I received an interesting email today from someone who feels that some pet related websites are benefiting from unnatural, and unethical link building campaigns. I get these occasionally, and I try to offer my suggestions on how to compete. Below is the email, I will respond at the end.

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Hello Ed

Today I was trying to locate the marketing department at *******.com and came across an email you sent to ******, who works at for that organization.

As I am also in the pet industry, I think you might find the information below very interesting as it shows why Petsmart, Petco or any of the largest pet retailers or manufactures such as Iams or Purina are not at the top of Google or Yahoo for pet products.

I hope you take the time to read the information below that I have sent to several pet stores and manufactures within the pet vertical. Needless to say, even with your experience, it would be next to impossible for your organization to defeat this link building scam.

Dear Online Pet Store

We are writing you about banner ad, web award and link building scheme that is making it next to impossible for your company and others in the pet vertical to get respectable rankings for the keywords such as Dog Shirts, Dog Gifts, Pet ID Tags, Dog Beds, Dog Treats, Dog Tags and Pet Supplies. As a result of clever and misleading awards and banners, three breeder guides are taking over most popular key words online.

Below you will find information about the misleading ‘link to us” exchanges that are taking place within the pet vertical; we will also lay out which sites are doing it (with examples) and why these 3 companies must be stopped.

Unfair link building schemes:
If you understand the basis of search engine optimization, you know that the amount of incoming links and keywords directed to your site drastically increase your ability of being placed at the top of the listings at Google and Yahoo.

A new link building scheme takes both of these factors into consideration by giving our ‘web awards’ and ‘banners’ loaded with key words and links back to different sections of their site. As each banner they give out contains 5 to 170 links back to unique sections of their sites, it is next to impossible for your company to attain a top listing for most pet products.

How well do their scams work:
If you do a search on Google for the keyword ‘dogs’, you will see there are over 83 million results. What you may not know is 4 out of the top 5 results have used some sort of link building schemes to reach these positions. Though you may not be going after the key word dogs, I will show how this link building scheme works for ‘dog tags’, ‘dog shirts’ or ‘pet supplies’.

Who is using link building schemes to increase rank?
Below are three companies who use loaded banners and text links to attain top ranking with Google and Yahoo.

www.nextdaypets.com
Using the ‘Web award’ and ‘Loaded’ banners, www.nextdaypets.com has managed to get hundreds of top 5 listings on Google. Below are just a few samples how well they rank for popular key words and examples of banners loaded with out bound links.

If you look at the “Link to us page” at http://www.nextdaypets.com/linktous.aspx ”, you can see how they lace their banners and text links with out going links. This can be tested by clicking on any of the ‘keywords’ in their banners or text links. For unsuspecting webmasters, their banners simply look like a graphic or ordinary text, this is how they manage to get so many links onto each pet related site.

For example – analyzing each of their banners and text links:

- Favorite Dog breed Link has 11 outbound links (Key words include pet supplies, dog rescue, dog breeds, pet products, dog supplies, dog breeders, puppies, dogs, pets)

- Dog Search link has over 150 out bound links. Each breed in the drop down links to their site plus puppies, pet supplies, dog rescues, dog doors, dog gifts.

- “Graphic link” as has 8 out bound links (Key words include dogs, puppies, dog toys, bird bath, pet supplies, pet products, dog breeds, bird feeders)

- “Text only link – Dog Rescues & Shelters” this text contains 16 out bound links ( Key words include – dog breeders, puppies for sale, dog breeds, pet supplies, dog products, dog doors, dog crates, dog gifts, dog toys, dog, pet, pet friendly hotels.)

- “Text link only – Dog breeders” this text contains 16 out bound links ( Key words include – dog breeders, puppies for sale, dog breeds, pet supplies, dog products, dog doors, dog crates, dog gifts, dog toys, dog, pet, pet friendly hotels.)

The “Web award” icon is not on their site but examples can be found at the following link: http://www.TheLongCoatShepherd.com/ , it contains 10 outbound links.

Should you do some research, you will see www.nextdaypets.com ranks high for each keyword that is embedded in their banners or ‘web awards’.

Dog Products #1 - 47,200,000 results (Google)
Dogs # 4 - 80,500,000 results (Google)
Dog Supplies # 1 - 14,200,000 results (Google)
Dog toys # 2 - 16,800,000 results (Google)
Dog Doors # 3 - 10,600,000 results (Google)
Dog Gifts # 1 - 29,600,000 results (Google)
Dog Toys # 3 18,200,000 results (Google)
Dog Breeds # 3 - 4,500,000 results (Google)
Pet Supplies # 5 - 54,800,000 results (Google)

www.terrificpets.com
Not to be out done, www.terrificpets.com is doing just as well. Using “Web Awards”, and “free search engine submissions” they have taken several top spots at Google. Web award scam in use: http://www.terrificpets.com/website_awards/ . They are not as greedy as www.nextdaypets.com in regards to banners but they do have 5 out bound links in their badges.

Dogs # 1 - 80,500,000 results (Google)
Dogs for sale # 1 - 13,000,000 results (Google)
Pet ID Tags # 2 - 1,780,000
Dog Tags # 2 - 7,290,000
Dog Breeders # 1 - 2,760,000 results (Google)

Free Search Engine Submission: http://www.terrificpets.com/search_engines/
If check out the link above, you will notice this company also offers “Free Search Engine Submissions” to anyone needing help promoting their site. The catch is that the webmaster must add their banner to their site. This “badge” has 12 out going links to different sections of their site. (Keywords include “dog shirts, dog tags, dog breeds, dogs, cat, dog breeders, dog training, dogs wanted, dogs for sale, horses…etc)

Why should you care?
As your company sells pet goods, you have the most to loose.

- Despite how much you spend on Search Engine Optimization Experts and Online advertising, you will not be able to get beat this form of link building. Sites like www.nextdaypets.com , www.terrificpets.com and www.pupcity.com will dominate unless these tactics are stopped and disciplined by the search engines.
- If this form of link building continues, your site will be pushed further and further down in regards to natural listing. Your only hope of being found will be “pay for click advertising”
- As many non profit organizations and breeders do not understand that these web awards, banners and text links are just link building schemes, these companies will continue to have their banners spread throughout the web. Every so often they will change up the banner so they can go after other key words such as bird, fish and small animal products.

Why your company cannot beat this link building scheme
Let’s say you sell “Pet ID Tags”. You have built a site, optimized it for key words, descriptions and submitted it to the search engines; perhaps you even paid for some pay for click advertising. When you do a search on ‘Google’ you see your company is not in the # 1 position… the questions is why is www.terrificpets.com . As this company gives out hundreds of badges/banners with the keyword embedded into the image, and they have links that are directed to their “Pet ID Tag” page, thus they are # 1. This company simply has more incoming links with the key word “Pet ID Tags” linking back to that page. If you are going after that “keyword”, you will spend tens of thousands trying to outplace www.terrificpets.com and will not succeed. The same goes for dog toys, dog supplies, dog doors, dog gifts, dog breeders, dog crates…etc)

What can you do?
Though not illegal, the schemes above are bad for the internet, your bottom line and the pet industry as a whole. As hiding links in graphics and abusing search engine submissions is frowned upon by search engines you may want to send an email to the abuse departments at Google and Yahoo.

Report Abuse

Google Abuse:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Search Engine Submission Abuse Article by Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

If you advertise online:
Contact the representative that you deal with at Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN or Overture about the abuse listed above.

Should you use ‘pay for click’ to promote your company, you may want to ensure your ads are not shown on sites that mislead pet owners. After all, why would not want to promote a company that is digging into your bottom line!

About The Pet Professor
Founded in 1999, The Pet Professor (www.thepetprofessor.com ) is a popular pet portal serving the interests of pet owners around the world. With a wealth of information on dog & cat training, nutrition, behavior, as well as other topics, we help over 10,000 pet owners a day locate the information they need to care for their animals.

Take Care,
David Beart
The Pet Professor
www.thepetprofessor.com
Phone: 403-270-9632
Email: admin@thepetprofessor.com

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Mr. Beart obviously feels that NextDayPets.com is engaging in some unethical practices. But to be honest, I cannot find the exact Google violation. They are stuffing quite a bit of links in to those banners, but the links are clearly visible, so there are no hidden links or “white-on-white” text. The “Web Award” scheme has been around a long time. How it is certainly cheesy, the Webmaster of the other site is choosing to post the link back to the awarding site. How this link strategy is certainly questionable, it’s not specifically violating any sort of rules to search engines. It is doubtful that these site will be penalized as spam. The more likely outcome is that a future algorithm shift will lower these types of rankings.

USWeb faces a similar competitor. Submit Express is semi-competitor in the search space, and they currently rank in the #1 position for the term “search engine optimization”. We believe this is in large part due to a Web stats counter they released years ago that links back to them when someone places it on their page. I don’t consider this cheating, I just consider it their strategy. The previous company in the #1 position for this term was very big into sending out emails, which in my opinion were Spam, asking people to exchange links with them. Clearly that practice paid off for sometime, but in the end, their rankings disappeared.

That being said, this is not how USWeb suggests it’s clients gain rankings. We are more a believer in getting good quality links from many relevant sites. If The Per Professor was one of our clients, we would recommend that they ask all the breeders they list on their breeder directory to link back to them. Obviously these breeder see a benefit of being on this site, and they have an interest in seeing it rank higher for terms that could benefit them.

I also checked on the idea that Iams or Purina don’t rank as high as they should. I found that they rank fairly well for search terms. In fact, these companies rank very well for the site they have. Both Iams and Purina enjoy first page rankings for search terms like “pet food”, “dog food” and “cat food”. These sites could rank for a lot more if they allowed search spiders to better crawl their site. Iams.com for example keeps some of their best information in Flash, which cannot be properly accessed by most search engines. And in Purina’s case, they didn’t even optimize the home page that ranks for these terms. They are there because they are very relevant to the term “pet food”.

Link building is an incredibly important part of any search engine optimization campaign, and there are obviously many different level of campaign quality. These site may very well continue to rank for sometime, or they may be hit by a algo shift and drop down significantly. Either way, there is nothing to really gain in reporting them to search engines for Spam. The pages ranking are relevant, the links coming into those pages are visible and legitimate. In my opinion The Pet Professional website still has a lot of work they can do on their own site before they decide the only thing between them and that coveted #1 position in Google is Spam.

My suggestion is that The Pet Professor work on their own site, and kick off their own link building campaign that they feel is ethical. And keep in mind that just because you don’t like the way a site gets it’s links, that doesn’t make it Spam. In the end it’s user experience that Google will concern themselves about. And these pages do not provide a negative experience.

search engine optimization, nextdaypets.com, pet sites, search marketing, google, spam, internet marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.