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Hey Mozers! I have just began my link building process, firstly creating unique and quality content and looking at my competitors.  I have found that much of my competitors are in listed in many directories.  Some are paid and some are not.  I noticed the paid ones had higher DA which seems appealing, however I'm stuck to think wether or not it is relevant to my site and if my audience will go there to search my services.  But then I'm thinking well if my competitors are there then why is it so? etc Does anyone know if this is something I should look at?  My site has been live since november last year and we only have 1 backlink at the moment according to moz...We are on the writing wagon to filter our content and make sure were writing good engaging content however I'm seeing this obviously not the only way.  I have also read the beginners guide to backlinks via moz and researched and read other interesting ways, including blogger outreach within my niche. Any advice around this approach?

I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet. How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?

One of our competitors just recently increased their total external followed looks pretty drastically. Is it safe to say they are doing some pretty black-hat stuff? What actions exactly could this be attributed to? They've been online and in business for 10+ years and I've seen some pretty nasty drops in traffic on compete.com for them over the years. If this is black-hat work in action, would these two things be most likely related? Wh10b97

Since Google's latest updates, I think it would be safe to say that building links is harder. But i also read that Google applies their latest guidelines retro-actively. In other words, if you have built your ilnking profile on a lot of unnatural links, with spammy anchor text, you will get noticed and penalized. In the past, I used to use SEO friendly directories and "suggest URL's" to build back links, with keyword/phrase anchor text. But I thought that this technique was frowned upon by Google these days. So, what is safe to do? Why is Google not penalizing the competitor? And bottom line what is considered to be "unnatural link building" ?

Hey guys, Today I checked the backlink profile of a competitor who is #1 in Google Australia for a highly competitive keyword. To my surprise though, every single link (except a few directory link) seems to be from a private blog network. It's a business selling advertisment products, yet somehow seems to have links on blog from website that sell pc repair services, sleepwear, bali villas rentals, etc.. In this case, would filing a spam report in google WMT be beneficial? It's not like they advertise that they sell links (nor are the websites the links are on), but it is quite clear that something dodgy is going on. Thanks

Greetings everyone! I've really been enjoying my Moz membership these past few weeks after studying my data and comparing it with my competitors I think it's high time I started asking some questions. The website I manage has a very good ranking history but over the past year we've seen a slight decline in our SERP positions.  I don't think this has anything to do with on-page optimization but rather with our link profile.  We have only about 10k links total while they have 175k - our mozranks are nearly identical, but his moztrust is 4.46 and our's is 3.51. I am guessing, on our end, I need to remove some of these low-quality nofollow links (though I'll be honest I have no idea how we obtained them to begin with) but what I don't understand is how our competitor is ranking so well because when I browse their link profile, it is filled with paid link and traded link directories that don't appear to be penalized for what they are.  I was under the impression that this was bad SEO, but now I am thinking I should just play his own game and submit to these sites too. Looking for any advice or ideas on a better way to compete... ❤ Jennifer

Well Guys there are lot of discussions in almost all the communities, blogs, forums about Post Penguin impact. Google says that if find that you're involved in any link building activities, we may penalize you. People out there have already started their developed links. But what if our competitors would have developed those links. Initially it was okay to develop one way links, I even developed lot of quality, but deliberately, links. around 95% links are placed manually, if return to some favor or money but all links looks natural. Most of the links I developed through content only, like articles, blog comments, PR submission, etc now really skeptical about the quality (after hearing lot of talks and reading n number of posts). Now, can I also submit my competitor's websites in 1000 topic directory (obviously not in any spammy directory), would it effect that website adversely? What if I spun an existing content and submit it into 500 article directories and give backlink to competitor site from using only one anchor text (which is obviously the main keywords - highest sales generating keyword) I look forward to some experts comments.

Using Open Site Explorer I was reviewing a sites links. This site happens to appear at position 2 in Google for a key-term that I am targeting for one of my sites. Most, if not all of the links appear to be coming from some very questionable sources that have absolutely nothing to do with their sites content or business. Some of the page titles are : Free Music - Free Music Tampa Bay Florida Fishing Guide Free BDSM and Bondage Sex, BDSM XXX, Fetish Por... LAX Car Rental Reciprical Links Page - Add Your Link Casino More Links Is this practice going to end up hurting their site and catch up to them at some point? From what I have read, these are not the type of links that you want to be going after.