You CAN Link Spam Your Competition Out Of Existance, Sort Of

by on April 9, 2012

On one of my Great Link Building Experiment posts, Armaan asked:

Thanks for that clarification…A lot of the “IM gurus” say that too many links pointing to your main site are harmful but I don’t think that Big G will ever penalize a site for “having too many links”. If that were so, I could easily point an army of links to take down my competitors! What are your thoughts on the same?

Also, I have a niche site that just keeps disappearing and then appearing in the SERPS…it’s been happening for over a year now and I have no clue…this site had UAW links pointing to it but I think the issue lies in “overusing” the anchor text….I think I need more of “Click Here” type of anchor text…any help on this?

As crazy as it sounds, yes, you can link spam your competitors page out of existence!  There are a couple of sites where people have done this as an experiment and it appears to work.  Here is how.

I don’t claim to know everything about the Google algorithm for detecting spam pages, but I do know that it exists.  One of the main goals of the Google Web Spam team is to find algorithmic ways to detect spam pages since it would be impossible for a group of 100,000+ people to sort through the trillions and trillions of web pages that exist, with hundreds of billions more being created every day.

So how and why does this work?

First off, it can really only work for low quality sites to begin with.  You aren’t going to be able to link spam Amazon or CNN or anything like that out of existence in the search results.

It’s a proven fact that the current Google algorithm will penalize your page straight to the bottom in the search results if you have an unnaturally keyword stuffed backlink profile.  If your site is keyword optimized for “blue widgets” and you make 1000 backlinks to your site for the exact keyword “blue widgets” and nothing else, you’ll get penalized.

Why?  Because the Google Web Spam team has analyzed good sites that naturally rise in their results vs spam sites.  What makes them different?  Good sites have a natural backlink profile with diverse keyword results, things like “bluest widgets”, “widgets that are blue”, “this site about blue widgets”, “http://blue-widgets.info”, http://www.blue-widgets.info”, “www.blue-wigets.info”, “click here to learn more about blue widgets”, “this awesome blue widget site”, “my friend Phil’s site about widgets”, and other random link text.   I’m guessing that they factor in the popularity of the keyword as well somehow.

Somewhere around 75%-85% unnatural keyword links, BAM, your site will disappear from the search results for that keyword.    People call this the “Google Dance” for a new site or the “Sandbox”, but those are really just excuse terms that people who don’t understand what is going on.

Note that the 75%-85% mark is likely very different for known spam magnet keywords.  “Make money online”, “lose weight fast”, “wrinkle cream”, “web hosting”, “gambling”, “porn”, and many other keyword subjects will probably drop at a 50% keyword stuffed mark.

So how do you take your competitors site.  Is it junk?  Do they have few backlinks or an already unnatural backlink profile?  Stuff the heck out of them!

Go to Fiver.com and buy backlinking jobs.  Comment spam, profile spam, anything.  Thousands of them.  Tens of thousands of them.  HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of them.  All for the same keyword.

And if you can get them over that 85% stuffed backlink mark, BOOM!  They’re gone for that keyword, and you go up a step.

That’s why this won’t work for a good site with diverse backlinks and diverse keywords.  Even if you could hit them for the one keyword “blue widget”, it’s only one keyword.  They’ll probably still rank fine for “widgets that are blue”, “blue widgets”, “widgets sites”, etc.

But if you’re battling it out with a single keyword targeted site, you can take them out.

 

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Jason Laffan April 13, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Interesting topic. You are one of the first to say that this actually works even though Matt Cutts has come out saying that it is not possible to negatively impact another site through spammy links. I have been thinking the last couple weeks after the latest round of panda updates that this was going to be a factor in some way. Sure they can just deindex blog networks but it is not google’s style to just not count something. It seems they do love to do small 10-50 SERP penalties that do not completely knock you out but leave you guessing as to what small change you made that caused this drop. I am not saying I will try this fiverr trick but I am not saying I will not either ;)

Just wondering how the last panda update effected some of the results of your previous tests? I am sure that is an entirely different blog post topic.

Peace

Armaan April 26, 2012 at 10:49 am

Hey EP,

Thanks for dedicating an entire post on my question :D

There’s been a lot of debate going on about negative SEO and I’ve been reading articles daily on the same topic….It’s scary to say the least but my belief is that as long as you continue adding value in Google’s eyes (that means well-written, high quality posts, nice blog experience overall etc), you’re safe….

That said and done, I really need your help! I have a site that was earlier ranking but after some UAW articles, all pages have disappeared from SERPS…I can still see my site when I do a “site:yoursite.com” and in my Analytics account I see 5-10 visitors a day coming via some long tail keywords….

Do you think it has anything to do with link diversity? What is the best way for me to solve this issue?

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