Quality Links My A$$!

Webpage in question: http://www.usfreeads.com/1176930-cls.html (first real backlink )

Spamming still works good on google. I would like to analyze a certain webpage that ranks high on google for very competitive keywords "reverse phone lookup" & "reverse phone directory" + as a result of backlinking it ranks for a number of similar and long tail terms. These two keywords are the ONLY anchors used in backlinking. No related terms or variations.

For a partial list of around 500 links, pr analysis, etc, you can download html here. You will see that every domain, every page has the same design, and some websites have 200 inner pages with links pointing to the webpage in question.

The keyword "reverse phone lookup" can be found on the second page of google. Bad? Not really, given that the spammer probably used an hour of this time for setting up his webpage and linking altogether. This term is searched approximately 673,000 times per month (source:adwords). Well doesn't really matter. We can see that in around 4 months (see when google first indexed the page) + this guy got 12.500 views on his page, that means 3000 per month, 100/day. Being in a similar industry I think this page should convert at around 3% or 4%. So he must be making around $15-$20 per day with this webpage if we look realistically.

Not much? Given the amount he spent on building the website and linking (approx. 1 hour with a few scripts), and repeat the process for similar pages...sky is the limit to your earnings.

Seems like piggy backing on authority sites and spamming your backlinks anywhere (not relevant), as long as they have some authority (PR), works like charm still. So, if you're into blackhat you could just fire up xrumer, get a few dozen keywords with affiliate offers, place them on some authority websites and you could be well on your $500/day within a period of months. Not a new idea, but as you see it works right now and it LASTS. The page in question is 4 months+ old. How do you look at this?

I for one am of course against these methods, as they WILL be caught one day or another. Building a legitimate and serious business standing on strong feet is the only way for me.

MY AIM OF THIS THREAD is to start a good discussion.

 

The surrounding text (somewhere around 20 words) has always been known to be the more relevant factor - not the overall page subject. If you take a look at many of the sites (quickest way is to hit up Site Explorer), you'll notice that they are sites with authoritative sites (in G's eyes, quite a few are of PR3-4). This guy has probably spent a truckload on domain names, or just bought a whole lot of expiring domains over time. So.. for an automated system, they really are quality links.

 

I was getting afraid no one will reply to my ramblings

What he has is expired domains yes, and then he fired up a doorway generator script and that was it. In these doorway pages he promoted around 10 of his webpages which all rank high for certain keywords. It would be quite hard to recognize and devalue these links, but in this case all these domains have the exact same design, so that could play a factor and maybe raise some flags for manual review...

 

What a waste. Using expired domains in this way will ruin their value in the long run. It is far easier, and safer, to 'flip' these sites with their original theme to get long term residual income. Even if that income is only $20 a month, multiply that by 100 ... and it starts adding up. Not to mention the possible sale of the site itself.

This type of thing is not new. It will get filtered out in time and all of the domains will be trashed.

I am wondering just how much money this guy is really making. I mean, even if you did do the search for reverse lookup and actually went to the second result page and click on the link, would that classified page actually convert?

As I read the page, I still have no idea what the guy was trying to sell -- all I saw was a form to contact the dude and had to supply an email address. Seems to me that he should had at least set up a better landing page than this. Like I said, what a waste.

 

Of course its not a new method, but I was really surprised to see this competitive keyword ranking so high with the only links being doorway pages with spam links.

Usually you would see these pages drop of the serps in a few weeks time, but it has to be noted that this guy is ranking even after almost 5 months after the first index.

I have no doubt it will get filtered out, but the question is when? Will it take years?

All these domains could be put to a lot better use, but maybe he has access to hundreds of these...Nevertheless, a waste it is indeed.

 

probably will be taken down when someone (human) reports it using the google spam reporting form, it's sad but true and many ppl still making tons of money this way

 

Great post! I liked the searching you did and thanks for sharing. By analyzing this spammy page you get some real insight into what really does work and not just speculation about "add X number of dofollow links per month" and the like. This person is having some great keyword ranking success even though they've left some footprints that show there's some spammy things going on. I think the pyramid will crumble at some point but most black hatters know this, it's just a matter of extracting as much $$$ as you can before that happens.

 

However the footprint they left is incredible. Shame on Google.

 

The constant debate that quality links are better than quanity baffles me. Clearly there is a lot of inexperience in this forum.

The more the better, even if it's not relevant.

 

That's true. Relevant or irrelevant is not important and the only thing that matters is the weight it passes on to you.

But, many mass link building methods have been devalued through course of time and the algorithm to catch these methods is only going to improve. You can see an example with directory and article submission. It's clearly not as powerful it used to be.

Seems doorway pages still work good though.