How is this done!?

Hi everyone,

So I've been doing IM for some time now, but I have recenty decided to get into the SEO field. I have had some success, and today, while looking for a niche for example "payday loans", I can only notice that the top 10 websites are not only PR0/Backlink0/Content0 - but also automatically redirect me to an affiliate link.
Example:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...j1.2.0.ernk_rqr..0.0...1.1.9.serp.s_dB2gTuj2c

I was wondering, how is this done - I understand there is some type of cloaking done? Is there any SEO done, what type? Does google know about this? If so, do they do anything about it?

I am very eager to understand this process.

Thank you all for your time

it's just clever seo, meta tagging, and social engagement.

They probably have content heavy sites on their to rank and build up exposure. Then switched it to an affiliate link and continued with their marketing.

Those are usually high quality hacked sites. The hack the domain, show their content to any referrals from google.com and redirect those visitors to the landing page. Any google bots are shown the actual page.

They blast the site with all kinds of links, it's a type of churn and burn strategy that is illegal and unethical (the hacking, not the link building).

I really don't know if these are hacked domains, or high quality domains. It just doesn't make sense. For example: Search item #4 for me is called "Mummy's Payday Loans" - when you click on it it redirects to automatically to an affiliate link: . But if I go to the main domain: http://www.mummyspaydayuk.co.uk/ it obviously shows me that it is not a high quality or backlinked domain: It shows that it was created on April 1 2013, just 16 days ago. So what is really going on here? It has to be some cloaking and SEO blackhat going.. Just can't figure it out.

So here's the ultimate question. How hard would it be to top those guys on google? How much SEO would I need? Usually PR0/LD0 links are a piece of cake, but since these are a little more complicated - what do you guys estimate is the word involved to get on top?

THanks!

It's not hacking, it's just pretty hardcore linkbuilding. Rankings last a couple days to a week at best but it's rank and bank site after site e.g. half the sites on home page registered 5 days ago dadloans.co.uk dogpayday.co.uk etc. Google thinks the site has gone viral so it gives it a first page ranking while the guy redirects it to a affiliate program and hopefully banks enough to cover linkbuilding costs. Rinse and repeat!

No, it's not hacked domains, it's just Cloaking + Manipulated Themes (WP, Joomla) to get links.
I'll explain:

The payday loans niche is known to have a short life expectancy in Google serps. Those websites you see now, will probably wont exist tomorrow or the day after.

There are several ways to do such tricks, and it goes like this:

1. First, they spread infected free themes/plugins like Joomla, Wordpress etc. such themes (or plugins) have hidden links that point to a payday loans website.
2. Some themes are controllable remotely by the hacker/spammer - so, they can switch the links every time they want to different websites.
3. Now, once a website owner installs an infected theme/plugin, the hacker/spammer gets its links.
4. Once the hacker/spammer website get enough links that position it in top serps, he then starts cloaking - Google sees one page, users see the money one.
5. The redirection process is held via a 301 server redirection, or using a Cross Domain Canonization tag
6. Cross Domain Canonization - means, a hacker/spammer accumulates links to website A, then he puts a Canonical Tag that points to website B. website B then use cloaking trick to present different urls to Google VS users.

Now, since payday loans is a short life niche, where spam websites get punished real fast, the trick to position a new spam website instead of the one who got lost is:
1. re-using the infected themes/plugins - once a website get punished, the hacker/spammer simply replaces the pointing links to another spam website(s)
2. or, using Cross-Domain Canonization, the hacker/spammer simply replaces the pointing canonical tag to a another website who then gets all the links immediately - and ranks over night.

More on Cross Domain Canonization:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

A slideshow that best describes what I lay down above with ScreenShots of the Payday Loans niche
http://www.slideshare.net/rustybrick/smx2013-arinahmaniv3

mrblackjack said:

A slideshow that best describes what I lay down above with ScreenShots of the Payday Loans niche
http://www.slideshare.net/rustybrick/smx2013-arinahmaniv3

Click to expand...

LOL BHW was featured on SMX 2013

I was one of the lecturers

Thank you for the great explenations. So if I am doing normal SEO backlinking - it would probably be impossible to rank on that search. But for example the kw "debt consolidation" seems not to have as many spammy links on top - would that be easier to reach top page? Please help me distinguish between a sites - I would hate to waste SEO money into something that was never useful in the first place.

Thanks again,

brikka said:

Thank you for the great explenations. So if I am doing normal SEO backlinking - it would probably be impossible to rank on that search. But for example the kw "debt consolidation" seems not to have as many spammy links on top - would that be easier to reach top page? Please help me distinguish between a sites - I would hate to waste SEO money into something that was never useful in the first place.

Thanks again,

Click to expand...

I dont think debt consolidation is a valuable word

I had to bookmark that SMX video, that was excellent.

Just to add this is a brute force strategy. This is about quantity of links and not quality. If you do some research on Google using various dorks e.g. intext:hawkloans.co.uk -site:hawkloans.co.uk you will see exactly what they are doing.

It's a mixture of signing up to free hosting providers, creating blogs and filling them with duplicate content and injecting their URL onto Joomla pages.

I can bet these guys are making an absolute fortune. They are clearly automating this. Although, I don't believe they own the Joomla plugin. Someone is likely selling their services and they are purchasing.

Wow, I've found out how they're able to insert their links. It's legit too. It's actually surprisingly easy to figure out how they came about doing this. It's a gem!

imageek said:

Wow, I've found out how they're able to insert their links. It's legit too. It's actually surprisingly easy to figure out how they came about doing this. It's a gem!

Click to expand...

Could you please tell me how (by PM if you prefer) ?

Not sure how injecting your backlink into a joomla site is legit ?

Removed. Don't actually want this public because there could be a potential for this to be used for malicious purposes and I don't want to be responsible for that.

Sorry guys.

Interesting thread.

All the other domains there have some backlinks, but one domain on there has only 1 backlink? Created last week as well, it's 2nd atm.

That one is probaby using a 301 redirect and passing all the love from a previous spammed site, cant really tell without more info.

I agree with you.