Understanding competitors link building tactics (possibly black hat stuff that seems to work)

[Martin_S]

So checking out the backlinks on a competitor’s page for a term I’m looking to work on, a page they rank pretty well for, I can’t but happen to note the kinds of sites that grant this company – who are well known in their field – its successes.

Many of the links to this page I’m interested in appear within short articles on blogs, really bad Wordpress blogs that are certainly just for SEO use. My questions are:

• Where do people usually source these blogs which typically contain material on a range of different topics? Are these probably paid links?

• How do they get so much content out there, albeit similar content, to so many of the hastily cobbled efforts? Would that be an agency with connections or a blogging community site?

• How can any search engine lend credibility to my competitor’s links when the article below has nonsense for penis enlargement stuff. Seriously?!?

• How are they not being penalised?

It’s frustrating because these aren’t the tactics I want to employ but they seems to offer success, but also, if your link is in an article that followed by another on penis pills, how I can take Google seriously in its stated aim of making things this prone to manipulation.

[PeterM22]

• Where do people usually source these blogs which typically contain material on a range of different topics? Are these probably paid links?

If they are small articles on a blog, they may be using blogvertise.com. A blog network that lets you buy links on the blogs on the network. The owner of the blog writes you a very small article with your link for a fee.

• How do they get so much content out there, albeit similar content, to so many of the hastily cobbled efforts? Would that be an agency with connections or a blogging community site?

blogvertise.com again

• How can any search engine lend credibility to my competitor’s links when the article below has nonsense for penis enlargement stuff. Seriously?!?

Often these kind of tactics work for a time, but often they eventually do get some kind of penalty. These grey/blackhat tactics can work for months, or even years..often depending on how black they are.

• How are they not being penalised?

They might at some pont.

It’s frustrating because these aren’t the tactics I want to employ but they seems to offer success, but also, if your link is in an article that followed by another on penis pills, how I can take Google seriously in its stated aim of making things this prone to manipulation.

I always think a lot of link building is somewhat grey unless someone is linking to your content because its awesome without any incentive or encouragement.  It's not perfect, but you have to work with it.