Competitor beating me with black hat?

[wario23]

One of my competitors is killing me in my top 5 competitive keywords and I think they are doing it using blackhat tactics. From the looks of it, they are missing a lot of meta info (headers, descriptions, etc), don't have a ton of content, have less relevant backlinks, and have a lot of doorway pages. The only thing that I can see is that they have a lot more C-block links than I do. Is that really all they need to beat me for these keywords? Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance

[fliphost]

Chance are they have built web 2, articles and scrapebox/xrumer blasts to rank. Would not be hard to do the same and over take the position.

[Matt Baker]

You don't have to worry about that.. Google is very smart.. just keep building natural links and do white hat SEO and everything would be fine.

[ashleysmith12]

hi
don't worry they can't stick on top of the position using black hat, you stick to white hat , and sure your get the benefit for it .

[IMdude123]

they could just have a lot of high PR backlinks

[John Moore]

"If you can't beat em, join em"

[Bofu2U]

Originally Posted by John Moore

"If you can't beat em, join em"

This. If he sticks more than 3 weeks I would start looking into what he's doing.

[GemFranco]

If you can't beat them but you don't want to join them, consult and expert

[dburk]

Hi wario23,

Forget about the C-blocks, that is just Cargo Cult and a totally bogus concept IMHO. IP addresses are not a ranking factor, with the possible exception of geo-targeting of search results. Link diversity is important, but IP diversity is not a factor.

SERP are not ranked based on the number of backlinks, but the relative strength and relevance of those backlinks are certainly a factor.

Based on you post, I would suspect that your competitor is beating you because they have stronger backlinks. All it would take, in most cases, would be a single relevant high PR backlink to outrank a competitor.

[outwest]

never heard of c blocks

[yukon]

Originally Posted by wario23

One of my competitors is killing me in my top 5 competitive keywords and I think they are doing it using BlueFart tactics. From the looks of it, they are missing a lot of meta info (headers, descriptions, etc), don't have a ton of content, have less relevant backlinks, and have a lot of doorway pages. The only thing that I can see is that they have a lot more C-block links than I do. Is that really all they need to beat me for these keywords? Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance

The only thing on that list that's Black H@t is doorway pages.

Really I only see that doorway page as BH If they are doing a redirect.

[JSProjects]

If he sticks, try and see what he is doing. If you don't mind taking a potential risk why not mimic what he does? BH techniques work. And they work well. Especially if you're not worried about the potential long term issues. Most BH'ers are already 10 steps ahead by the time they get noticed and don't care about a site getting slapped. (Since they've already got plenty more.)

Just depends on what you want. Long term results without constantly worrying about getting "slapped," (well, there is always a minor chance regardless..) or quicker results but the constant need to be a few steps ahead?

[wario23]

I don't think they have more relevant or higher PR sites I do. From what I can see, most of their links are from forum profiles with anchor text (mostly forums for popular bands). And it's not even like they're active in the forum; they just have a link on the profile page so it's not like they have authority on the forum. If I just create profiles on all of these same forums, is that really going to even us out? They've been on top for over a year and as much natural and organic link building that I've done, it hasn't yielded any results. Thanks for your input guys

[yukon]

Originally Posted by wario23

I don't think they have more relevant or higher PR sites I do. From what I can see, most of their links are from forum profiles with anchor text (mostly forums for popular bands). And it's not even like they're active in the forum; they just have a link on the profile page so it's not like they have authority on the forum. If I just create profiles on all of these same forums, is that really going to even us out? They've been on top for over a year and as much natural and organic link building that I've done, it hasn't yielded any results. Thanks for your input guys

Profile links are weak, I'm sure either the competition is doing something else, or you need higher PR quality links.

Doing the exact same as the competition will only have your page breaking even, you have to SEO better than the competition If you want to rank higher long term.

Go after quality links & better on page SEO.

[Logicson]

i think you should more work on your keywords and buy some more quality backlinks on High PR and Alexa Rank..............

[MikeFriedman]

Are you sure it is just profile links? What are you using to check backlinks? I bet you are missing something.

And PR is not the only factor for backlinks. All PR 3 pages are not equal. For example if one has 100 outgoing backlinks and the other has 7, the one with 7 is giving a much stronger backlink.

[delboy2010]

I have experienced people who have managed to rank using ALOT of PR profile links, but you have to remember they will be using a set of links not just these, also you need to look into the fact that some of the links you are looking at could be getting boosted heavily by blasts with xrumer etc etc

[oneshotmarketing]

I doubt forum profiles is what's keeping you and your competition apart.. You need to analyze what he's doing, build some quality links and try adding fresh content

[webworm]

Bad works doesnn't stand for long times.Don't worry and go on with your organic SEO.Google will penalized your competitor if they are doing black hat seo.