Paid Links still work : Death by SEO

 

UPDATE 4/4/12 : There has been quite a bit of talk lately about Google’s latest algorithm change and how it will devalue the content farms primarily used by link spammers and link merchants. I am definitely seeing a shift in organic results for quite a few sites, but the sites that are coasting on blatant link spam are still doing  just fine. When I see mezzaninesbydesign.com drop, then I will believe that Google has finally struck a blow to the dreaded link merchants. 

Link spam is alive an well, and is still the fastest way to the top spot in the SERPs, for a while anyway. I have two clients that are dealing with competitors who are involved in aggresive link spamming campaigns. It is frustrating as hell for me, because I am not going to risk the agencys or my clients reputation by beating them at their own game. So, short of submitting ineffectual tattle-tail reports to Google (which never do anything anyway), and mapping out the link spamming companies client list to let them know they may very well see their organic traffic drop to zero in the coming months, there isn’t much I can do.

So I am going to bitch, AND, I am going to name names. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the hardcore black-hatters, in the same reason I have a lot of respect for DB Cooper. In fact, I have so much respect for some of them that when I discover their secret, I keep it. Typically I am not a snitch, in all aspects of life. I just don’t believe in it, and its a safe bet that those who aren’t living right will eventually do themselves in, but if you are directly stepping on my toes, or making my life difficult, all bets are off.

So lets begin…..

If you are reading this, then you probably already know what link spamming is. If you stumbled on this article and don’t know about SEO, link spamming is the practice of building as many links as possible, from as many domains as possible, with your target keyword in the anchor text, and flooding the search engines with these pages. Here is the definition from Google:

Web definitions

The theory, and rightfully so, is that the sheer volume of links pointing to your page using your keyword in the anchor text will cause Google to give you favorable positioning in the search engine results. This has been the foundation of Googles algorithm since the beginning, and usually it works pretty well.

Now, on to the good stuff..

Let’s pick a random keyword, how about ‘Mezzanines’. There is a fair amount of volume for this keyword and it spans several industries. I would like to get in the top 10 for this keyword, how hard is it going to be? Let’s check the competition. I am going to use Market Samurai for a quick snapshot of the competition. If you don’t use Market Samurai, you’re nuts. It is hands down the best piece of software a web marketer can have. So this is what the landscape looks like:

Click the image to enlarge

For the most part, this is typical in the industrial safety supply world. Most of the companies have been around for close to the same amount of time, most got online around the same time, etc. Wikipedia is an un-movable so we forget about that, but what do we have here? Something is strange.  In the DA (domain age) column, you can see that most of the sites are about the same age, 9-12 years old. But it looks like we have a real up and comer in the #2 position, mezzaninesbydesign.com (yes that’s nofollowed). Mezzaninesbydesign.com is only 3 years old, and I know for a fact that they were not in the top spot for Mezzanines a few weeks ago, but look at em’ go! This needs some investigation.

So, what is mezzaninesbydesign.com doing SO well that they are able to just shoot up through the SERPs and pass all the old dogs? The RDD (referring domains) column shows that they don’t have nearly as many domains linking to them as most of the other sites, in fact, none of their numbers are that impressive.

Note: the screenshot of the competition is only a partial picture, if you would like to see all the site results you can check them out at http://www.noblesamurai.com/share/seo-competition/a84jtocflggkwcgk448w#historical 

The next step is to visit the website and check out what they are doing. It is clear that the site was built with search engines in mind. They really wanted to rank well for ‘Mezzanines’, but no matter what you do on-site, it’s not going propel you to the top of the SERPs when you are facing off against these other seasoned websites. Scroll down to the bottom and you can see that the site makes no bones about the fact that they are using a SEO company to get their rankings. The footer of the site says it all:

Click the image to enlarge..

 

I don’t have one client that would ever allow me to advertise my company in their footer so this makes me question the ownership of this site, certainly looks like there is more than just a client relationship between Mezzanines by Design and Magnetik Search Marketing. At least I don’t have to hunt to find out who is working on the site.

Given that all the important numbers from Market Samurai are lower than the competitor’s sites, it’s immediately clear that this is a backlink issue. Either the few backlinks that mezzaninesbydesign.com has are coming from seriously powerful sites, or they have an abundance of links with the keyword Mezzanines in the anchor text (or both).

Natural links come over time, and almost always are to the home page and use either the company name or the URL. If your keyword is your company name, well lucky you, but that not often the case. Mezzanines by design does have their target keyword in the company name and URL, but that’s not enough to get the top spot for this keyword. So let’s look at their link inventory and see what we can see..

Let’s cruise over to www.backlinkwatch.com and look at the links pointing to the site, paying particular attention to the anchor text.

 

OK, mystery solved. It’s clearly the links. The shot above is just a small sample but it pretty much all looks the same. Lots of links that use Mezzanines in the anchor text and are not nofollowed. In fact, out of all of the links pointing to the site, only one or two are nofollowed. We now know that none of their links are natural, they are all either spammed, planted, or paid. Google doesn’t like this, I don’t like this.

What is even more interesting is the domains. If this were a natural profile, there would be plenty of domains that had something to do with industrial safety supplies, but there are none to be found here. In fact, the only consistent thing we can see with the domains (other than the lack of nofollow), is that the word India seems to appear in quite a few of them. There are real estate sites, car rental sites, tourist sites, but no sites that have anything to do with Mezzanines.

I visited almost all of the sites and after the first ten or so it was obvious what was going on. First, they are all WordPress sites, all of them. Many of the sites are using the same theme, and they are all following the same format of a few articles and then a ton of links. A quick check of the WHOIS information shows that they are all owned by the same guy.

Registrant:
Mahender Reddy chintalapally

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: JERRYDMOOREFORCIRCUITJUDGE.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
SNS159.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
SNS160.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM

Not even trying to cover his tracks. His process is simple: Mahender Reddy chintalapally is snatching up seasoned domains as they expire, throwing a WordPress site up and placing the links on the site. He has a big network of sites that he controls and sells the links. Buying links is the quickest way to get de-indexed in Google. They are quite clear on the matter. This is how mezzaninesbydesign.com was able to race to the top. Check out their link history:

 

That my friends is a link spammer profile. Again, not even trying to hide it. So, the next question is: what involvement does Magnetiks Search Marketing have with this technique? Their site is big and professional looking, they list some decent clients that I’m quite sure would not want to befall the same fate as BMW and JCPenny but who knows? Looking over the sites owned by this Indian link spammer, it’s just simple connect the dots to create a client list of people who are buying these services. I’m sure some of them know whats going on, but I’m sure some of them don’t and someone will lose their job when their marketing team see’s their organic traffic drop to zero and the CEO cant even find their website in Google when she types in the company name.

I have not contacted Magnetik Search Marketing to ask them why they would employ someone who is so brazenly breaking Google’s TOS. I’m sure they would plead ignorance, or say “we discovered this a while ago and are no longer working with mr. so-and-so”, and honestly I don’t particularly care. As I said earlier, I respect people who really put effort into working the system and do-so under the radar, but this smash and grab bullshit that $299 SEO’s engage in is very frustrating to me and when I have some free time, I will occasionally hasten their falling on their own sword.

I hate losing the top spot to spammers, but as long as I know and my client knows that this is temporary, I will sit back and watch, and wait for Google to hopefully figure out how to deal with this. If for nothing else than to see what new creative ways the true blackhatters come up with the game the system.

 

Going back to the grind…

Although this past year has been nothing short of on-the-edge-of-your-seat exciting, I have decided that it’s time to get back to work. I have accepted a position as interactive marketing specialist at one of the better agencies round these parts. My official start day is Jan 3rd so I am going to spend the time until then, wrapping up client work and watching a lot of television.

2011 was quite a year for search marketers, lots of drama and algorithmic changes. Google likes to keep us on our toes. 2011 was also the year that being an SEO was cool. With PPC in its final death rattle, working with organic results has once again proven to be a mans game. In the past 2 months, my inbox has seen quite a few lucrative job offers from both agencies and companies looking to bring search in-house. Yesterday I received the biggest offer I have seen in the midwest, a starting salary of $110,000 with a cushy corner office. Honestly I wish they would have contacted me a week earlier because the job sounds like a cake walk, but I’ve already sold my soul to another and I try not to go back on my word.

My decision to go back to work for someone else almost saw me whisked out of Wisconsin and re-planted in New Jersey, my decision to not go still nags at me – did I miss a great opportunity? The thought of living and working 15 minutes outside of Manhattan is really appealing, even though the conspiracy nut in me says that moving closer to NYC in 2012 is a horrible idea. The job was a gimmmee with no shortage of work and improvements on the site. The appeal was that they wanted someone who was creative overall to work on not only SEO but also usability and other channels of traffic. *sigh* the more I write about it, the more I wonder if I made the right choice by staying here.

2011 was also the year of lousy clients. Lessons learned on that front – PUT IT ALL IN WRITING! I had a friend/bro deal go horribly south because the client handed me such a pile of shit that I had to spend all the money on building them a new site. Trying to improve traffic and conversions on their current site was pointless. This of course was not part of the scope and my bad for not getting that in writing. Huge waste of time for me, and they ended up with a site they can use for years.

2011 was also the year of lousy contractors. I – being the softy that I am – hired a developer who I KNEW was going to screw me by way of his neurosis. I understand that when you flip over a rock in the online world you are bound to step in some aspergers, but this guy really threw a wrench in my plans and caused me major headache. Then he flat out stole $1000 from me from a clients deposit, which cost me the job and put me in the hole. I am going to have to pay that back, and $1000 is a pesky amount. It’s too little to warrant a kiss from a louieville slugger, but big enough that it hurts me to have to pay it back. I still havent figured out how to resolve this one, but this kid is the master at shooting himself in the foot. He shot me in both feet, several times.

2012 is going to be a better year. I find that putting in time at a 8-5 agency is really good for my mental health. I don’t mind burning the occasional midnight oil, but being able to shut down at 5 and not think about it until the next day is really good for my brain. My time at Zeon was the easiest life has been in quite some time. I left there because I couldn’t fake it anymore. My hope is that my new home doesn’t require the same facade, because I can only put on a show for about 11 months before I have to let out steam and tell people ‘the way it is’.

Maybe 2012 will be the year that I finally clean this damn site up and remove all the old posts that blew up with the auto poster. I’ve only had that on my plate for 10 months and as you can see, it never happened.

Fox 6 Milwaukee : Courtney Gerrish : Brad Hicks : I will leave you alone!

Fox 6 News search engine rankings. I will give them back to you!

I noticed that I am getting a lot of traffic for people looking for the Fox 6 Milwaukee news casters, particularly Courtney Gerrish and Brad Hicks and his silly ties. I can’t stand local news – that’s no secret – but I don’t think I am obsessed with it. Brad Hicks is hilarious to me – only because I think he is the real life Ron Burgandy and I love the movie Anchorman. I have taken issue with Fox 6 a couple times because of a few of their stories that I thought were not only stupid, but also harmful. I also think Brad Hicks is an arrogant jackass (it turns out a lot of people do – I found some funny blog posts about him from his old network in San Francisco). ANYWAY.. not the point of this article.

I was just checking referring stats and I see that I am beating out the Fox 6 website on its own keywords in the search engines! That is pretty sad. I have always had a particular interest in media outlet sites and their methods of marketing. They have done a few things right, but they are way off-base on some serious fundamentals. A media outlet site could be an absolute power house if they understood how search engines work. Too bad. I would love a crack at one of those. The link building opps and social media opps are huge. I’m sure no one is going to beating down my door for making fun of Brad Hicks ties, but I am quite sure the people at Fox 6 have run into my site on a few occasions. I will stop posting about Brad and Courtney because I don’t think I am doing anyone any favors by occupying the top spot in the search engines for these keywords. Brad Hicks: This is the last time I will mention your name. I promise

Courtney.. I don’t think I ever had a problem with you. I appreciate knowing who is peeing in the food in Milwaukee restaurants.

Incoming search terms:

• dirty dining milwaukee
• fox 6 dirty dining
• brad hicks ties

VENUE.COM IS A SCAM

Sometimes you have to get ugly to get peoples attention. This is apparently the case with VENUE.com. My girlfriend got a pre-approved credit card in the mail from Venue.com The site claims to make luxury items affordable. They don’t, what they do is send pre-approved credit cards out to people with spotty credit, dazzle them with high ticket items and get them on the never ending payment plan. That’s not such a surprise, however, what happens next is. If you are researching VENUE.com , read on.

Venue.com Questionable Business Practices

My girlfriend Sarah was checking out the Venue.com site and she found a good deal, a really good deal. She has been looking for a plasma or LCD TV, Venue had some. They were a couple hundred dollars more than everyone else, but as I said, they target people who probably cant get credit elsewhere. She ran across a hell of a deal, a 50″ Plasma for $4. Yes, $4. Obviously a misprint – but what the heck right? SO she did what we would all do, she ordered 3. We were joking about it, wondering if it would slip through. There have been plenty of instances where online merchants got careless and had to pay the price. Eventually she called to check, she got a rude customer service person on the phone. He said – so are you ready for the TV’s? She said “are you going to sell them to me as advertised?”. He said “We obviously cannot sell you a plasma tv for $4″. The the executive office canceled it. We thought that was the end.

We just logged on to her account, 2 weeks later. The shipping charges are still there. $200 per TV and she is being charged for that! 2 more calls to customer service, no satisfaction. So tonight I called, sometimes a male voice is all you need. I got someone who was probably in a call center in Bangalore. I asked why the shipping charges were still there, she was baffled, baffled because she THOUGHT THEY SENT THE ORDER! She asked me if I received the item, I said obviously not, it was canceled. Again, nothing, we will be contacted within 48 hours.

Legal Recourse? I think there just might be!

Now what gets interesting here is I contacted my friend who is a hot shot attorney in Miami. I asked him if they had to honor the online price, even if it was a mistake, and he said NO – As long as they give the money back.  Well, they haven’t. So this could get interesting. Illegal Business Practices by Venue.com?

If you look for Venue.com on the web, there is no mention of them, nothing, no reputation, nothing. I am guessing that the complaints will start piling up. I am also guessing that when someone goes looking for information on Venue.com they are going to see this post. DO NOT DEAL WITH VENUE.COM ! They prey on people who are denied expensive items due to bad credit then engage in obvious shady business practices.

Now, a  note to the person from Venue who is paid to search for word on the internet: I am an internet marketer by trade. I specialize in internet promotions and search marketing. Within a week I can have 20 horrible reviews pop up for anyone looking for Venue, and I have the time to do it. So, if I were you I would bite the bullet and handle this.

Next comes the BBB, then Scam.com, then , well.. You know. I can trash your name in a week, it will take you months and thousands of dollars to repair it. That’s a lot of time and much more expensive than a 50″ plasma.

The kicker here is that the reason we were even on the site was that she was going to order a 40″ LCD tonight but cannot because of the shipping charges.

VENUE.COM You will get a post a day and 10 links that you don’t want (per day) until this is settled.

Incoming search terms:

• venue making luxury affordable
• venuemakingluxuryaffordable com
• venue com goes out of business
• venue com out of business