Google is doing the opposite of what they say again
Let me share something interesting I found.
I did kw research on loan related keywords in Finnish and I found that there is small website (oivalaina.fi) which ranks between 1 and 3 positions with the search terms "laina" and "lainaa" (in English: loan or loans). These are the two highest volume keywords in this niche.
The website has only a few pages with just a contact form and really low-word content which is not specially optimized for any keywords.
Ahrefs only shows 26 referring domains but DR 43. Some spam links, some quest posts etc. pretty normal backlink profile for small website. Only 2 backlinks with keyword as an anchor text.
Then I dug a little deeper and I found a huge expired domains network. They have hundreds or thousands expired domains that have been made into a private "domain park" network. Each website looks similar and contains links to 9 different affiliate sites as a reference. Another domain linked from the same domain park also ranks first with "payday loans" keyword.
Ahrefs and SEMrush can't find these but you can find most of these linking sites with a search term "Tämä domain on varattu. oivalaina.fi".
And this happened just after Google released the March core & spam algorithm update.
Conclusions:
- Links are still really strong ranking signals.
- Expired domains works now even better than quest posts for link building.
- ******** / nofollow ratio is almost 100%
- Almost all anchor texts contains website's name or domain. No keywords in anchors.
Let me share something interesting I found.
I did kw research on loan related keywords in Finnish and I found that there is small website (oivalaina.fi) which ranks between 1 and 3 positions with the search terms "laina" and "lainaa" (in English: loan or loans). These are the two highest volume keywords in this niche.
The website has only a few pages with just a contact form and really low-word content which is not specially optimized for any keywords.
Ahrefs only shows 26 referring domains but DR 43. Some spam links, some quest posts etc. pretty normal backlink profile for small website. Only 2 backlinks with keyword as an anchor text.
Then I dug a little deeper and I found a huge expired domains network. They have hundreds or thousands expired domains that have been made into a private "domain park" network. Each website looks similar and contains links to 9 different affiliate sites as a reference. Another domain linked from the same domain park also ranks first with "payday loans" keyword.
Ahrefs and SEMrush can't find these but you can find most of these linking sites with a search term "Tämä domain on varattu. oivalaina.fi".
And this happened just after Google released the March core & spam algorithm update.
Conclusions:
- Links are still really strong ranking signals.
- Expired domains works now even better than quest posts for link building.
- ******** / nofollow ratio is almost 100%
- Almost all anchor texts contains website's name or domain. No keywords in anchors.
