How Has This Website Not Been Penalized?

[0_00_0]

This is the most ridiculous link profile I have ever seen. How have these people not been slapped so hard by Penguin? I mean they are ranking second for a highly competitive (seo-related) keyword that makes up over 90% of their inbound links! I'm sure a lot of the links are very high quality but does this kind of a linking strategy still work? I just checked out their inbound links to see if I could get a few of the ones they were using. Just a hint the primary keyword is "City Name" SEO.

Anyways, I would love to hear what people think. This is an SEO agency so they are clearly using link building techniques. I am just beyond surprised that this is working.

 

[bonzo90]

I've seen alot of people doing it, its like a sort of "viral" backlink effect, to trick google into thinking the website has had a sudden "buzz" about it, after the backlinking is done in such a short time and space, there is then a slow build of links afterwards.

 

[Rua999]

If it's not what's mentioned above it's probably footer backlinks... seen plenty of sites having this type link profile with footer links and getting away with it

 

[bonzo90]

@Rua999 as in link networks ? It would probably explain such a massive jump, Essentially an extra 3k referring domains in 1.5 months!

 

[Rua999]

Ye most of the top sites in my niche are using forum footer links from a related topic forum and killing it.. check where they're links are coming from on backlinkwatch.com or something. I've seen it on other sites the same as well and it has me thinking of doing something similar

 

[Hierarchy]

I have seen similar stuff in other industries. Typically they are ranked because of a wide diversified anchor links across multiple domains. Observe referring domains for anchor texts. If these are spread across tons of different anchor text variations it would explain why their ranking well. However I feel like that site-wide links will be discounted in the near future will be changing soon in upcoming algorithms as it is becoming more abused.

 

[0_00_0]

@Rua999 as in link networks ? It would probably explain such a massive jump, Essentially an extra 3k referring domains in 1.5 months!

Just a note I was looking through their profile and noticed they are using private networks. Very obvious. They are using it for themselves as well as what seems to be clients.

I guess looking a little closer they only have ~4000 referring domains. One or a few of those domains must have many thousands of pages with a footer link. Probably a forum.

Thanks for all the input guys! I've just been hit with Penguin too many times so this really bugged me because it was working.

 

[Hierarchy]

No prob. Just keep diversifying your links.. Those who focus too much on one type of links eventually get hit by these updates..

 

[makeitrain85]

I saw this happened to a guy in my niche too. I spammed my site with thousands of spammy scrapebox comments and got hit hard. The other guy spammed his site with hundred thousands of low quality links and stay on number 1 for 3-4 months now. I'm getting used to this now.

 

[N1ckG2]

There was a site like that stuck to #1 for a few months, on Тue this week it dropped down to #8.

 

[antichrist]

I always look at referring domains and not pages.

 

[turbohacker]

I've seen alot of people doing it, its like a sort of "viral" backlink effect, to trick google into thinking the website has had a sudden "buzz" about it, after the backlinking is done in such a short time and space, there is then a slow build of links afterwards.

This is not a new tactic either, I have used this tactic in the past to create the illusion that a client's website has gone viral. Obviously these back links were decent quality and not spammy but it works. The main challenge is consistency afterwards....

 

[Scritty]

Despite all the fear mongering about backlinks - the plain simple truth is more backlinks still wins 9 times out of 10
Those that get slapped by overop make a lot of noise on forums about it (sometimes it was not even orverop that was at fault - but that's a whole different post)
But this noise does two things.

1) It makes people think that the majority of sites were hit rather than a "noisy minority"
2) It engenders fear

If "2" happens - then Google has basically done it's job. Not in the way people think (by having an algorithm that can tell the providence of links and link building) but instead by just making people scared to make links.

Not saying Google aren't trying to crack down, but they are no where NEAR as good as Google themselves profess or self rightous and massively over expensive twat and poseur filled sites like SEOMOZ and the fear mongers say.
In addition variation of platform, anchor text and link building chronology still wins just about every SEO related battle there is. If you are White Hat and proud you might hate that view point. You might even argue against it.
You might argue - you'd be wrong - but you can argue I suppose.
But link building wins. Ok you do it a little differently - but it wins. That's proven in almost all niches and it's as true now as it was 15 years ago.

Scritty

 

[phpbuilt]

+rep for "self rightous and massively over expensive twat and poseur filled sites like SEOMOZ"

and yeah, everything else Scritty said +1

 

[Jackmitch]

Totally agree with Scritty as well. Especially with his second point.

 

[gorang]

Its like parking your car on double yellow lines. You might not get caught.

Also it could be a churn and burn website for short term.

 

[Jouster]

I bet there's a lot of sitewide links in there, so a lot of those links are coming from the same domains, so it may not be as over-optimized as it appears and yes I see this all the time, I personally think the popularized "rules" of penguin only apply to what google deems low quality sites, check out inner pages on sites like CNN, ESPN, wikipedia, etc.......they can have 90% of links going to the same kw no problem, cause they're big ole authority sites, but the same page on a little pissy 5 page MFA wannabee and down the toilet she goes...

 

[deviatus]

There are rumors going around that Google is finding it harder and harder for their computing power, even though it's massive, to keep up with the exponential amount of material on the www. And then for each site they have to send their little spiders to check on, and then there's the 200 or so ranking factors they need to keep track of, and the SERPs themselves. Websites are also increasing their load times as the CMS's and software running them is getting more complex, as people are demanding sites that can do more.

The website will fall eventually, I think I'll coin a new term: "Penalty lag" due to the ever increasing size of the internet and Google's limited (but still huge) resources. It's just too much data. Google does initially index a new site faster than Yahoo and Bing, but it's how often does Google check up on the site and monitor it. Like I said, an unbelievable number of web pages are on the net, it's passed a trillion.