Competiton Creating Links from high ranking blogs through comments?

[Horrific_ending]

So I have been noticing that a lot of my competition is leaving a lot of non sense comments on high ranking blogs. What they are doing is either

A. Linking the username they are using back to the page they want to link or

B. Within their comment on that blog leaving their URL in the text or end of comment.

Question is does this even work to get links back to your page? Is this that even ethical SEO? Might be a dumb questions but how am i suppose to fight this when its already hard enough to come up with unique content for a e commerce site and then i have to battle my competition doing this?

[malecce]

Hi

I think that the unique content for a site is only a% to get a good ranking in search engines.
So if you want to compete with other sites you have to spend time writing in blogs or forums or facebook talking about good quality of services you offer on your site.

Maybe you'll understand if the sites where your comments are of good quality to get quality  back links

Ciao

maurizio

Forse cercavi: <a>Io penso che i contenuti unici per un sito sono solo un % per ottenere un buon posizionamento</a>Digita il testo o l'indirizzo di un sito web oppure traduci un documento.Annulla

Traduzione da italiano verso inglese

italianoinglesespagnoloI think that the unique content for a site is only a% to get a good ranking in search engines.
So if you want to compete with other sites you have to spend time writing in blogs or forums or facebook for example inForse cercavi: <a>Io penso che i contenuti unici per un sito sono solo un % per ottenere un buon posizionamento</a>Digita il testo o l'indirizzo di un sito web oppure traduci un documento.Annulla

Traduzione da italiano verso inglese

italianoinglesespagnoloI think that the unique content for a site is only a% to get a good ranking in search engines.
So if you want to compete with other sites you have to spend time writing in blogs or forums or facebook for example in

[RyanKent]

Question is does this [blog commenting spam] even work to get links back to your page?

It works by definition. You see the link back to the page, so yes it works. I think the question you really want to ask is whether or not this is a best practice and should you be doing it.

Is this that even ethical SEO?

No. It is a black hat tactic. This practice as you described is being performed specifically to manipulate search engine results.

How am i suppose to fight this when its already hard enough to come up with unique content for a e commerce site and then i have to battle my competition doing this?

Do everything you can to practice ethical link building. There are dozens of means by which you can obtain links. Focus your effort on creating world-class content which others will want to link to.

I will use the SEOmoz blog as an example. Take a look at this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo

Notice the article has received 82 thumbs up, 0 thumbs down. Scroll to the bottom of the article and you will find impressive social engagement: 399 tweets, 82 facebook likes, 22 google +1s. Every tweet is a link, and facebook likes and Google +1s can be links or create other links. I am also willing to bet many people will quote, reference and link to the article as well. This article is topical (SEO topic on a SEO site), it addresses a real need which affects many people, it is very short but well written, and it includes a great infographic. If you can generate one article like this a week for your site, all you need to do is let the world know about the article and the links will come.

If you decide to use blogs as a means to promote your content, I would share a few suggestions:

• focus on blogs relevant to your industry. Linking to a vitamin site in a blog comment from an article discussing health tips has a lot more value then linking from an article discussing car insurance.

• become an active member of the blog communities where you share comments. Learn the latest topics and issues in your industry and talk about them.

• don't link to your site in every reply. Don't link to your site in most replies. Become a genuine member of the community.

• Be authentic and helpful. If you have knowledge, freely share it. Build up a reputation in the community as a respected authority. A single link to a site from a respected authority is worth more then 1000 of the random blog links you described.

Also understand Google is aware of the problem with blog article comment spam. Many blogs will nofollow all comment links for this reason. Others allow the links but then manually review and remove the spam. Others will leave the spam, but generally these blogs are less respected and valued because people don't like spam. Also, the blogs which leave their sites open to spam are flooded with links. Each link devalues the other links on the page. When you get to the point of having 500+ links, none of them have any value at all. I've seen pages with thousands of links with people still adding new ones every day as if they had value.

In all likelihood, Google's quality team has seen many of the sites you are referring to and devalued the site's outgoing links due to spam. People will continue adding links, but none of them have any value. Additionally, Google may have reviewed the site itself and determined the site has too high of a percentage of spam links and devalued them.

TL;DR - don't add to blog comment spam and don't worry if your competitors engage in the practice. Buckle down and build the best content and links you can.