Semi-competitor wants to share articles

Sutra

Sutra

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Got an email from a competitor asking to share each others articles (syndicating style) with attribution links at the bottom. Basically like those buzzfeed articles where they post an entire article from a site with a link saying "Via xxx" at the bottom.

It would be a good way to get articles on my site with little work, plus get traffic from his readers.

But 2 things:

1) Would swapping articles like this have any negative effect on SEO? I know syndicating articles is fine but syndicating each others articles with attribution links seems like it might be viewed as a link exchange thing.
2) They aren't competing for my main keywords but they do have 1st place keywords I want. So it would feel strange to be buddy-buddy but then be like, "Well hey, I'm taking your main keywords amigo".

Would love to hear your guys thoughts.
 
Does he know SEO well enough to know if you created a "syndication" category and noindex it or at least nofollow the links or both?
 
1) it would be seen as link exchange in the eyes of seach engineers at least in the eyes of google and though it probably wouldn't have negative seo impact it wouldn't have any positive impact either.

2) Yeah if you are going for a kw they are currently ranking 1 for it would be kinda strange

3) Maybe it's me but I don't actually see the bennefit of the deal other than growing your site's size, after all why would I click through to your site from your competitor if I can read the full article on his site, I understand that if you produce mind blowing content I might want to go and see what else you have, but it would truely have to outstanding.
 
@Samwise89
I don't know how well versed he is in SEO. But I assume he knows it well enough. He has a somewhat viral site and it looks like he's created articles to specifically target certain keywords.

@lion1978
1) Being seen as a link exchange concerns me. Looks like he's been doing it with other sites and his site is doing well because of it. However, (and I could be wrong about this) this seems like the type of thing that's likely to get slapped by Google down the line, thus fucking me over. His site is primarily viral in nature (though it's information too, not a shitty viral site like providr, etc) My site has viral aspects but I'm working hard to grow it into a full blown authority site and dominate the market.

2) Yes indeed. Which leaves me wondering why he wants to do this with me. He has to know that I'm going for some of the same keywords he has.

3) Well, my shit is outstanding, hahaah. But seriously, I was surprised about this. Recently a large site ripped one of my articles and posted it to their site with a via link at the bottom. It ended up sending me about 15k uniques over the course of two days.
 
I'd just trade one link each and call it a day. Leave it up to the other party to determine how to use it best.
 
What's their social reach like? Maybe change it from an SEO conversation to a traffic conversation.
 
They have around 80k FB fans. I forgot to mention that he said he would post the articles on his facebook page.
 
@Trankuility I don't know what brain fart I had earlier, but the fact that he knows that you are going for the same kw is actually what makes sense in this case, since google already sees his site as an authority on the kw, having a link exchange with you, would make it harder for you to aoutrank his site for that kw since in the eyes of google your link to him would be a "vote" for his site on it's authority and therefore help his site a lot moe than yours, though it might give you a little boost.

fact though still is that google hates recipricol links, however if he posts your article on his facebook page and not on his website that changes the game somewhat in the sense that if that is the case then it's no longer a recipricol link aka. link exchange in the way google hates it.

LOL I guess sometimes good things can come from ripping off other peoples shit, and in my opinion a true testiment to the quality of your shit.
 
Google hating reciprocal links is a fallacy.

Only having reciprical links that are part of a link scheme, that may be another story. It was a problem, but the algo changes and its nearly impossible to say how many you can have before it starts to hurt you.

The only reason that I can think of not to do this is you could potentially boost your competitor. But he could boost you and more than likely will.

I would do it, see how much traffic it generates, how much $ you make, how many email subscribers you get, and decide from there how many more and how often you want to do it.

I promise, having a handful of reciprocal links between two sites in the same niche won't hurt you.
 
Calamari said:
I promise, having a handful of reciprocal links between two sites in the same niche won't hurt you.
Click to expand...

Agreed. That's how the web, niches, communities, and neighborhoods are built in the link web. I think the real problem is crap like trading site-wide sidebar and footer links. The old school "Blog Roll" style that should have been no-followed.
 
Thanks for the feedback amigos.

I'll let him use some of mine. I might use one of his, but I'm not too interested in pushing his content to my audience. So will see what's up.
 
Kinda interesting...

I ended up telling him that I only wanted to publish my own articles but he could publish mine on two conditions:
  1. He credit me with a dofollow link
  2. He host the images on his own site
He agreed and just posted one of the articles today. He kept everything intact, including all the links within the article that point to other articles on my site (all dofollow), my amazon affiliate link, and even my email capture form. Tested the email form on his page and it works, so not only will I get the backlinks and traffic, may also even get some subs out of it.

Noice!
 
Trankuility said:
my amazon affiliate link
Click to expand...

Not good. You either need to have him remove that or make sure you list his site in your Amazon account as one you own (and make sure you say it's not promoting directly to people of age 13 or younger). Amazon has slung out tons of bans since the start of this year for people not adding sites to that list.
 
Ah, gracias. Will take care of that pronto.
 
Just spoke to Amazon support. Gave them all the info. Said it won't be a problem since I notified them about it.
 
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