Forum Moderators: martinibuster
a former partner just became a competitor. Time to look into his web presence and how he managed to get the good ratings he had over years.
I was schocked to find that Alexa lists well over 350 sites linking TO HIM!
Now that I visited about 30 of these sites a pattern seems to emerge. There is an unnatural high amount of sites which are hosted by free webspace providers like GeoCities or Hypermart who are simple link lists containing well known companies like IBM, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft etc. Buried in these lists there is one entry pointing to our formal friend. A lot of these sites - which all differ in layout and welcome message but are more or less identical in their link-content - have "last edited" dates of 1999! There are also Italian, French, Spanish and Asian versions of this page.
It's too much similarity between these pages to be coincidence. Especially since this guy (and we) are located in a pretty tiny niche of the market. So I guess he did this on purpose.
Questions:
Does this really help in order to promote sites? He has a Google page rank of 6 and Google lists 166 link sites. He has an Alexa page rank of ~240.000.
Can Search Engines really be tricked like this?
If I do the same, can I be penalized in some way? By whom? Why?
Is it ethical?
I guess the answer to the last question is simple. But I'm interested in your feedback.
Can Search Engines really be tricked like this?
Some of the time, yes.
If I do the same, can I be penalized in some way?
Yes.
By whom?
The search engines.
Why?
Because a competitor complains that it's spam and unfairly influencing the SERPS.
Is it ethical?
No, and ultimately the best way to deal with it is by improving your site and increasing its size using 100% ethical methods. Don't get drawn into a spam war - you could bring yourself down with him.
And, if you're 100% certain, report this competitor to the search engines as a spammer. Doing so helps all of us to deal with this kind of thing.
TJ
And, if you're 100% certain, report this competitor to the search engines as a spammer.
In the meantime I have browsed another 10-15 of these sites. I AM certain that there is purpose behind it. But if you look at a single of these pages, they all look like normal, personal, slightly outdated link collections. It's only the mass of them that looks suspicious. But for every single page you can say "Hey, that's a personal hompage and I never met that guy before - not my fault he's linking to me"...
First off, how much page rank does each of these pages have? Do they all link to each other (crosslinking) or merely to the target page? If there is heavy crosslinking then you probably have a reportable offense, otherwise much less so.
Also note that the links to IBM etc will substantially dilute the amount of PR that he is able to pass onto his target page.
There are over 100 factors that Google takes into account when ranking a page. Just looking at a competitor's page may not really explain why it is doing well.
The sites are NOT crosslinked, but only point to the target page (and to IBM, Apple, etc.)
It seems he has only one version of Spanish, since I found the same page already 3 times at different providers.
His main web presence is - admittedly - good. There's lots of stuff and info there. He also participates in PPC programs.
Investigating our own site honstly, our content is good as well. We are multilingual (he's English only) which makes some things a bit more complicated for us. We do NOT participate in any PPC programs.
I emailed a handful of the more complex sites (the ones with more non-link content) and asked for inclusion in their list. Already 3 of 5 came back with mail delivery errors.
The biggest PR so far was 2 (of 10).
Unlikely to have much impact in the SERPS then....
TJ
Even if it's well over 350 of them?
Are you serious?
Will have some impact on keywords if the links have good anchor text.
Sounds very ominous, but as you said, they can always plead innocence.
Have you looked at your own SEO to look at ways of improving your own ranking?
Are you in dmoz, joeant, goguides directories?
Good page titles, H1 tags etc.
As I mentioned before - you can beat the spammers if you have a good site, with good content and you make the most of the elements which are known to be good for the search engines.
TJ
Are you serious?
Dead serious. I can send you the address in question via sticky if you want to double-check. Maybe I'm overreacting...
Have you looked at your own SEO to look at ways of improving your own ranking?
It's work-in-progress for me. We do pretty good in our native language with a PR of 6 for our language-selection doorway page and a PR of 5 for the two language sites. Two seperate product sites have PR5 as well.
Are you in dmoz, joeant, goguides directories?
Working on DMOZ. Never heard of the other two (thanks!).
Good page titles, H1 tags etc.
Page titles should be OK. What about H1-tags and style sheets?
As I mentioned before - you can beat the spammers
My personality structure tends more to the honest way. However I'm in an odd position right now and management simply issues the order "We need to rank better". The unethical way IS tempting, and I wonder how long I may have any choice at all...
Never heard of the other two
Pmkpmk, fathom recently published a fairly massive directory list here: [webmasterworld.com...] . Happy hunting! :)
My personality structure tends more to the honest way. However I'm in an odd position right now and management simply issues the order "We need to rank better". The unethical way IS tempting, and I wonder how long I may have any choice at all...
I believe that there are two kinds of spammers: those who know what they are doing and those who do not. The former have a clear plan of what they will do when they are busted (note that I did not write if), the latter come crying to us saying that "Google suddenly dropped me!".
I have absolutely no interest in making moral judgements, but if you plan to spam, please think before acting.
What about H1-tags and style sheets?
A good search on here about H1 tags and style sheets will see you right.
<ADDED>If you're asking me if you can use CSS to set the typeface and style of H1 tags then the answer is yes you can</ADDED>
H1 tags are still important in all the major engines.
The lesser known directories can't do you any harm - they probably won't serve you much traffic, but a backlink is a backlink and you never know which future search engine may end up buying them out and using the database.
I would lose your language selection doorway page (assuming that's the page called "index.*" and the one everyone links to you by) and put a language option on the main navigation page instead, moving that main page to root and renaming it "index.*". That will increase the PR on all of your deeper pages by a factor of 1 and is worth having. If you're using .php/.asp etc, it's quite easy to do the language option <ADDED: Actually, it's also very easy to do it in straight html>. Think about it - all of your content pages that are linked to off your main navigation page will go to PR5 from PR4. Can't do any harm.
Page titles should be ok
Hmmm...... I would rather you said "I am 110% sure that my page titles are perfect" ;)
Page titles are very very important. Go back and check them all. Read Brett's "26 steps to a succesful site in 12 months" or whatever it's called first. I can't find it now - can someone else point the link out for me? Follow his titling suggestions to the letter. I promise you they work (made a huge difference to us when we first started out and I knew nothing - from No. 12 to No. 1 in a single move - thanks Brett!).
I have absolutely no interest in making moral judgements, but if you plan to spam, please think before acting.
I totally and wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment from Mohammed. But at least you're still considering the ethical approach. I promise you, if you get it right, you will top them in the SERPS without playing their dirty little game.
Rather than spend time creating spam sites that link back to you, spend the time building content. It's more constructive, you'll feel good about it and both your users and the search engines will love you for it. And it's the users returning to your site that matter - spam sites setup for backlinks won't help you with that long term. Forget the quick fix, just build it and keep rebuilding it until it's right. Long term that will really set you up at the forefront on your market place. The short term unethical approach does nothing for your users and ultimately could just get you banned at the same time as your competitor.
I would still report them - send in a SPAM report as you never know.
TJ
As for the content: I get a very satisfactory Google positioning for the important keywords for my native language. I got the PR6 resp. PR5 *SOLELY* via content and cautious optimizing. There's also a lot of "altruistic" content on my site (i.e. content like a glossary of common terms for my industry, or general introduction into certain aspects of our area without marketing-talk).
It's just: we never cared much about the US market because we got this partner. And he scored high in the US. And now he's with the competition. All benefits we got from him are now gone or even against us. We learned a lesson - for sure - never to let go things so copletely out of our hands again. But we need to react after the crash landing.
I would lose your language selection doorway page and put a language option on the index page instead. That will increase the PR on all of your deeper pages by a factor of 1 and is worth having.
Hmm.... since we are currently adding a thrid language I'm restructuring the site-tree anyway. From a flat tree with the languages mixed I'm switching to a www.widget.com/en/page.html model with en=English general, us=United States and then the 2-letter-ISO codes for the other two languages. With a tree like this, I can have index.html pages for each language.
I was NOT planning to dump the doorway page. But maybe I can move the English content to the (former) doorway page and offer a bookmark-this function on the new language-dependent index.html pages.
But doesn't that mess up Google too?
I was NOT planning to dump the doorway page.
Why keep it? It's just a PR drain as you're putting your content pages one further link back.
But maybe I can move the English content to the (former) doorway page and offer a bookmark-this function on the new language-dependent index.html pages.
If English is your No. 1 targeted language, then yes I would agree. I suppose the point that I was trying to make is to get your targeted language main navigation page to the place where everyone is linking to you. You want the PR6 on *that* page and not on a doorway, then linking directly (where possible) down to the content which will then become PR5 - and those are your high value pages.
You then want on that main language index page links to the other language index pages which will put those in the same PR position as they are now (5 and downwards as you get deeper).
If you're changing structure, why not consider throwing a keyword in the directory as well : www.domain.com/widgets_EN.html for example? I know some people have had success with that.
But doesn't that mess up Google too?
No. In what way were you thinking it might?
TJ
<ADDED : Just saw your above post after I posted. You just found the one thread that everyone involved in building websites should read at the very least. There's gold in them thar hills...>
If I do the same, can I be penalized in some way?
While someone already answered yes to this, I'm not sure this can be the case. All a competitor would have to do to get you banned would be to set up these pages themselves. Not that I think it is a good idea, or worth it - I really don't know.
Cy
"You can get penalised *if* on a hand review it's possible to link ownership of the linking sites to yours - or its beyond all probability that you own them."
It's a long shot that it could happen, but the advice against spamming as a means of combating spamming remains.
TJ
If English is your No. 1 targeted language, then yes I would agree. I suppose the point that I was trying to make is to get your targeted language main navigation page to the place where everyone is linking to you.
I'm between a rock and a hard place here. English and - OK, let's not weasel around it anymore - German visitors are by far the top two groups, with English visitors SLIGHTLY in the lead. However my main site is a ".de" site, not a .com So German visitors expect to get a German page under a German domain. International and especially US visitors are somwhat reluctant to surf a non-.com domain, but over the years we established it so I don't want to abandon it...
To complicate mattersmore, we are not only adding a third language, but we are also opening a US office, and we reserved a companyname-america.com domain for them.
One option would be to use the .de-Domain ONLY for German traffic and get a completely new domain for non-US-non-German traffic. But this will loose the PR we know have by means of the doorway page. I'm facing the same problem for the new companyname-america.com domain...
If you're changing structure, why not consider throwing a keyword in the directory as well : www.domain.com/widgets_EN.html for example?
Hehe... that's exactly how it IS right now. My gut feeling is that visitors would appreciate the www.domain.com/en/index.html more, compared to the method above.
Tricky one.
One option off the top of my head (but I'll have a think on the way home so this is from the hip!):-
1. Buy the .co.uk (or .com) for the English site and 301 redirect from .de to that. .co.uk becomes PR6
2. Change the directory structure of .de (as you are now) so that you can then "re-link" to it from .co.uk (every page has a new URL on .de)
3. Link to the new .de index page from .co.uk (and other languages) - secondary language sites index becomes PR5 as they are now.
4. 301 redirect all the pages currently on .de to their new home on .de with the new directory structure.
5. Redirect anyone surfing that's not in Germany to .co.uk or .com. You still have the German link on the .com if they want it in German but are not in Germany.
6. Existing German users will go to the .de, but that's 301'd so they will just get the new URL's. Edit the old .de index URL (keep them on there for a bit) to say "please update your bookmarks) etc.
That get's the right end result I think, but could take google a month or two to catch up with it all.
As I said, this is from the hip and I wrote this very fast......
;)
TJ
1. Buy the .co.uk (or .com) for the English site and 301 redirect from .de to that. .co.uk becomes PR6
The .com equivalent of the .de is taken, and there's no chance of getting it (believe me, I've tried). But I guess your tips apply for ANY .com I want to use in this case?
But I guess your tips apply for ANY .com I want to use in this case?
Yes.
And I've re-read my post and I do believe it's correct with all the 301's, but better if someone else on here could also validate.
TJ
Anybody else with a second opinion on trillianjedi's 301-orgy?
