Slightly Shady SEO | Making Money Online, One Script at a Time

Ok, so first off. To anyone whose been trying to get ahold of me, I apologize. Been offline for a few days since school was over, and I had to move. I was only on for an hour or so a day. But I’m back in action now.

Secondly, for those of you unfamiliar with this topic, I recommend you read the blackhat case study entry that started this (Note: Conditions beyond my control made me change how I was going to promote for this case study).
This experiment wasn’t designed to rank necessarily, but rather to see how possible it was to provide some decent longevity using blackhat tactics. I tried to rank my site high enough that it would get traffic in it’s niche, but not so high it would be noticed and banned for the search engines. In addition, the tactics I decided to use were ones that would cause as little friction as possible.

I can’t give out too much information, as the site is still indexed. It was first indexed in early November.

About the Niche Chosen

• The niche chosen is very much saturated by affiliates.
• Both the initial short tail keywords, and a really common misspelling were targetted.
• The top 10 keywords in this niche are somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 searches per month. So it’s definitely not a top tier keyword, but it’s not bad.
• The top ranker for all of the keywords chosen is the affiliate program I’m running through, so trying to rank too high was risky.

About the Tactics Used

• Directories (all autosubmitted; nothing by hand) were used to clutter up the linkdomain: results to prevent snoopers from seeing too much.
• The majority of the blackhat link drops were on a single CMS that is not commonly used by blackhats to drop links.
• The blackhat backlinks themselves were reinforced by more blackhat backlinks behind them(15-50 each), giving them some relatively substantial power to pass.
• Articles were hand written, but it is quite obviously an affiliate site to anyone within marketing. The articles are relatively short.
• Overall time invested was probably 3-6 hours. (I hate writing content, and procrastinated a lot)
• All inbound links used rotated anchor text. Frequency was determined by how difficult the keyword was to rank for.
• The url structure of the CMS all the link drops were on looks similar to the auto-submitted directory architecture(yes, this is the true point of the directories)
• Depending on the inbound link checker used, 600-a couple thousand inbound links were found.
• Some of the blackhat link drops themselves were no longer indexed or at least are hard to find after they got reinforced. This is largely a result of me being more than a little bit overzealous in my initial reinforcement. Oddly, it appears they’re still passing link juice? I shouldn’t be ranking this high if they’re not.
• Links were dropped over the course of 3-4 days via a cron script that dropped them a random number at a time.
• The links dropped to reinforce my real links were really crappy links. Many of them are from an ancient BBS system that hasn’t been used in years. And I mean litterally years. So these domains have produced nothing but spammy links for a long time, and have expanded to be hundreds of thousands of pages. This was selected due to my belief that it’s mostly pissy webmasters that track down sites. Not as much algorithms anymore. So by dodging easily angered forum webmasters, life stays drama free.
• Despite my best efforts the site has gained a few organic backlinks. Thankfully, they don’t give too much power so they shouldn’t effect the overall outcome of the experiment.

The Progression of Ranking: From Birth Until Present
Note:

• Site was first indexed in November, and quickly broke the top 50. Afterwards, it was smacked WAY down for the proper spelling into the 200-300 range. It was still ranking for the misspelling.
• After a few weeks of this, it continued to climb for misspellings, and drop for proper spellings.
• At this point, something peculiar occurs. The pages ranking for each search term are not the proper pages. Apparently I was too enthusiastic in my anchor text shuffling, because the anchor text definitely overwhelmed the on page content. This is another sign that the pages I was too zealous in reinforcing are still passing juice; they were the ones that used the most shuffling. Afterwards, it was more contained.
• Now, I forget about the domain for a bit(sorry guys!)
• Fast forward a few months. The domain is currently ranking top 5 for every targetted term involving the misspelling(there is actually some competition for the misspelling; it gets about 1/2 of the traffic of the proper spelling). On a positive note though, it’s top 10 for most most medium tail keywords(2 keyword combos) with the proper spelling(some top 5), and top 15 for the primary keyword (where it still gets traffic).

Rankings on MSN/Yahoo

• Yahoo: Ranking top 10 for every single keyword targeted with the exception of the main one. It got muscled out of there, though for a bit it had the #3 slot. The medium tail keywords seem to hover mostly around 3-5.
• MSN: #12 for the primary keyword. #2 for most other keywords, including every one of the popular misspellings. The furthest down it is for any keyword other than the primary one is #7.

So XMCP, Did Anyone See what you were up to?
Yes, it got 5 referrers from site: commands, and one subpage got a referrer from a yahoo linkdomain: command on the main site. That was months ago though, so it obviously passed whatever inspection it got from whichever webmaster it got.

So where are the rest of the stats?
All in good time. I’m still debating about pumping it up a bit more in the rankings. But it has to get banned before I can give out any more information than I have here…

So What is Hampering Progress?
Well first of all, I barely spent any time on this site, and should’ve spent more. I may fire off a few more rounds soon. Beyond that, I have to be really careful not to outrank my affiliate program for these keywords. They definitely have a professional SEO on board, and have claimed the top spot for almost all the keywords I’m targeting. Ranking higher than them is a risk I’m not willing to take.

-XMCP

PS: If you feel like it, I did a podcast over at Cant Get Rich. And no, I have no idea why my voice sounds so nasally.

PPS: I’m super tired as I write this, so forgive any bonehead errors.

Copeac CPA Program

My experiment sites are currently pending analysis, so I thought I’d stick in a more general article today. As I consider myself something of the black sheep or somewhat estranged cousin of the mainstream SEO industry(understandably), I figured it would be a good idea to put this out there.

Whitehat SEO, while not at a standstill, is certainly feeling a pinch from Google lately. Penalties are being handed out to sites much like a fratboy would cups of beer to the only attractive girl at the party. And yet many still refuse to learn anything remotely blackhat. I understand that they don’t want to implement the tactics specifically that I talk about, but there’s a lot more to it, and a lot that can be learned. So without further delay….

Some Great Reasons that a Whitehat SEO should Learn Blackhat SEO

1. Blackhat SEO can be used as a Mindset, not Necessarily a Set of Tactics
   Blackhat SEO, in my opinion, is thinking outside the box in your internet promotions, regardless of Google’s thoughts. Are they frowned upon? Yeah. They are. But thinking of tactics that are against Google’s TOS take only a little bit of tweaking to become a truly killer tactic.
   Take a look at this thread from experts-exchange. It looks like all the answers can’t be seen, correct? But then scroll wayyy to the bottom. Past the “Sign up today”, past the menu. And there are the answers. Here’s reality people: That is a tiny modification on cloaking. And yet it (apparently) is within Google’s terms of service. How Much do you think that increased their sales, and how many longtail hits do you think they get a day from the data that’s towards the bottom? I’ll give you a hint. The number probably has a lot of zeros on the end of it.
2. You Shouldn’t Forget About Us, because We Won’t Forget about You
   Just because you ignore blackhat SEO doesn’t mean we’re ignoring you. While I like to piss off as few people as possible during my SEO adventures, many don’t have that scruple. As soon as you release a tool, be aware that people are going to look for a way to mess with that. I’ve actually seen people successfully create sitelinks that link to a competitor’s product plug without doing anything illegal or editing a single file.
3. Blackhat SEO Learns Search Engine Rules Insanely Fast
   Ok. Blackhat sites are typically a hyperbole of whitehat sites. Everything is more. More speed, more pages. Extremely good, or extremely bad links. Identical anchor text, or purposefully randomized anchor text. Many internal links, or none at all. And you control these variables. It’s truly incredible for research, and finds the “breaking points” much faster than most whitehat sites. If you don’t want to do it yourself, just listening to what people have to say is an incredible learning tool.
4. Like it or Not, We’re Ranking
   You’re going to want to know and understand what a competitor is doing. Many people quite frankly suck at spotting even the most basic of tricks. Thought obviously I won’t advise you report anyone, it’s still good to know what you’re up against.
5. Tired of Paying for Backlinks? Find the fresh ‘n free ones.
   Remember when the concept of do-follow flickr links still existed and worked? If that time period was only a week long, it’s because you weren’t watching blackhats closely enough. I’m constantly amazed when I examine heavily spammed search engine result(think viagra, phentermine) the number of authority links that exist, and where they came from. I’m not talking about the illegal hacking ones either. In many cases, they’re not even blackhat necesarilly, and they’re free for the taking.
6. Learn What you Can Get Away With
   Ever seen an obviously blackhat site ranking for a long period of time, and wondered “Why the hell is that still ranking?”. Well, if it’s been their for awhile chances are that for whatever reason Google’s autodetection schemes haven’t figured out how to nail it yet. I wouldn’t advise using their exact strategy in case things go awry, but water it down a bit and you may just have yourself a winning strategy. As always though when trodding the gray line, a new, non-client site is a good move.
7. Mangoes.

Yes, just a brief entry today. I’ll cook something new up as soon as inspiration strikes.

-XMCP

Ok. So after the dramabomb that was yesterday, I thought I’d drop a more traditional entry. The guide here is going to be essentially for people that are constantly worried about the big G getting wise to their tactics. Especially with Google’s recent “shading in” of most whitehats by killing off even widget bait, more and more people are getting worried. Even for non blackhat sites. Some of these tips require sacrifice, so it’s up to you to weigh out the cost/reward.

Oh yeah, and this is for people who DO buy links, or DO have sketchier tactics.

1. Pseudo-Linkbait - Linkbait is one of the few secure channels for getting links into your site, so long as it’s on-topic. But here’s the dirty little secret: It’s also a great channel for funneling spammed or paid links. It’s much more believable that people were linking out to your linkbait than to your home page, so why not buy a few links going there? Who knows, maybe it will even build up to semi-viral at some point from the people seeing it. The day Google penalizes because “Your linkbait wasn’t good enough” is the day I move to Russia and pull out the super black hat.
2. I Will Smack you 1 Time For Every Sitewide Link You Have - If your site is on Free Credit Reports, or something that REALLY is not of any interest to people in reality(yeah, credit related sites don’t get e-groupies, deal with it). It would appear sitewide links are very much discounted, and beyond that, it’s a massive “THIS IS NOT A NATURAL LINK” flag. Overall, not worth it in my opinion.
3. Be Creative on the Context of your Links - If you’re buying, spamming, or link farming your own links, you probably have control over how stuff is worded. So if you’re in a high competitive niche, talk trash about yourself sometimes. “I tried to sign up for a free credit report, but that company hasn’t gotten back to me yet! What the heck?”. So long as you don’t mention your own company name in the text, no one will ever realistically relate the entry to your site, and for a competitive field they’ll never rank and become your PR problem. But that context is infinitely more believable than a 500 word blog entry on credit reports.
4. Negotiate Unique Links - If you’re soliciting sites for links and paying them, ask them how much it would cost(1 time payment) to not get them to sell more links off that site. It will break your financial bank a bit, but while you know you’re not stupid and will probably float under the Google radar for a bit, you cannot say the same thing for every other idiot with $20 that they sell links to.
5. Separate this Site from Your Others - Use a different registrar, different name, different host, different everything. Matt Cutts has said before that webmaster with a blackmark on their record may be looked at a bit more skeptically than others with a clean slate.
6. Stealth Redirecting - Definitely one of my favorites, but a bit on the grayhat side to be sure. Use caution. Create separate clone sites with similar site structure. Build links to them with your higher risk tactics(don’t waste money on them though). Tell Google to shove off, and deny them in robots.txt. After all, it’s not their business what you do if you’re telling them to stay the hell out of your site.
   Anyways, after you’ve built up your sketchball links, redirect those pages INDIVIDUALLY to your new, real site. Yahoo and MSN will follow it, and after MSN hits it the 10,000 times necessary to conclude that yes, you are in fact redirecting, you should get a decent bump in their search engines. But since Google isn’t even allowed to access the site, those sketch arse links never come into question.
   However: Make sure you do NOT redirect robots.txt. That’s why I said individual pages. Google still checks on robots.txt at times, and you want to make sure it doesn’t get sent to your new one. Not sure how that would work, but I also don’t want to find out.
7. Observe the “Top 1000″ Rule - Remember that a LOT of the bannings/penalizations that occur nowadays are due to competitors reporting your site. If you can garner a few REALLY strong links organically(1000 may be a bit optimistic) you’re golden. Yahoo is the only remaining useful backlink checker, and they max out at 1000 links. So if you can keep that first page(or as many as possible) clean, what happens past your 1000th link in Yahoo doesn’t exist to the world. While for many people this may not sound reasonable, getting mentioned in something along the lines of an AP news wire could easily give a substantial bump into that 1000. Yeah, this tip is hard. Get over it.

-XMCP