something like this, because I thought Google saw that kind of thing as manipulative.

But big brands do it all the time, don't they? I read an article about how a small number of large corporations are dominating the search rankings by using this method to interlink all of their brands.

If this strategy is so insanely powerful, if I'm ever going to compete with this site and get back my traffic I then would have to do the same thing. But it seems incredibly sketchy and borderline breaking webmaster guidelines.

So what counts as a link scheme and what doesn't? When is it okay to interlink your sites, especially when they're topically related?

I'm not planning to rat this site out by the way, I just want to know whether it's something a beleaguered white hat like me can do to recover my business.

[tangor]

Most times your trust your gut. It generally will tell you if it passes the smell test.

Then again, I suspect many have done that and taken it for a sign of "get rich quick while you can".

Curiosity: Which site is older, yours or theirs?

[broccoli]

My site, it's 8 years old with redirects from my old 19 year old site. I have 100K backlinks. The site that has taken over is about 18 months old.

[justpassing]

When is it a link scheme

When it doesn't look natural, and legitimate.

You have a page about cars, you link to a page about bananas, it doesn't look legitimate.

It's okay, if the link goes to a page about other cars, and by extension car / vehicles related pages.

Too many pages with similar content linking to each others, or involved in a circular linking scheme is suspect too.

Out going bottom links are suspect too.

[JesterMagic]

@broccoli My site is suffering similar to yours thanks to the March update. I too have a competitor that came out of no where and is less than a year old (we are close to 15 years old). They appeared to take over our spot in the SERPS for most of our keywords while we dropped 8 or so spots. It's not a exact match domain and they do not have a very good backlink profile at all, at least as far as I can tell. On the surface their content looks okay but when you have knowledge of the niche and read it, it is full of errors, omissions, or just completely wrong.

They are also doing SEO tricks like sticking the current month and year in all of their page titles. Google continues to blissfully keep increasing their presence in the SERPs.

[aristotle]

Pay no attention to what other people do with their sites. Design your own site according to your own goals and your own standards. Work out a good plan at the beginning and stick to it. Create the best content that you can for your visitors. Don't spend any time trying to build artificial backlinks.

[justpassing]

+1 @aristotle

[broccoli]

Thanks for the thoughts guys! So what I think I’m hearing is it’s probably okay to link to your other sites if the links are logical and in context.

I would never build artificial links - I’ve never needed to. These are genuine ideas for sites that I’ve had for some time and sat on because I was worried Google wouldn’t like it if I had sites in related niches.

@JesterMagic Sorry to hear you were hit too. I don’t know what they did to us in March but it seems like they weren’t very careful with it and it caused a lot of collateral damage.

[lucy24]

You have a page about cars, you link to a page about bananas, it doesn't look legitimate.

If that isn't already a party game for webmasters, it should be. Pick any two random nouns, mad-libs-style, and work out a plausible link between them. In this case, you're writing about appropriate foods for long car trips--things that don't require special utensils or refrigeration, don't smell much and don't make a mess.

Linking back from bananas to cars ... hm, that's a little more challenging. But I'm sure someone will figure something out.

The key is: would a human ever follow this link?

[anallawalla]

broccoli,

But big brands do it all the time, don't they? I read an article about how a small number of large corporations are dominating the search rankings by using this method to interlink all of their brands.

I don't agree that big brands do [something] all the time. Not sure if you meant having a small number of highly topical link sites, or a hidden PBN, or something else.

I am an enterprise SEO with about 10 brands to look after, all of them being in a group of companies. One brand has 1.5M backlinks but hardly ranks, while the one with the most high rankings and revenues has about 300k backlinks. All brands get the same quality of content, SEO and almost no contrived links. Some of the brands are household names; some sponsor sports stadiums; some sponsor major sports teams. While I am not directly addressing link schemes, I am suggesting that your competitor might have other factors in their favour.

[broccoli]

@anallawalla Yes, I've figured out a bit more since posting this. The site is using LSI and partial match keyword stuffing in headings, and managed to get ONE good link from a big viral site, which I think is outweighing everyone's web 2.0 shares and my news site links. I think the entire niche is under a Maccabees type penalty, and this site avoided it because it's too small. I think I'm also being constrained by my brand name, which contains a sentiment word. It doesn't matter how good I make my site if Google is going to put me in a subcategory box and keep me out of the short tail.

[EditorialGuy]

IMO, it's wisest to think long-term. If Site X is using an obvious brain-dead SEO trick like inserting today's date as an editorial dateline, the owners are assuming (or at least betting) that the trick won't come back to bite them. And when it does come back to bite them, you can be sure that they'll be wailing and gnashing their teeth on a forum like this one, blaming the evil Google for being mean to small businesses.

[aristotle]

One of my sites has an article, call it "the history of widgets", which has some dates from the 18th and 19th centuries within the text. I haven't touched this article in years, but it's still doing quite well in google. Obviously you can't change the dates of historical events, unless you're trying to a false version of what happened.