Competitor caught using link exchange - anything I can do ?

In the last couple of months I've noticed a fellow photographer in my area skyrocket from nowhere to the top of the first page of google. In the spirit of not publicly badmouthing competition, I won't disclose their website but will say they presently appear very high on the first page for the obviously desired and competitive keywords.

I did as any reasonably intelligent businessperson on the web would do and looked at their backlink profile and seriously didn't understand how this person managed to launch to virtually top position for a very competitive search term ('ottawa wedding photographer' -- Ottawa and region is about 1.3 million folks) so quickly.

That was until today, when I found a sub page of their site called 'links'. In short, this photographer has a massive link exchange system happening covertly beneath their site; and I'm positive this is the reason why they are ranking high.

As far as I know I'm operating in a white hat fashion and feel like a pistol-less sap roaming a landscape of gunslingers.

Q: what is my move ?

Genuine question, but is this illegal? Or against some code of ethics?

Not illegal, of course. Just in violation of google.

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #15359234
Not illegal, of course. Just in violation of google.

How so?

(Promise I'm not playing Devil's Advocate here, genuinely curious)

It's fairly obvious why it would be, but read hereif you're genuinely curious.

Google tries to display content in searches based on organic factors (how good the content is, how much people seem to like the content, etc.). Doing well organically actually takes work. These kind of link shenanigans totally subvert google's aim to provide good content by artificially pumping up sites for a given search--sites that would not otherwise be showing up.

In short, a link exchange produces a huge page rank which helps the page show up in google, but a link exchange has NOTHING to do with how good or actually popular the content is, hence google's policy.

This has nothing to do with you. Eventually, Google will find it and they will get smacked. Or maybe they won't. You are not the internet police, so really you can't do anything about it. You could start your own link exchange site if you want.

^ If it had direct effects on your bottom line you would think it had something to do with you.

Why would it affect your bottom line? I've found that word of mouth works far better than any advertising I could do online. I don't really do any SEO or any of that crap.

Google is my main marketing tool aside from word of mouth. I land 15 ish weddings every year through folks finding me organically. I'd like to keep this or improve it and am finding it impossible to compete with people who pay SEO companies to cheat their way to the top.

I agree Google we eventually catch on and make his site invisible for a little while. They even do that to their own sites who don't follow policies.

Just to clarify: when I say link exchange, I'm not like talking about a page with a few links to friends. I'm talking about thousands of hidden sub-pages--basically a website within a website--with pages and pages of nonsense content and brimming with hundreds of links.

I've actually seen this happen to competitors who dropped past me in the rankings and are on page 5+ now. But it's still frustrating to have to compete with these people while they're winning--because there seems to be an endless supply of them.

TheBrick3 wrote in post #15359393
I agree Google we eventually catch on and make his site invisible for a little while. They even do that to their own sites who don't follow policies.

Old man asking a silly question....
What is this Link Exchange and how can I put one on my web page or listing?

^lol. I can't help you there.

Fester wrote in post #15359410
Old man asking a silly question....
What is this Link Exchange and how can I put one on my web page or listing?

The logic that Google uses is secret and always changing, but a part of it is the number of links that connect to your site. The logic being that if everybody is linking to it then it must be interesting.

So what some people will do is exchange links. Send a private email to the webmaster of another site saying "I'll post a link to your site if you post a link to mine" so you both get a boost. Google doesn't want people to "fake" the system since that makes their search results less useful and if they find somebody doing this they will penalize them, intentionally marking them down in the rankings.