Case Study: can excessive backlinking return a website from sandbox

[TheSEOWizard]

Hello all,

I am relatively new to both this forum as well as Black Hat SEO. I have been a whitehat webmaster for around 5 years and have always worked on

EMD (exact match domain) + Quality Content + Minimal Whitehat SEO

and I have managed to build several authority sites with this same formula in all these years. Many of my successful sites have also been from completely organic backlinking and high quality content with no manual SEO done. EMD has always been one of my main weapons in all these years and it has always resulted in bringing me at least in the top 5 after adding quality content.

But after the Panda updates, EMD does not seem to be working for me that well. Previously with only a few quality articles and without any SEO I used to rank in top 5 of google at least with EMD.com domain. And with some minimal whitehat link building it used to reach at least top 2-3 google rankings. But things have completely changed now. Even after adding several dozen quality articles on SEO optimized wordpress blogs, I am still not able to rank even in first page of Google using EMD.com after the Panda updates. It is working fine in Yahoo and Bing though. So, the Panda updates has in a way resulting in forcing me to Black Hat SEO as my main weapon "EMD domain" is not working that well anymore. I have always been a massive supporter of Google and I still love and respect them but if quality and EMD is not working, then probably something else would need to be done. So, let it be Black Hat if that is the need.

I have never been that big in affiliate though I have invested in a lot of affiliate plugins, review scripts etc. in all these years. But I was earning at least some affiliate income (apart from adsense) using a few EMD affiliate sites. These mainly included one clickbank site and 3 amazon sites. The clickbank site was an exact EMD.com domain but a single sales page website with affiliate link which was ranking in the top 3-4 with minimal whitehat SEO and I was making upto a 100 dollars a month. The Amazon sites were respectively EMD.org, reverse-EMD.org and EMD.us and all were ranking at least on first page of Google with minimal whitehat SEO.

But Panda has hit me really hard in these affiliate sites and all of them were sent into oblivion the same day. I waited for several months and it never returned back in all these months. There was no blackhat or excessive backlinking by any means and so, it was quite surprising. So, a couple of months ago I tried to experiment by starting somewhat backlinking in the EMD.us domain to check how it goes. I bought both scrapebox and AMR and started to blast it gradually. I managed to rank it in top 10 of both yahoo and bing for the EMD keyword but Google is not moving an inch. I also left blasting it a month in between. I hardly use scrapebox anyways and so, I will now blast the shit out of this website to see if Pandalized (especially those which were not due to backlinks) can be brought back by excessive backlinking. If not it can go to the trash can. If it works, then I will revive the other three sites too and work on some new ideas and share them with all here.


So, here are the details of the case study:

Domain: GamesForXbox360.us
Keywords: games for xbox 360, xbox 360 games
Age: 8 months 2 days
Yahoo Indexed Backlinks: 530
Google Indexed Page: 261

Rank in Google: none for both keywords since Panda update

Rank in Yahoo:

games for xbox 360 - rank 5
xbox 360 games - rank 41

Rank in Bing:

games for xbox 360 - rank 72
xbox 360 games - rank 139

It has been the most consistent in yahoo all the time with top 10 almost throughout. Bing was also good but I had left blasting for a month in between for which it went down though it would probably go up again as I have blasted a few hours ago too.

So, I will blast the hell out of the site and check if sites which have been Pandalized without excessive backlinking can bounce back in Google after excessive backlinking. And in case it does then how long does it take to do so.

If anybody wants, then please feel free to run some blasts of any kind including scrapebox/AMR/Xrumer Profilelinks blasts or anything else to help me out. I will keep on blasting and try to post report every week till it is fully dead or till it is back in Google. I have scrapebox, AMR and a nearly unused VPS so I will keep on blasting as much as possible too. I will also try to run some other backlinks through other SEO tools I have though they might not be that effective as they are whitehat and quite slow.

So, let the test begin. I have blasted around 2100+ posted AA right now. And I have blasted around 200,000 or more links in the past 2 months though most were not filtered out AA like the ones I have just posted today.

Please use the same keywords "games for xbox 360" and "xbox 360 games" if anyone contributes a few runs so that the effect of EMD can be tracked too.


Regards,
TheSEOWizard

 

[The Great Gambarra]

Good luck, will be watching the results of this closely.

Is this one of your higher quality sites? I am asking because I copied some of your content and did an exact match search on Google and it turned up quite a few results on other sites.

Do you have another test site where you can experiment with unique content?

 

[tony23]

Interesting, I am in same(ish) boat, trying more content and high PR links instead of spam.

 

[ConcertoinE]

Hey There. I'm in. Until this morning, I was sitting at page one for a few sites. Some of them got to page one within 3 weeks of starting the campaign. All have been holding steady and all were receiving steady traffic driven.

Then Came this morning!

Half my assets are no longer anywhere on G. Sandbox? Perhaps. There are a lot of silly theories going on out there by people who obviously have no clue to what it takes to get bumped or get back on, so i think this test of yours is an ACE idea. I'm in.


One quick question, what are your thoughts on drip feed vs explosive feed for articles when building links. I have done it both ways, and they both work - obviously one faster than the other. So what gives?

Thanks.
ConcertoinE

 

[TheSEOWizard]

Sorry for replying late. I was also quite busy and so, could not blast anymore too yesterday. Will set up to blast again now.

Good luck, will be watching the results of this closely.

Is this one of your higher quality sites? I am asking because I copied some of your content and did an exact match search on Google and it turned up quite a few results on other sites.

Do you have another test site where you can experiment with unique content?

Thanks buddy. No, it is no way one of my higher quality sites. I would have never called myself a quality whitehat webmaster if it would have been my main sites. It is an Amazon affiliate website built using a premium Amazon plugin. The listings are pulled up automatically from Amazon from inside the plugin and posted with my Amazon id. These are amazon descriptions and that is why you see the duplicate content.

I had recently got one other site but it was in health niche. I paid a writer to write more than 2 dozen unique articles and I used them in the website. The quality of writing was good and grammatically correct but not the quality of an authority site. The article quality was 5/10 according to my own standards and I have pretty much high rating standards due to which I have been able to build authority sites even without SEO in these years. So, they are definitely not bad and they are unique for sure even after checking with CS Premium. The website was not getting traffic even after 2 dozen articles were posted over the period of a month and so, I decided to test that out too. The problem with that site was that there was no definite keyword there in the domain and it was random health domain. So, played a few and blasted comments with a few keywords. Those were not heavy blasts and not AA lists but proper blasts with scraped fresh urls. The result was that after a few small scrapebox blasts it vanished from Google again though went to the top of Yahoo and Bing for the keywords. Even now it is at Bing top 10 for one of the keywords I targeted. I can try that out as that is also partially wasted and it has unique content. But the domain is a problem in that case as it is not EMD. Secondly, Panda did not throw it out but scrapbox backlinks threw it out of Google. So, the case study would be quite different. I was trying to check out if websites which were suddenly kicked out by Panda without reason of backlinking can bounce back after massive backlinking.

Interesting, I am in same(ish) boat, trying more content and high PR links instead of spam.

I would have to agree. To be honest, I am planning to work on SEO on my next sites but to use somewhat whitehat with high quality links as I have been doing all these years. I have not fully tested out a domain on AMR alone but at least scrapebox is a waste for direct money site link building and WOULD DEFINITELY KICK YOU OUT OF GOOGLE. But then would it mean that you can kick out your competition by scrape blasting them out. It would then mean negative attitude at least by some SEO companies etc who would kick out the competition from their client's site. Scrapebox is definitely a suicide weapon for killing a website and I won't be surprised if it is used by SEO companies for killing competitor sites in the future.

Hey There. I'm in. Until this morning, I was sitting at page one for a few sites. Some of them got to page one within 3 weeks of starting the campaign. All have been holding steady and all were receiving steady traffic driven.

Then Came this morning!

Half my assets are no longer anywhere on G. Sandbox? Perhaps. There are a lot of silly theories going on out there by people who obviously have no clue to what it takes to get bumped or get back on, so i think this test of yours is an ACE idea. I'm in.


One quick question, what are your thoughts on drip feed vs explosive feed for articles when building links. I have done it both ways, and they both work - obviously one faster than the other. So what gives?

Thanks.
ConcertoinE

I have seen sandbox for a few of my sites over the years. One of my affiliate sites again was sandboxed a few years ago but that had completely unique content and more than a dozen proper articles of 500+ words (maybe upto 800 words in some cases or more). It was within days after I gave I bought a 2000 manual directory submission service for the site. It was not even ranking for the domain keyword and was gone for nearly 8 months. Then on the next PR update which was quite late that time, it suddenly bounced back and came at 2nd or 3rd page of Google for a very competitive keyword. However, that site again did not make me a dime till date. I also used Adwords in that. Not sure what happened but it bounced back after nearly 8 months and it also got PR2 perhaps at the same time. I am not sure it is still similar scenario nowadays as my affiliate sites were kicked out by Panda without any backlinking this time. I have not tried article marketing a lot and as I mentioned earlier I was more of a EMD + quality content + minimal SEO guy but Panda has destroyed a lot of those. In fact, I have not yet tested AMR fully and its potential on a site. But it did not show too many backlinks when I tried it a month or so ago. Perhaps I would need to blast them with scrapebox. AMR directories and article directories as a whole are getting a lot less indexed nowdays it seems after Panda. I used another popular article/directory submitted software in the past few years which was mostly manual/semi automatic and the result was not bad with that. At least my rankings improved. However, Ezine and other authority directories still seem to work though they seem less effective compared to pre-Panda time. It is quite confusing now to be honest as there are very few ways left for SEO or building high ranking sites. Whitehat effectiveness like EMD, directory submission, article submission, blog commenting (genuine), RSS submission, press release submission etc. are decreasing with time and so, it seems blackhat is the only option left nowadays. I would not call blackhat but greyhat as blackhat does not seem to work too. I am now experimenting with various greyhat techniques. I have hundreds of domains which I have held for years and EMDs stop working then I can instead waste them on experimenting out different ways till I find the correct combination. And more than anything else I want to be massively successful in affiliate marketing too as I have never been able to achieve significant success. Except clickbank no other affiliate/sale network has worked out for me. Need to improve on that. I have got the basic concept now and will be testing out on a nearly foolproof technique for achieving the same by mixing whitehat and blackhat. The test/war would begin soon.

As for this site, I would perhaps not worry building much quality links though I might purchase a few web 2.0 etc. and try blasting them. Completely whitehat looks like a waste here as of now as it was not kicked out due to backlinks in the first place itself.

 

[TheSEOWizard]

Alright blasted moar links in the last few days. It has been nearly the same.

Still fluctuating in the yahoo top 10 for "games for xbox 360" and within 40-75 in bing for the same keyword.

For "xbox 360 games" it is in the yahoo 40s and bing 120+ regularly.


Google is not willing to move an inch as ever. Will gradually slow down blasting. I have checked with quality sites too with several dozens of unique content. Scrapebox blast and AMR blast (especially in one go) means death for the site in Google though they are loved by Yahoo and Bing which virtually never brings any traffic. All of my tests are pointing to the same. I am again concentrating on my whitehat SEO techniques and they seem to be working a lot better and are proving to be a lot more effective without being killed off in Google SERP. The game of SEO right now seems to be "higher quality backlinks" rather than "number of backlinks" from my research. And whitehat at least for level 1 is more than enough for achieving the same. So, would probably return to it. Only if a site does not move ahead or moves too slowly with whitehat will I use black hat. I might also try a few sites especially related to affiliate marketing with unique content for somewhat blackhat. But overall I am again being more inclined towards Whitehat SEO primarily as it's effectiveness still seems quite good.

 

[kPybus]

hows it looking ??

 

[TheSEOWizard]

Did not blast it for many days. Still at Yahoo rank 7 and Bing 81 for "games for xbox 360" which fluctuates and becomes better after blast. But still in oblivion in Google. I am bored with this site and I will blast in a while. Don't see it returning soon as Google is bringing out new Panda updates and it is just devaluing sites even more. One thing which I might try is to cloak the amazon affiliate links and check. If that does not work then probably after a few weeks I would need to assume dead by Google.

 

[cloakndagger]

Try temporarily removing your ALL your affiliate links and then blast.I'm pretty sure that's why G has dumped your site.

 

[phpbuilt]

I'm not sure what your test is going to prove.

You say you were doing this and Google spanked you ...
EMD (exact match domain) + Quality Content + Minimal Whitehat SEO

But when I visited your site, I grabbed a little content off your page and http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/www.google.com/search?q=%22is+drawn+into+the+world+of+Dead+Island+on+the+brink+of+a+mysterious+epidemic+that+suddenly%22 ...

172,000 results.

There's not really much need to test what is going to happen, even if you spam it into oblivion you will always have issues with this site, because it is not high quality, it doesn't have unique content. It's not even a real EMD (to get a bonus in the SERPs you need a .com, .net or .org exact match).

The only thing this test is going to show is whether an autoblog with poor quality dupe content and massive amounts of amazon affiliate links can rank if you send massive backlinks to it. My guess is no ... but lets see how it goes.

 

[valle]

I see it on page 2 of Google right now.

 

[Benyamin]

So what happened? Got any juicy updates?

 

[Rogar]

Interesting - good to look out for.