When I did the Ask the SEO Vets panel at SMX Advanced a few months ago, someone in the audience asked a question about what to do when your competitors are buying links and getting an advantage from them in the engines. Vanessa Fox immediately answered that you could report them, to which several of the panelists, myself included, replied with a collective groan.
I responded that I have never reported a competitor, never will and believe heavily in karma and that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. After all I said, if I spent my time reporting every competitor of mine breaking a rule, that’s all I’d EVER do and my own sites would suck because they’d be getting no attention. Quite a few folks in the audience clapped loudly, quite a few looked at me and rolled their eyes. It’s a touchy subject, but one I feel strongly on, and I’ll tell you why.
The engines are not our “friends”
Look, I like a lot of engine reps. Matt, as an example, is an awesome guy, responsive to the webmaster community and genuinely wants to make Google the web a better place. But Matt isn’t Google and Google is not your friend. They are a multi-billion dollar company that makes their money monetizing the content of others. They don’t care about “you” as an individual, your company or Who’s Cheatin’ Who. They care that their index is being abused due to a problem they themselves created (links being the currency of the web) and use human nature, you wanting to make your life (and ability to rank) easier, to get you to work for them for free report folks.
SEO folks and the various engines have a delicate relationship. We’re not friends… though we’re not quite enemies – we merely co-exist because we have to. They need our content, we need their traffic. Don’t fool yourself into believing otherwise.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones
When you report one person in your industry, make no mistake that it will likely draw attention to everyone in it. There are very few sites out there that don’t at least have one of two skeletons to hide and before you report your competitor and bring attention on yourself, you’d better be damn sure you are in that minority.
Are you using nofollow heavily? Do you have your keywords repeated on the page one too many times? Do you have 20 links in your footer, keyword laden, to internal pages on your site? Did you buy a few directory listings at crappy sites a few years back, before Google officially took a stand, that are still in existence? Do you comment legitimately on a lot of blogs using anchor text to your site? Remember that Google has quality raters (if you want a more current version of quality rater guidelines, maybe now is the time to invest in an SEOBook membership) and based on their guidelines, not an intricate knowledge of SEO, they decide your “intent” and report it back to Google.
Is your site really as squeaky clean as you think? Sure, you may not be buying backlinks or cross-linking a network of sites, but will you survive an in-depth, possibly inexperienced, industry wide scrutiny if your report brings one on?
Are you willing to bet your sites rankings, or for corporate SEO folks, your job on it?
Studying brings you a higher ROI
Ok, so your competitors are buying links or breaking some other search engine guidelines, so you want to run out and report them. But have you studied why what they’re doing is having the effect that it is? Have you figured out which link placements are bringing them the most benefit? Have you figured out which sites are giving them the most bang for their buck? Have you figured out why their obviously cross-linked sites are even bringing them benefit?
One of the “blackhats” I know told me once “Blackhat is merely figuring out what works whitehat and then automating it as much as possible.” The techniques are the same – it is the legitimacy of obtaining or implementing those techniques that make them “black” or “white” in the world of SEO.
You can learn from these folks and then backtrack what is working for them and figure out a way to legitimately benefit from what they’re teaching you about the algorithm.
As I’ve always said, every good blackhat I know can whitehat their asses off. The difference is that legitimately implementing their techniques will protect you from future algorithmic changes. You get the benefits without the risk.
Constantly focusing on others takes the focus off where it should be
Is your Web site and marketing strategy really the best it can be? Focusing on what everyone else does and why your organic SEO life is so unfair distracts you from doing what will benefit you most – improving YOURSELF. The best thing you can do for your Web site is to focus on IT and not spend all your time whining about your competitors.
Reporting your competitors is no more an SEO strategy than a heavyset person complaining about what good genes her skinny friend has is a weight loss technique.
- Focus on creating a point of difference.
- Focus on creating compelling and unique content.
- Focus on promoting your blog or website.
- Focus on finding horizontal exposure and link opportunities.
- Focus on creating the best site architecture possible.
- Focus on working your internal links to get maximum effect.
- Focus on what matters… YOU.
Let the search engines sort out what your competitors are doing wrong while you build an algo-resistant and defensible site that ranks because it should and not because of the current flavor of the month SEO technique.
Frankly, no one likes a rat
The SEO industry is full of paranoid people. And I can tell you from experience that nothing gets you out of the “circle of trust” faster than tattling to search engines, even if those in that circle aren’t directly affected. I know I’ve been told by some that I’d be “surprised at who makes reports”. And I probably would. And then I’d never share anything with them again.
There is a very fine line between fighting what you feel is an injustice and “outing” Web sites. And sometimes even the biggest names in the industry have a hard time walking it without falling off the tightrope. Much like with the “intent” of a link, it is extremely hard to discern the “intent” of an outing.
I’ve seen many folks drop off dinner lists over the years because they violated Omerta and discussed what was clearly off the record in public. Sure, maybe the guy you reported this time doesn’t affect me, but maybe the next guy you report will, collaterally, due to you bringing scrutiny on an industry with a lot of glass houses or outing a little known technique to make the Sphinn homepage.
Once you start being a potential liability, you close a lot of doors that could have resulted in a competitive advantage for both you as an SEO and your Web site and its rankings.
About the Author
Rae Hoffman is the CEO and Co-Founder of Outspoken Media as well as the author of the often controversial Sugarrae Blog.
Get social with Rae at Sphinn | Twitter | WebmasterWorld
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Any post where you can drop a Omertá reference is probably going to be a good read.
I have to agree with you on this one and would also like to point out that even if you think you do have a ’spotless’ website, that still won’t matter. What’s stopping someone from creating the spam and then reporting you for it once it shows up? It’d take less than 20 minutes to get 4k+ blog and forum posts headed directly to your pages, not to mention a 5 minute burst of every single directory you could get your hands on and your domain would look like a Russian porn site circa early 1990’s. That’s just the easy stuff that they use to consider ‘white-hat’ but now is red flagged. Learn from folks that are ranking better than you are, don’t report them!
Heck, if you’re still determined to report them consider what else that person or team might know (worse: what they’re willing to do) that can take down your properties……it’s a lot harder to get back in good standing in the SERPS than it is to be knocked off them.
When I fist started doing this SEO stuff, I struggled with this subject. I didn’t really understand what you’ve just outlined, and I saw a bunch of people doing things that I was told I shouldn’t do because there would be consequences in the SERPs (either immediate or down the road). I think I was about 6 months in before I adopted the philosophy described above. I think it’s an easier point to make when you’ve been on the dark side of things [cough] . . . it’s obvious that you’ve got a significant amount of experience dealing with this issue from both sides and that makes this post even more valuable, especially to those that haven’t quite had a chance to figure this out on their own.
No secret here, submit Outspoken and Sugarrae posts to Sphinn and they will go hot . . . good work as usual.
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Most the time Google does not act directly toward a site when it is reported. What they do is look at what has been done and then see if others are doing it. They look at your category as a whole. What may just happen is the playing field is evened but that just leaves you right where you were before you started. Remember that your ranking is based on a lot of links. People linking to you might be doing the thing that is reported and then you lose link value. Turning in competitors is a waste of time and there is a good chance it could make things worse for you.
Now if you really want to hurt your competitor make a list of their backlinks and contact each website with a personal email and try to get that link removed.
Rae, I think that was a good article. I enjoyed all the extra work you put into the article by adding all the pictures.
I often have clients that tell me about sites in their space are doing such and such and should they report them. I have always encouraged them to work on their sites and not on the sites of others.
While there are some sites that are able to produce enough quality content to win the links they need to rank where they want to — most sites don’t seem to be able to do this. There will always be someone in their space that is “buying” less links than they are and would like to report you (just ask Doug Heil).
What goes around comes around.
I totally agree with you about whining about your competitors is waste of time instead figuring out what works with their techniques and spending more time on your site to make it more successful.
I love this article, because I am tired of all the boo-hooing and finger pointing on the web. It makes you feel like you’re in preschool again!
There’s a reason that omerta’ is associated with the Camorra and other “mafiosi,” Rae.
I agree that it’s always more innovative and impactful to charge forward without looking at your competition in the rear window, but allowing black tactics to go unchecked, and even rewarded makes the whole Internet a slimehole.
SuagarRae… with all due respect when you use “omerta” in this context it seems you don’t really understand what omerta means. It means more that just silence. there is silence because when there is a problem they deal with it. Usually ends up with a guy in a hole in the desert. I stopped wearing hats many years ago and looking at it in wrong/right terms. SEO doesn’t have ethics, people do. Customers make the call on what risks they want to take. That said… there is a time when rogue firms need to end up in a hole in the desert for the good of the whole… a code of silence without dire repercussions for “F%^&ing with the Organization’s trust and rep”… is in reality neglecting the industry brand. We need to do more than just be silent, I agree ratting is BS, we need to find a way to expose the flimflam not dealing with it doesn’t work out well… calling it a boondoggle also isn’t much better than ratting. Why? Hurts the brand. The boondoggle is subjective. One persons boondoggle service is anothers poor marketing of a service. Ask any telemarketer how letting people tarnish the industry brand ends. They’ll tell you it end up with a list and gov’t regulation. In the old days there weren’t many of us so we “took care of it”. I agree, now things are little more complicated. But think about this, how has the silence thing worked for the industry brand so far?
Terry – my point isn’t to ignore it, but to deal with it in a way that benefits YOU. Studying what’s being done and focusing on making it benefit you. Not by working for Google as a free intern.
As for the silence working so far – it did, for a long time. The engines figured out ways to deal with it, we figured out ways to benefit from it if we weren’t on the “blacker” side and went about our business. It worked. And then blogs appeared and the industry brand went to shit, in good part, to a bunch of fame seekers who no longer respected that the engines are not our friends and fame is not our reward – making money is.
Totally agree with the points you’ve made, many focus on their competition to a pathetic playgroundesque (hey, it’s a comment, I can invent words) extent. The search engine standpoint on this will inevitably differ, but hey, this should be the SEO Omerta (love that word).
The line that seperates black and whitehat can be relatively thin anyways and as you say, pretty much everyone is guilty of something. Whitehat SEO is still manipulating search engines and doesn’t always tie in with improving the end user experience anyways.
Rae, I have never heard someone explain the whole, we just co-exist, reality between search marketers and Google better than you just did! I could not agree with you more in that Google would love nothing more than to have anyone and everyone do their work for them (no wonder you and Graywolf are tow peas in a pod!).
I also love the fact that we see completely eye-to-eye on the whole blackhat thing, also very well articulated. They just automate white hat stuff. And, as a professional SEO consultant, these blogs are some of the few places one can go to actually learn about and discuss advanced techniques these days. But yes, it’s all about what you take away from it, clean up so to speak and make it your own. But it’s good to get the creative juices going.
I mean you really have to hand it to Google, they are VERY smart. Obviously ALOT smarter than 80% of the professionals in our industry. Because they have tricked everyone into thinking that somehow outing each other will somehow help them individually and will somehow make our industry this fluffy land of puppy dogs and ice cream. Well, whenever there is money involved in anything you can bet that any Utopian ideals are out the window.
Fantastic post and I feel that things you laid out absolutely HAD to be said! Hope this hits the homepage of Sphinn so the rest of the industry and “get it”.
I would defnitely have to say that I strongly agree with this article! All of this finger pointing within our industry reminds me of preschool. I look forward to forwarding on this article to my associates here at Dragon and hearing their thoughts and opinions. Well done!
Siobhan, Dragon Search Marketing
(Aghast!) Buying links and other black hat stuff is cheating. But then again so is not reporting cash income, driving above the speed limit, changing lanes without using your blinker and virtually everything else almost everyone in the entire world does who can get away with it.
While lots of hard work getting links “the white hat way” will work, black hats spending lots less time and effort can still take time off for concerts and going to the gym while the white hats toil away at their keyboards long hours into the night chanting their mantra “backlinks, backlinks”.
If you’re fairly bright, disciplined and industrious (hey, one out of three ain’t bad) then merely studying what the cheaters do and learning from it is great advice. But in a classroom of cheaters where virtually every single person cheats, the grade is given on a curve and the bar is continually raised to make it ever harder to get an A – not cheating is detrimental to survival.
I whole wholeheartedly agree with you on not reporting them. Don’t even think about it. Study what they do, and do the same thing in a way that isn’t cheating. Surprisingly though, in spite of your statement that you would not trust anyone who reported someone to Google, not too long ago Grey Wolf had a problem with Guy Kawasaki allegedly using cloaking and went to Matt Cutts at a convention to report it. Matt Cutts took a look at it, and declared Guy Kawasaki’s site to be clean. You obviously still trust Grey Wolf though.
I don’t agree that in the general community of SEOs most of the black hats can white hat all that well when they have to.
Rae,
You bring up some important points that I didn’t used to agree with.
I was hellbent on reporting a couple of really blatant black-hats for a while. I eventually found out that Google never did anything, no matter how much I complained. One day, Matt eventually even looked into it for me (after I ragged on him spam-like through Twitter). His response was – those tactics are not having any impact on the results. So like the sites really are doing well in the SERPs for white-hat reasons, and thus black-hat tactics are going to be ignored by Google, not penalized. Personally, I think it’s because those suckers have lots of money going to Google with AdWords accounts and Google doesn’t want to lose that money.
Ultimately, it all led me to just accepting that the whole venture was a big energy drain. I still gripe about it, but I won’t bother “reporting” it anymore.
Only after I had a shift in perspective, I was able to step back and see the bigger glass houses picture and “when one finger is pointing out, four more are pointing back” concept as well.
Thanks for reinforcing the true nature of this issue.
I came through from my rss reader and didn’t think to read the author of the post, kept thinking Lisa is right on with this one, and then I saw the author.
Rae, really like the way you put it. This is timely for reasons outside of SEO, thanks for expressing the way you do.
I reported a competitor once. Once.
I spent the next several weeks worrying about whether Google was going to launch a full-scale investigation into my own site, and then penalize me for any tactic I’d tried that was even remotely tinged with gray.
After I stopped freaking out, I realized it was a total waste of time. The spammy site is still ranking first, and I don’t need the extra stress in my life.
p.s. Congrats to Lisa for coercing Rae to write today’s post. ;)
One could make the case that ANY active/purposeful link building is blackhat.
On a base level, even if done by hand, you’re consciously building links to your target site with the intent of boosting its rankings. Keeping the word “automatically” out of that sentence doesn’t make you a saint or a better marketer/publisher/SEO. Just as buying a blog post over emailing the site owner and charming your way into a guest post so you can drop a link both serve the exact same purpose from an SEO stance.
The whole “they’re cheating” bitchfest is completely tired. Thanks for the solid post.
Hi gr8 post. I do understand what the nofollow tag is but doesnt everyone use the nofollow nowadays? I thought google makes bloggers to use it by default to avoid spamming. So why did u mention, the use of too much nofollow links?
That is confusing me.
Rob
Of course you should not “constantly” report competitors. Of course you should spend most of your time heads-down working on making your own sites better and promoting them.
But an occasional report is helpful, and total abstinence is leaving money on the table.
If Google goes after a whole category, all you need to be is better than average, not squeaky clean. Just better than the guys you’re reporting. Relatively, you’ll benefit. But you guys are overestimating the great and all-powerful Google. Here’s what happens when a report is made:
- Most are ignored. Nothing to gain, nothing to lose.
- Some are followed up and the site is punished. Everything to gain.
- Only rarely does Google have the free resources to try to target a while niche. In that case, as long as you are cleaner than others, you’ll benefit. But even the act of defining a niche and identifying all parties is tricky, and you may slip through the net altogether. Remember, you’re snitching on inbound links, not keywords, so identifying your site is not a trivial thing for Google, unless you’re stupid enough to use that Webmaster Tools account.
“Karma”? Is that a joke? Are you a Hindu or something? That’s just not scientific. Or are you being metaphorical and saying that your reporting may leak out to an enemy or an enemy may be able to follow the tracks back? Sure, there’s a chance of that, so you consider it. You don’t talk about your snitching. To anyone. You don’t do it if the niche is small enough that the suspects will be few in number.
But these risks are small. Google doesn’t send out press releases saying, “Thanks to a tipster we have killed such and such a site.” The site just goes down in the rankings. And as SEO professionals, we know that any number of factors might have been responsible. So the only waste of time would be the victim trying to figure out if revenge is necessary, and against whom.
What I’d like to know if anyone has actually had any luck reporting a site for “blackhat” link buying? I’ve had so many clients come to me to do battle with sites doing this for years, and they’re all still ranking 1/2/3. So many of them reported for years without anything ever hapenning.
I’d comment but this is a nofollow blog so why waste the energy?
Ralph: The nofollow is removed after your 20th or so comment. We reward those who are active members of the community. If you’re looking to whore SEO blogs for links, I’m sure another list of “dofollow” blogs will be posted shortly. I’d keep my eye on Sphinn if I were you.
whew….got like 15 more posts to go before I’m dofollow! ;)
great post!
There’s always going to be a “wannabe SEO” who will report you or try to take down your site just to get on your nerves. I have the urge to do so many times, but I have only reported those sites that opens up a popup to download some computer virus scanning software.
Real SEOs don’t need a lot of those dumb tricks that will rank you high. (not talking about content building either) :)
I clapped my hands once, and now was the second time.
The best way to be successful, is to focus on how to be better and not how to harm others
Totally agree here though I even think the ‘outing’ cited here over the injustice is going to far too (great comment thread there, at least I thought so).
The part that I hate the worst is how Google’s gotten everyone into this mindset that if you’re disobeying Google’s guidelines that you’re somehow behaving immorally. To me that’s some very bitter kool-aid yet some people in the biz just can’t get enough of it.
That analogy works if the end-goal is to be skinny. However, in most cases the end-goal is to be more attractive than the other options. The fatties aren’t shooting for perfect, they’re shooting for “better than the rest.” Therefore, if a fatty wants to rank number one amongst their peers, they can exercise and eat smart like everyone else… OR… they can blow up the gym and set fire to Trader Joe’s. But like you said, the latter option is a waste of resources.
I am agree, I don’t like to report competitors because some of them just don’t know what’s going. Many companies hire SEO’s and your competitor maybe hired some “black hats” witout even knowing it.
Once in a while I have to report some websites when my clients ask about it.