07-26-2014, 01:32 AM
1. Hacked Websites
Majestic SEO recently published a case study
of a site that managed to rank for the ridiculously competitive search
term “car insurance.” The domain was registered a mere 3 days before it
showed up on Google’s front page. The landing page was…nothing. Just a
Joomla login page. There was only one page on the entire domain.
If we were to take the SERP at first glance, this empty page was more
important that long established brands like Tesco Bank and Money
Supermarket.
And how did this page manage to impress the Google algorithm to such a
ridiculous extent? By hacking websites and installing links using a
Joomla plugin.
During all this time, the site had no content, and almost certainly
had awful user data. None of this apparently mattered. The site stayed
in one of the most competitive search results for five straight days
until people started complaining directly to Matt Cutts about it. The
next day, the site vanished, almost certainly manually removed.
If you’ve spent any time analyzing some of the most competitive
search terms, you should already know that this situation is not
uncommon, not by a long shot. In only slightly less competitive markets,
these kinds of search results can last for weeks or more, and I
wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was almost always a manual review,
not an algorithmic demotion, that delivered the final blow.
So yes, in this post-panda/penguin world, sites with zero content can
rank on the front page of massively competitive search terms long
enough to make some serious cash, and they can do it on a link profile
made of hacked links, a tactic that is not only spammy, but illegal.
What can we learn from this?
First and foremost, we can learn that link velocity can basically dominate just about any other factor.
The site hacked 2,923 domains and built 127,047 links in just over a
week. Despite what many spammers and gray hat SEOs tell each other,
there is nothing in Google’s algorithm that says overnight links are a
bad thing. In fact, the faster you build links, the better, as long as
they aren’t coming from known spam sites, and the links aren’t getting
deleted as soon as they show up.
For white hats, this really emphasizes the power of viral content.
Content that pulls attention and gets shared at a rapid pace is
typically going to outrank content with slow and steady link growth from
guest posts and similar sources.
Odd as it may sound, to Google’s algorithm, this site’s hacked link
profile looks more natural and authoritative than one built on guest
posts, even authoritative ones.
Most of the hacked sites had “low citation and trust flow, 34 and 21
respectively.” Chasing authoritative links still isn’t as useful
strategy as attracting a large number of shares from mediocre sites.
Authoritative links should be thought of more like “SEO insurance.” You
want to build those kinds of links to send a message of trustworthiness.
But it’s still the massive amount of links from the base that really
tell Google you’re influential on the web.
We’ve pointed out before that the “gray hat” SEOs are the most at
risk. Panda was released before Penguin for a reason. This was a
deliberate choice. EzineArticles was clogging virtually all of their
search results, while outright spam was only turning up for competitive
search terms, where people already expected to find spam.
Gray hat SEO poses the biggest threat to Google, because a massive
amount of mediocre search results is more threatening than a few spammy
niches. You can’t be half-in, half-out when it comes to white hat SEO.
Here’s another thing worth pointing out. The site had only seven anchor text variations,
and 53 percent of the links used the exact match anchor text “car
insurance.” This emphasizes that, while it’s wise to diversify your
anchor text, you shouldn’t get paranoid about it. Over-thinking anchor
text is akin to over-optimization.
And finally, from this we can learn that obsessing over content factors is a bad idea. This
site ranked on no content but a login page, and it was the only page on
the entire domain. And why should we expect otherwise? There are plenty
of legitimate sites on the web with close to zero content. They’re
called tools, and they make up huge percentage of the most successful sites on the web.
For all Google’s algorithm knew, the Joomla login page was a car
insurance quote tool, or a login to a private community, or any number
of other things.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: modern SEOs place too much emphasis on “content,” at least the way we currently define it.
Think of every major site you use on the web. How many of them are
pure content sites? How many of them are tools, social networks, or
communities? I’m betting the vast majority of them fall into the second
group.
2. Private Link Networks
Source-Wave’s Becker has become something of a hero for the black
hat, gray hat SEO crowd, and it’s easy to see why. In one example, he
recently shared, with full transparency, how he managed to rank a nearly empty site for a search term with 40,000 monthly searches in just 4 days.
In some ways, this case study is the exact opposite of the previous
example. He didn’t do it with thousands of linking domains, he did it
with 4. The secret? He built a private link network.
The idea behind a private link network is simple: you buy several
high authority domains, and use them to build links to your “money
site.”
Here’s the blunt truth: the way the algorithm stands today, private
link networks are basically invisible. If you join a public link network
(such as the late BuildMyRank), you’re probably not going to survive
for very long. But if you buy up a bunch of sites and use them to build
links, and don’t advertise what you’re doing, you’re going to get away
with it for quite a while.
Not long enough to count as a viable marketing strategy, mind you, but long enough to make some cash.
It’s things like this that can make white hats feel seriously
demoralized and want to throw in the towel, especially if they haven’t
put in the hours yet, and learned how to do real marketing for real
clients.
Can we really learn anything from this?
Yes.
There’s a strategy buried in this one that I keep bringing up, and that’s seriously underrated. It’s the power of acquisitions: something that multinational conglomerates understand very well. It’s basically the same thing as a private blog network, only augmented to be perfectly legitimate and even more valuable.
It’s also very simple.
Just buy up high quality blogs with massive traffic, redirect the pages to your site, and hire the blogger.
Most SEOs don’t realize that most of the influencers on the web have
trouble with monetization; that you can probably pay them better than
they can pay themselves. Many bloggers would be ecstatic to learn that a
marketing agency would be interested in buying up their blog and hiring
them for a full time position.
This strategy really is the best of both worlds. You get all the SEO
value of a private link network, plus the added value of a pre-earned
audience, all wrapped up in a nice white hat package. It’s one of the
most powerful SEO marketing strategies in your arsenal, and I’m outright
amazed it isn’t used more often.
Now, this particular case study also shares a few other tactics that
fit well into any white hat campaign. First off: the power of internal
links. Google seems to like internal link loops. (The home page links to
this page, which links to this page, which links back to the home
page.) There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking advantage of this.
Putting a link at the bottom of each blog post that takes them to the
next one is a perfectly legitimate thing you can do to keep visitors
reading, and it helps all of the pages on that ring rank better than
they otherwise would.
I’ve mentioned before that “domain authority” is more or less just
the power of internal links, and that “page authority” is the only
metric that matters as far as “link juice” is concerned. Domains do have
some influence, but I suspect this is driven almost entirely
by things like user behavior data and domain name. I’ve never seen
evidence to suggest that the number of linking root domains to your
domain matters, beyond the power of page authority and internal links.
In short: make it very easy for Google to find your pages. Don’t bury links to old content in the archives.
Finally, this case study highlights the power of outbound links
as well. Becker apparently links to authoritative sites in order to
convince Google that his sites aren’t spam. I’ve never looked into this
myself. Outbound links give you so much more credibility, as far as your
users are concerned, that I’ve always used them.
However, if the black hats are doing it, you no longer have any excuse to be greedy with your outbound links.
3. Paid Links
It’s basically impossible to find case studies on this particular
topic. Nobody wants to spend money on links only to reveal their results
to the world. That said, there is no shortage of black hats who can
rank websites using link profiles that they paid for.
In one experiment, half of the people who responded to a link building outreach email expected to be paid.
On average, they asked for $285. This was in November of 2012, well
after Penguin, and judging by the relatively small upset that was
Penguin 2.0, I’d be very surprised if anything’s changed since then.
It should go without saying that public link buying networks don’t
work for very long at all. But these kinds of private exchanges can pass
value for a considerable amount of time before the site gets slapped.
What’s more, it’s usually the link sellers,
not the buyers, who receive an actual penalty. (I’m surprised more
people didn’t already know this.) The buyers typically face link devaluation, not penalties.
Buying links is a very bad idea if you want the SEO value of your
links to last, and that includes doing things like offering “free
products” in exchange for links. So what can we learn from the black
hats who still buy links?
In the black hat sector of the travel industry, links cost close to $300. How much SEO value can you buy with that money?
Could you pay an influential blogger to write a guest post on your site and earn at least one natural link by doing it for the price of $300?
Could you pay a photographer or graphic designer with a large social
media following to produce and promote an image for you for $300?
Could you conduct some sort of survey or study in order to reveal a
fascinating piece of information for your audience with $300?
Unfortunately, the mindset against buying links has spilled over into
our broad approach to SEO. Most SEOs just aren’t willing to spend money
in order to turn a profit. They fail to realize the vast number of ways
it’s possible to spend money in order to earn SEO value.
This is tragic.
4. Tiered Linking
This is one of those strategies that a lot of white hat SEOs are
surprised to learn still works, or that it’s worth the effort for
anybody. But one case study, by MakeMoneyNinja, explains how he used tiered linking
to build a profitable website starting in September of 2012. As of May
2013, the site was still profitable. Panda and Penguin updates didn’t
seem to do anything.
How did he do it? Basically, he joined a bunch of private link
networks, set up some web 2.0 properties, and started spamming these
with crappy links. He’s been spending about $500 a month in link
building using this method, and he’s been getting close to $3,000 a
month in affiliate sales.
Now, clearly, this is not the way to build a sustainable business,
but it demonstrates that tiered linking, as it stands, does seem to
protect sites that would otherwise fail in short order.
So, what’s the lesson?
There are a few things to take away from this. First of all, when you
do build links yourself, and you want their value to last, you want to
maximize the chance that the content will go viral. A guest post on an
authority site is much more valuable if it is written to attract natural
links and social activity. This means that it will continue to
contribute value long after it falls off the front page.
Second, it’s worth promoting content on sites other than your own.
Guest posts aren’t just an opportunity to build links; they’re an
opportunity to earn traffic and credibility that you can’t yet earn on
your own site. You can enhance this by promoting the content that you
publish on authoritative sites. For example, by adding a link to the
post in your email signature, promoting it through your social channels,
and putting it in a badge on your site, you can increase conversion
rates, establish authority, and give long lasting value to these
accomplishments.
Majestic SEO recently published a case study
of a site that managed to rank for the ridiculously competitive search
term “car insurance.” The domain was registered a mere 3 days before it
showed up on Google’s front page. The landing page was…nothing. Just a
Joomla login page. There was only one page on the entire domain.
If we were to take the SERP at first glance, this empty page was more
important that long established brands like Tesco Bank and Money
Supermarket.
And how did this page manage to impress the Google algorithm to such a
ridiculous extent? By hacking websites and installing links using a
Joomla plugin.
During all this time, the site had no content, and almost certainly
had awful user data. None of this apparently mattered. The site stayed
in one of the most competitive search results for five straight days
until people started complaining directly to Matt Cutts about it. The
next day, the site vanished, almost certainly manually removed.
If you’ve spent any time analyzing some of the most competitive
search terms, you should already know that this situation is not
uncommon, not by a long shot. In only slightly less competitive markets,
these kinds of search results can last for weeks or more, and I
wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was almost always a manual review,
not an algorithmic demotion, that delivered the final blow.
So yes, in this post-panda/penguin world, sites with zero content can
rank on the front page of massively competitive search terms long
enough to make some serious cash, and they can do it on a link profile
made of hacked links, a tactic that is not only spammy, but illegal.
What can we learn from this?
First and foremost, we can learn that link velocity can basically dominate just about any other factor.
The site hacked 2,923 domains and built 127,047 links in just over a
week. Despite what many spammers and gray hat SEOs tell each other,
there is nothing in Google’s algorithm that says overnight links are a
bad thing. In fact, the faster you build links, the better, as long as
they aren’t coming from known spam sites, and the links aren’t getting
deleted as soon as they show up.
For white hats, this really emphasizes the power of viral content.
Content that pulls attention and gets shared at a rapid pace is
typically going to outrank content with slow and steady link growth from
guest posts and similar sources.
Odd as it may sound, to Google’s algorithm, this site’s hacked link
profile looks more natural and authoritative than one built on guest
posts, even authoritative ones.
Most of the hacked sites had “low citation and trust flow, 34 and 21
respectively.” Chasing authoritative links still isn’t as useful
strategy as attracting a large number of shares from mediocre sites.
Authoritative links should be thought of more like “SEO insurance.” You
want to build those kinds of links to send a message of trustworthiness.
But it’s still the massive amount of links from the base that really
tell Google you’re influential on the web.
We’ve pointed out before that the “gray hat” SEOs are the most at
risk. Panda was released before Penguin for a reason. This was a
deliberate choice. EzineArticles was clogging virtually all of their
search results, while outright spam was only turning up for competitive
search terms, where people already expected to find spam.
Gray hat SEO poses the biggest threat to Google, because a massive
amount of mediocre search results is more threatening than a few spammy
niches. You can’t be half-in, half-out when it comes to white hat SEO.
Here’s another thing worth pointing out. The site had only seven anchor text variations,
and 53 percent of the links used the exact match anchor text “car
insurance.” This emphasizes that, while it’s wise to diversify your
anchor text, you shouldn’t get paranoid about it. Over-thinking anchor
text is akin to over-optimization.
And finally, from this we can learn that obsessing over content factors is a bad idea. This
site ranked on no content but a login page, and it was the only page on
the entire domain. And why should we expect otherwise? There are plenty
of legitimate sites on the web with close to zero content. They’re
called tools, and they make up huge percentage of the most successful sites on the web.
For all Google’s algorithm knew, the Joomla login page was a car
insurance quote tool, or a login to a private community, or any number
of other things.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: modern SEOs place too much emphasis on “content,” at least the way we currently define it.
Think of every major site you use on the web. How many of them are
pure content sites? How many of them are tools, social networks, or
communities? I’m betting the vast majority of them fall into the second
group.
2. Private Link Networks
Source-Wave’s Becker has become something of a hero for the black
hat, gray hat SEO crowd, and it’s easy to see why. In one example, he
recently shared, with full transparency, how he managed to rank a nearly empty site for a search term with 40,000 monthly searches in just 4 days.
In some ways, this case study is the exact opposite of the previous
example. He didn’t do it with thousands of linking domains, he did it
with 4. The secret? He built a private link network.
The idea behind a private link network is simple: you buy several
high authority domains, and use them to build links to your “money
site.”
Here’s the blunt truth: the way the algorithm stands today, private
link networks are basically invisible. If you join a public link network
(such as the late BuildMyRank), you’re probably not going to survive
for very long. But if you buy up a bunch of sites and use them to build
links, and don’t advertise what you’re doing, you’re going to get away
with it for quite a while.
Not long enough to count as a viable marketing strategy, mind you, but long enough to make some cash.
It’s things like this that can make white hats feel seriously
demoralized and want to throw in the towel, especially if they haven’t
put in the hours yet, and learned how to do real marketing for real
clients.
Can we really learn anything from this?
Yes.
There’s a strategy buried in this one that I keep bringing up, and that’s seriously underrated. It’s the power of acquisitions: something that multinational conglomerates understand very well. It’s basically the same thing as a private blog network, only augmented to be perfectly legitimate and even more valuable.
It’s also very simple.
Just buy up high quality blogs with massive traffic, redirect the pages to your site, and hire the blogger.
Most SEOs don’t realize that most of the influencers on the web have
trouble with monetization; that you can probably pay them better than
they can pay themselves. Many bloggers would be ecstatic to learn that a
marketing agency would be interested in buying up their blog and hiring
them for a full time position.
This strategy really is the best of both worlds. You get all the SEO
value of a private link network, plus the added value of a pre-earned
audience, all wrapped up in a nice white hat package. It’s one of the
most powerful SEO marketing strategies in your arsenal, and I’m outright
amazed it isn’t used more often.
Now, this particular case study also shares a few other tactics that
fit well into any white hat campaign. First off: the power of internal
links. Google seems to like internal link loops. (The home page links to
this page, which links to this page, which links back to the home
page.) There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking advantage of this.
Putting a link at the bottom of each blog post that takes them to the
next one is a perfectly legitimate thing you can do to keep visitors
reading, and it helps all of the pages on that ring rank better than
they otherwise would.
I’ve mentioned before that “domain authority” is more or less just
the power of internal links, and that “page authority” is the only
metric that matters as far as “link juice” is concerned. Domains do have
some influence, but I suspect this is driven almost entirely
by things like user behavior data and domain name. I’ve never seen
evidence to suggest that the number of linking root domains to your
domain matters, beyond the power of page authority and internal links.
In short: make it very easy for Google to find your pages. Don’t bury links to old content in the archives.
Finally, this case study highlights the power of outbound links
as well. Becker apparently links to authoritative sites in order to
convince Google that his sites aren’t spam. I’ve never looked into this
myself. Outbound links give you so much more credibility, as far as your
users are concerned, that I’ve always used them.
However, if the black hats are doing it, you no longer have any excuse to be greedy with your outbound links.
3. Paid Links
It’s basically impossible to find case studies on this particular
topic. Nobody wants to spend money on links only to reveal their results
to the world. That said, there is no shortage of black hats who can
rank websites using link profiles that they paid for.
In one experiment, half of the people who responded to a link building outreach email expected to be paid.
On average, they asked for $285. This was in November of 2012, well
after Penguin, and judging by the relatively small upset that was
Penguin 2.0, I’d be very surprised if anything’s changed since then.
It should go without saying that public link buying networks don’t
work for very long at all. But these kinds of private exchanges can pass
value for a considerable amount of time before the site gets slapped.
What’s more, it’s usually the link sellers,
not the buyers, who receive an actual penalty. (I’m surprised more
people didn’t already know this.) The buyers typically face link devaluation, not penalties.
Buying links is a very bad idea if you want the SEO value of your
links to last, and that includes doing things like offering “free
products” in exchange for links. So what can we learn from the black
hats who still buy links?
In the black hat sector of the travel industry, links cost close to $300. How much SEO value can you buy with that money?
Could you pay an influential blogger to write a guest post on your site and earn at least one natural link by doing it for the price of $300?
Could you pay a photographer or graphic designer with a large social
media following to produce and promote an image for you for $300?
Could you conduct some sort of survey or study in order to reveal a
fascinating piece of information for your audience with $300?
Unfortunately, the mindset against buying links has spilled over into
our broad approach to SEO. Most SEOs just aren’t willing to spend money
in order to turn a profit. They fail to realize the vast number of ways
it’s possible to spend money in order to earn SEO value.
This is tragic.
4. Tiered Linking
This is one of those strategies that a lot of white hat SEOs are
surprised to learn still works, or that it’s worth the effort for
anybody. But one case study, by MakeMoneyNinja, explains how he used tiered linking
to build a profitable website starting in September of 2012. As of May
2013, the site was still profitable. Panda and Penguin updates didn’t
seem to do anything.
How did he do it? Basically, he joined a bunch of private link
networks, set up some web 2.0 properties, and started spamming these
with crappy links. He’s been spending about $500 a month in link
building using this method, and he’s been getting close to $3,000 a
month in affiliate sales.
Now, clearly, this is not the way to build a sustainable business,
but it demonstrates that tiered linking, as it stands, does seem to
protect sites that would otherwise fail in short order.
So, what’s the lesson?
There are a few things to take away from this. First of all, when you
do build links yourself, and you want their value to last, you want to
maximize the chance that the content will go viral. A guest post on an
authority site is much more valuable if it is written to attract natural
links and social activity. This means that it will continue to
contribute value long after it falls off the front page.
Second, it’s worth promoting content on sites other than your own.
Guest posts aren’t just an opportunity to build links; they’re an
opportunity to earn traffic and credibility that you can’t yet earn on
your own site. You can enhance this by promoting the content that you
publish on authoritative sites. For example, by adding a link to the
post in your email signature, promoting it through your social channels,
and putting it in a badge on your site, you can increase conversion
rates, establish authority, and give long lasting value to these
accomplishments.