Trying to understand my competition's SEO strategy

HeleneOnWheels

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Hi everyone, I’m hoping I can get some help in here from people who really know SEO. I am fairly new to it but I would consider myself in the moderate skill range, because I put a lot of time into learning. I have a niche affiliate site about a topic/products that are hot right now. I’ve worked hard on my on page strategies and now for the past couple of months I’ve been focusing on backlink building. I've been paying for niche edits, guest posts and forum postings and I did a press release. I have a few parasites but not all are indexed yet. A few PBN links too, it's my first time using those. I fell into a niche that initially wasn’t competitive, but suddenly became extremely so because of current world circumstances. I made a lot of money very quickly from a lucky guest post with my affiliate links on someone else's site, but then that dropped in the SERPs and I decided to create a whole website around the topic as I felt I would have more control and a better chance of ranking. Anyway, I’ve now got good results for a couple of keywords but the ones that could make me really great money are extremely high competition.

It seems that my biggest competitors for the keywords are large magazine websites like Vogue, Self, and Wired. They are not in the niche, but everyone is talking about items in my niche right now so perhaps niche is less important for these keywords. I started looking at their backlink profiles in AHREFs and they've managed to build hundreds, sometimes even thousands of backlinks to get high-ranking pages. I’m trying to understand how they are doing it and if it would even be feasible for me to do the same. I've been able to spot some tactics like high-DR parasites pointing to their pages, but I don't understand others. Here are the ones I'm wondering about. These are all boosting Wired but the other sites are similar.

First, they have excerpts and/or copies of their articles on high-DR sites with a backlink. Why isn't this duplicate content? Example:
https://gilbert.terrywilson3.net/2020/06/15/everything-you-need-to-work-from-home-like-a-pro/
They have tons of articles duplicated on the site above.

Then they have a lot of sites which seem to be guest posts that have multiple backlinks to articles on their site. Here are some examples:
https://newslanes.com/how-to-take-photos-of-fireworks-with-your-phone/
https://infoshack.co.uk/the-best-veterinary-telemedicine-services-for-your-pet-2020
https://jirnal.com/the-last-quarantine-self-care-manual-nails-hair-and-pores-and-skin-care/
https://pressbuz.com/is-it-game-streaming-s-turn-for-a-labor-revolution-8317.html
https://www.lakeland-storage.com/hong-kongs-security-law-puts-big-tech-at-a-crossroads/
https://pressbuz.com/is-it-game-streaming-s-turn-for-a-labor-revolution-8317.html

What are these websites? Is it a PBN? They seem to have some pages with affiliate links, but topic wise they are all over the place. The backlink profiles of Wired, Vogue, and Self all have many many websites like this. How can they get away with posts that contain several backlinks to their domain in the same article? Do you think these sites avoid getting penalized because they are so popular, they have enough legitimate backlinks that these more questionable ones don’t get scrutinized? Or are these legit enough that Google would not care?

Since they are ranking for my keywords while not being in the niche themselves and building backlinks from tons of sites that have nothing to do with the niche, should I also stop focusing on building niche backlinks and just get as many backlinks as I can? I anticipate this website will have a somewhat short shelf life, but I’m thinking a year or so before it becomes no longer relevant. Is that too long for churn and burn or should I start trying more risky strategies?

And finally, how much do you think they are paying for all of this SEO? I'm really curious.
 
Do you think these sites avoid getting penalized because they are so popular, they have enough legitimate backlinks that these more questionable ones don’t get scrutinized? Or are these legit enough that Google would not care?


Right, they have enough power and really big brand in the Google's eye, they can do everything even wicked blackhat, but you can't. Those backlinks websites are either scraping spam sites no related with them or outreach services did for them, or a mix, but it does not matter, because even no links, those pages will still rank at No.1 page, because of their authority.

This is the notorious SERP bullying, Wired, Vox, Vogue, you can name it, all big publishers are doing the same thing to squeeze more money for their own interests. Whether you can beat them or not, no one know, you can try with a very quality website, get some very niche-related links, get quality social shares, make it popular, to see if you can squeeze into the 1st page, first get the site done, then let it age 1 year to see, whilst move to your other business.
 
First, they have excerpts and/or copies of their articles on high-DR sites with a backlink. Why isn't this duplicate content? Example:
https://gilbert.terrywilson3.net/2020/06/15/everything-you-need-to-work-from-home-like-a-pro/They have tons of articles duplicated on the site above.

Google says content syndication is fine. I guess that's what this is? Can't tell for sure without more context. Otherwise, the original content poster of course shouldn't get punished, but the copycat will.
 
Google says content syndication is fine. I guess that's what this is? Can't tell for sure without more context. Otherwise, the original content poster of course shouldn't get punished, but the copycat will.

I think it is content syndication, but I’m not completely sure. Would these popular websites want to syndicate almost all of their articles? That seems to be what’s happening. Does it divert traffic from their website? I ask because the company I work for (totally separate from my SEO projects and I have almost no input into their SEO or rather lack thereof) syndicates many of its articles to Yahoo. A number of us have advocated ending or greatly limiting this syndication relationship because Yahoo's versions of the articles often rank higher in the SERPs than the originals. Obviously I wouldn’t want that to happen with my website.
 
You have slim chances to win Wired and Vogue with your affiliate site, at least in the short/medium term. I would suggest to invest in competing for longtails.
 
I think it is content syndication, but I’m not completely sure. Would these popular websites want to syndicate almost all of their articles? That seems to be what’s happening. Does it divert traffic from their website? I ask because the company I work for (totally separate from my SEO projects and I have almost no input into their SEO or rather lack thereof) syndicates many of its articles to Yahoo. A number of us have advocated ending or greatly limiting this syndication relationship because Yahoo's versions of the articles often rank higher in the SERPs than the originals. Obviously I wouldn’t want that to happen with my website.
Tough call with no general answer. It's a good idea to regularly reevaluate whether it's still worth it in your case, yes.
 
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