What is this "Black Hat" backlinking method?

[HenrySEO]

I'm looking at some backlinks of a competitor and they are, literally, all redirections....

Here's a sample:

https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/Resources/Info-Sheet/Mini-Beast-Identification-Key?returnUrl=https://thevou.com/fashion/plus-size-clothing/
http://severeweather.wmo.int/cgi-bin/goto?where=https://thevou.com/fashion/plus-size-clothing/
http://toolbarqueries.google.com.eg/url?q=https://thevou.com/fashion/plus-size-clothing/

These URLs (and this is a tiny sample) all have redirections in the URL path like this:

• ?ReturnURL=
• url?Q=
• goto?where=

Etc etc - and they all (attempt) to redirect to the destination URL

Is this for some sort of affiliate cookie insertion?

Feels like I am missing a trick here - and it is something I should know and understand but I just don't get why there are so many backlinks like this...

All pointers massively appreciated!

 

[MisterF]

They're probably hacked links, as the Royal Horticultural Society won't be linking to crappy clothing sites.

 

[HenrySEO]

@MisterF sounds about right - but why would someone plant a link on a hacked site w/out gain? Unless of course they were paid to be an SEO for the destination site and they are just boosted the DA and other metrics to make it look good?

I'm just not seeing the benefit here...

 

[MisterF]

@MisterF sounds about right - but why would someone plant a link on a hacked site w/out gain? Unless of course they were paid to be an SEO for the destination site and they are just boosted the DA and other metrics to make it look good?

I'm just not seeing the benefit here...

There are SEO providers out in the world who use hacked links to improve DA etc, so possibly this was used in that context.

 

[HenrySEO]

There are SEO providers out in the world who use hacked links to improve DA etc, so possibly this was used in that context.

Yes, basically SAPE right? @MisterF

Still, would love to understand why there are so many of these referring domains.....maybe some tiered link building going on, i.e. trying to power up a Tier 2 pre-money site...

 

[kimomalcolmx]

Yes, basically SAPE right? @MisterF

Still, would love to understand why there are so many of these referring domains.....maybe some tiered link building going on, i.e. trying to power up a Tier 2 pre-money site...

no it is not sape, sape are homepage links,
does your competitor rank with those links ?

 

[MisterF]

Yes, basically SAPE right? @MisterF

Still, would love to understand why there are so many of these referring domains.....maybe some tiered link building going on, i.e. trying to power up a Tier 2 pre-money site...

These are hacked links nothing to do with SAPE mate.

 

[HenrySEO]

no it is not sape, sape are homepage links,
does your competitor rank with those links ?

Yes they do very well - and most (if not all) of their backlinks are like I've referenced

The URL that they redirect to has approx 3.6K indexed keywords and has 3.6K RD's - with apparently +/- 4K monthly visits (which you consider as a ball-park). So my point is that it's not a mickey-mouse page - it's a solid ass page that adds value

Just can't figure out why (or "if") these redirections add value?

 

[mw0]

These websites linking to your competitor are using these redirect pages for their external links. Some websites do that for whatever reason.

For example on schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk, instead of linking out normally like <a href="https://someothersite.com">some anchor</a>, they'd put <a href="https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/...ation-Key?returnUrl=https://someothersite.com">some anchor</a>.

So someone built tier 2 links to this redirect page, with your competitor's site as a parameter so they could get it indexed, and make it look like schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk is linking to them. No hacking involved. They may have just bought some cheap link package or something that claims to increase DA. I doubt it's very helpful, but haven't tried this so I could be surprised.

 

[HenrySEO]

I mean, I wouldn't really care that much but curiosity has got the better of me...feel like I'm missing a BH trick that I wanna try

 

[Turbo B.]

These links are redirects, the same like google redirects. It does not gives positive impact for rankings.
These kind of redirects are used by scammers to increase their sites metric to sell backlinks on these fake sites for newbies.

 

[HenrySEO]

These websites linking to your competitor are using these redirect pages for their external links.

For example on schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk, instead of linking out normally like <a href="https://someothersite.com">some anchor</a>, they'd put <a href="https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/...ation-Key?returnUrl=https://someothersite.com">some anchor</a>.

So someone built tier 2 links to this redirect page, with the competitor site as a parameter so they could get it indexed, and make it look like schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk is linking to them. No hacking involved. They may have just bought some cheap link package or something that claims to increase DA. I doubt it's very helpful, but haven't tried this so I could be surprised.

Very interesting....but surely the domain in your example has to be the root DNS that has to then 301 to resolve the ridirection....or am I being a dumb-ass here...

In fact I guess most of those URLs will be 404 so it's just the AHrefs crawler that sees this and inflates the DR right?

 

[Turbo B.]

So someone built tier 2 links to this redirect page, with the competitor site as a parameter so they could get it indexed, and make it look like schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk is linking to them. No hacking involved. They may have just bought some cheap link package or something that claims to increase DA. I doubt it's very helpful, but haven't tried this so I could be surprised.

Yes, right. But it is impossible to get it indexed.
Only 3rd party SEO tools can see it as backlinks if T2 links are built.

 

[X]

For sites that have general redirects through a script like what you listed, they'll redirect to any page - so you can use your own URLs in place of those you listed, and index them and they count as 301s and 302s. This is a pretty old-school method, I built a script a while back that did this with a lot of redirect scripts.

You can use these links as part of a tiered backlink strategy, and blast your own links to pages that link to your site through them, and it passes on some some nice authority to your target URLs.

Not as effective as it once was, but still a decent way to add to a backlink profile

 

[mw0]

Very interesting....but surely the domain in your example has to be the root DNS that has to then 301 to resolve the ridirection....or am I being a dumb-ass here...

In fact I guess most of those URLs will be 404 so it's just the AHrefs crawler that sees this and inflates the DR right?

The redirect pages are just coded to grab the URL from the parameter, and give a 301 or 302 response back to whatever URL was provided. They aren't 404, the website will respond with a valid redirect code (301 or 302), because that redirect page actually exists, and has no checks in place for what URL is provided.

 

[HenrySEO]

Fascinating stuff

So - the site is question MUST have a "catch-all" 301/302 rule?

Amazing...def learnt something today...

 

[HenrySEO]

And once you scrape or discover a solid list of automatic 301 then you can go nuts

 

[mw0]

Fascinating stuff

So - the site is question MUST have a "catch-all" 301/302 rule?

Amazing...def learnt something today...

If the site is PHP, for example, then that page would just have something like:

header("Location: $_GET('returnUrl')", true, 301);
exit();

Basically the server just tells the browser "hey, this is a 301 response, and the location is at this URL." There's no list of rules anywhere that need to be checked first. I think the way 301 redirects work is simpler than what you're imagining.

 

[HenrySEO]

If the site is PHP, for example, then that page would just have something like:

header("Location: $_GET('returnUrl')", true, 301);
exit();

Basically the server just tells the browser "hey, this is a 301 response, and the location is at this URL." There's no list of rules anywhere that need to be checked first. I think the way 301 redirects work is simpler than what you're imagining.

Got it - and thanks for explaining.

So, it's dependent on the site being PHP and having that response set accordingly.

Sounds like a bit of a shag and not sure it packs any value for me

 

[proxygo]

They're probably hacked links, as the Royal Horticultural Society won't be linking to crappy clothing sites.

dont think they will be to pleased when they find out .