Black Hat
Bad Credit Personal Loans In Google
April 28 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
The other day I wrote about the hilarity still showing up for buy Cialis still in Google even after all these “quality” updates. While I can see how Google’s toned down the power of having a lot of specific anchor text links, there are clearly problems still. So right now for the search term bad credit personal loans is showing one silly result. This is a very competitive term and this type of crap shouldn’t still be showing up, right?
Tagged google, Link Building
Buy Cialis Online Google Results
April 26 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
So the super duper spam attack Google algo update hit this week and continues to roll out, so what do the search results for some of the most spammed keywords look like? Well let’s take a look at buy Cialis and see what we can find ranking in the top 10 for one very competitive keyword.
Negative SEO Fiverr
April 21 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
While this is most likely just a quick way to make a few bucks while jumping on a trend, we will however see an influx of these services. I’ve been enjoying the debating on whether or not you can penalize a site with boat loads of links. If you can buy yourself a bunch of junk links and end up in all sorts of trouble, why couldn’t someone else. There’s no way to tell who paid for those links so we have an interesting year ahead of us still.
Tagged blackhat, link sabotage, negative seo
Blog Network Outed & Google Responds
October 1 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
I was doing some answering on Google Webmaster Central this morning when I spotted a thread where someone outed a link network publicly. This should be a little alarming to those blackhatter’s out there who do the same thing and don’t cover their tracks. What’s even more strange to see is an actual Google employee piping in on the thread, and it looks like someone’s hard work is about to be pwned.The network was put in a Google Docs and every site is now on the web for all to see, and that means Matt Cutts.
Fortune 500 Company + SEnuke = Disaster
July 3 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
Before we get into this quick post I’ll state this is in by no means a bash to SEnuke, but more of a lesson when hiring an in-house SEO. A lot of the link building tactics used in the software are 100% link schemes, and are going to eventually get you in trouble. However, it is also in the user(think guns don’t kill people, people with guns..) to make it black hat. You could most definitely use it for legit purposes in small doses. But for the most part, this software spams forums, blog comments and web 2.0 profiles. It also now does link wheel “strategies”, and by looking at the diagram below, what do you think of;
If that’s not a visual definition of a link scheme. So in came an email from a fortune 500 company asking for help when their homepage dipped out of the SERPs, and a whole ton of their target kw’s were now bouncing around the 50-70 range. Not good right? Naturally my first step was to run a link report and see what was going on. I nearly spat my coffee all over the keyboard with what I saw after my Link Research Tools (shameless plug for Cemper here :) report finished.
So what happened? This company is an old school one, and they for so many years just relied on a webmaster, basic on page SEO and the natural links they received. After a few of the higher ups went to a conference and got all jazzed on online marketing, they decided to put together an in-house team. This lead to someone fresh out of university being picked up and hired, along with 4 other graduates from the same school/marketing program.
Perhaps a risky move, but the university has a great reputation, and the fresh hires were cheaper than some one with a lot of real world experience. Perhaps the first mistake, but not necessarily a bad move. The problems arose once the team decided to implement SEnuke as their link building platform and methodology.
After learning about link wheels, profile links and all the other “techniques” out there they went to town with this software. After 8 months there were nearly a dozen link wheels setup with spun content, but the worst part, the thousands and thousands of forum spam, blog comment and 2.0 profile links. To back that up, only 6-10 different money keyword anchor text were thrown in the mix. This got real obvious real quick.
So a year later and some very major problems are now a reality in this companies life. The clean up process is going to be down right awful, and guess who gets the clean up work duty? No me, that’s for sure! We’ll be taking their link building efforts into 2012 with awesome content, resources, web apps, mobile apps and beyond. Large companies have huge pull and don’t need to resort to anything other than natural link creation, so let this be a warning to all.
Be careful who you hire, don’t use questionable tactics and do things right if you want to stick around longer than a year in the SERPs. Google is going to be really focusing on SERP quality over the next year (and beyond), so now is the time to go over everything and make sure you’re squeaky clean.
Tagged blackhat, Link Building, penalty, senuke
Dilbert Caught Buying Links – Google Punishes!
June 27 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
Thanks To: Dilbert.com For The Comic!
Tagged comic, dilbert, Paid Links
Buy Google +1 Votes? How Long Before It’s Gamed?
June 12 | Black Hat | Ryan Clark
I was recently adding the Google +1 button to my site, and while I’m not too happy about adding another bloody button to the long list of ones here, it had to be done. I’ve yet had to see any positive results, or notice a change within my Google SERPs in regards to this new social voting feature. The long tail search results still are over spammed and it seems that Google’s Panda update is still lost in the dark for the most part. So is this the next step to redeeming the polluted search results, or the next thing to game?
There is without a doubt a network being formed as I write this to sell, trade and gain Google +1 votes. I scoured some of the biggest webmaster forums for this post to see if anyone was already offering them for sale…not quite yet (and I’m kind of surprised). There is definitely going to be a blitz to buy these if they work, and if it does work well then Google is in for even more trouble.
For those in the know, or in the I read a ton of forums, their is another large update related to Panda coming. There has also been talk about a major change to the way they view links as well! I doubt this sooner than later update will incorporate the +1 votes, but in a year from now I imagine these will come heavily into play. Just like the people who have gamed links when the anchor text tip was out, they’ll game this and there will be huge money to be made. So this is why I’m a little worried.
So how many of you will buy these votes if it’s an option? If you’re not willing to dip your pen in the black ink, do you fear being left in the dust with nothing to do but complain to Google? I’d also love to hear from anyone who thinks the +1 votes are already influencing their rankings.
Tagged google +1, google plus one, social media, vote buying
