Main competitor has thousands of bad backlinks

Just because you are building links manually, does not necessarily make them any better. Unless they are being built on Google platforms, Google has no way to know if they were built manually or through automation.

If your competitor is really building spammy links, just wait it out. It will catch up to them eventually. You can file a spam report with Google too if you want, but I doubt they read many of those.

Yes, many websites with lots of spam backlinks are still performing well. May be they have some of the Very Good backlinks too.

Adding fresh content doesn't increase website weight. G sees each page as an individual, so you need to get backlinks to added articles too, to make them perform well.

Ok, I get the confusion here. Folks are so focused on serps and seo and links. But serps and links and seo and google don't BUY. Humans buy.

The companies who are focusing on the humans with content the humans read - instead of the serps - are the ones getting traffic.

A few examples:
'
sethgodin dot com
huffingtonpost dot com
forbes dot com
inc dot com
contentmarketinginstitute dot com
perrymarshall dot com

and on and on and on

sure, they may do SOME link building

but their FOCUS is quality content for the humans to read

anyhow, I know that this message isn't popular here, I just jumped in here for fun, I saw the post, but I'm not gonna keep trying to convince . . . .

I just see it a different way, I guess I'm just different in the way I see these things, and that's okay, I guess, we all build our businesses differently!!

Cheers,

Sean

That's still not what I was saying, who knows, maybe I phrased it wrong, I've written maybe 30 emails today, coached for 2 hours, written several new pages on a site . . . so maybe typing too fast.

My contention is that the #1 focus should be quality content promoted to interested individuals, any seo is behind the scenes, secondary, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, no worries, I don't have a dog in the fight!!

Take care,

Sean

I guess I'm just more interested in the real people and the real traffic than I am the google rankings. But for those in the google rankings game, so be it!

Anyhow, I guess we agree to disagree!!

Take care,

Sean

yeah, I am really in a different boat than the seo'ers -

I probably shouldn't have dipped my feet into this post

yes, the whole point of seo is to increase traffic

but my guess is that only about 1% of people who do seo actually get traffic

the ones that DO are doing seo in CONJUNCTION with great content.

I was simply trying to bring up the point that seo without great content is a losing battle, as so many folks are seeing now -

Sean

Ok, guys, I give up the fight -

Sean

The more I read about SEO in the new age post 2013 algo updates, the more I have this sneaky suspicion that Google has managed to get some type of quantum leap forward on identifying what really SHOULD rank for a keyword and what should not.

I'm starting to believe that the engineers are laughing over there while reading through this forum and are talking to each other about how really far behind the 8-ball we are on this stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if things have evolved over there so much that google really "KNOWS" what people want. They KNOW if the content on your site rocks or if it doesn't, regardless of how many backlinks you have. They KNOW how if your backlink profile is fake or not.

For example, on the last point, Google is tracking half the world now because so many people either use their browser or are signed in to gmail while going about their business. All of a sudden tons of backlinks point start showing up pointing back to your site, which SHOULD be a signal that it's great content. Of course, Google checks within himself and says, "Wait a minute...if this is so great how come none of the people I track all day are actually showing up on this page in any way-shape-or-form? Something fishy here."

There are a lot of factors why your competitor site has not been penalized by Google. Several important factors include website age, PR, onsite optimization status, and also reputation. You mentioned you found a lot of spammy links to it. However, since the sites have already built a lot of backlinks, it may also be possible that the site have more of good backlinks coming from high ranking sites. It depends on the ratio of its quality links VS unnatural links.

So how can you compete with this kind of site? I suggest you focus on building more links for low competition keywords. Try to gather as much low competition keywords as possible then start building links to it.

However, do not stop optimizing and building links for your high competition keywords. These still matter a lot since they can bring in a lot of traffic to your site. But just to make sure that you can get enough traffic and compete with other sites ranking for the main, high competing keywords, you need to target a lot of low competition kws. I hope that makes sense

Since Google keyword tool is not around anymore, you may use other keyword research software like Affilorama Premium (which is powered by SEM Rush) to get more keyword suggestions.

Good luck!

I doubt the site has 25k backlinks, really...

If you checked it through ahrefs, you need to check "referral domains". Many people mix that up.

For example, one site has 300 links from referral domains, however the total amount of backlinks is "45,000". See, it might actually have legit links on 300 different domains, just some of the links are sitewide which are making this huge spike in the amount of backlinks.

No one can get away with spammy backlinks, you keep building quality links and keep adding quality content to your site, It's just a matter of time google detects the links of that site.