How the hell is this website ranked in first page

Search term:
Los Angeles locksmith

First page website result (cant post link):
locksmithlosangelesx

Status -
The website has about 5 unique articles. For each article each change the title to fit a different location.
He keeps the pictures and the article completely the same for around 150 different locations.
So total he has around 750 articles which are completely copied word by word, picture by picture, and just change the name of the city.
Yet he has been in first page results for a while now.

If thats not bad enough you can see these sites:
sanjoselocksmithx
philadelphialocksmithx
dallaslocksmithx
lasvegaslocksmithx
and more.. (sorry can't post links yet, triggers forum protection)

They are ALL identical to the first site. All articles are copied in each site from the other sites, just changing locations.
This is insane. The only thing that changes the location.

Despite all this, every one of them is in first page google search results for their areas: dallas locksmith, etc..
And there is a lot of competition in these searches.

Can someone explain how google can rank a site with absolutely 0 unique content, copied completely from other domains, no value, and not even too many backlinks.
How are they ranked on first page for so long?

It doesn't make sense..

probably very good backlinks. Most likely because the keyword is low competition.

low comp keyword and despite what most will say. Exact term match

IAMAZEME said:

low comp keyword and despite what most will say. Exact term match

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you mean Exact Match Domain ?

G algorithm rewarded this website for its qualities

Super easy term, EMD and the first backlink I looked at was in a network

Even though the site has many violations, his onpage is better than most of the top 10. This is one reason. The second is, he is using a combination 301s, and relevant backlinks. Looks like he built his own network, because a lot of the themes are the same on the shitty WP sites in his network. I am sure if I dug even deeper, i could find his out, but meh, not worth my time. Also, if you look at his anchor text profile, "Los Angeles Locksmith" makes up for over 25% of his total anchors (referring domains).

Trust me, it is only a matter of time before this site gets wacked. Google used to keep a close eye on the Locksmith niche, which is notoriously shady and full of spam. I am pretty sure the first couple Penguin iterations cleaned out most of it, now it is just coming back with round 2-3-4. When this site gets nailed, he will probably 301 it away, and start the process all over again. I am sure he already has started working on the next round.

It look like he got hit in August 2012 , lost almost 100 keywords too . He's just gaming the system


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They got lot of backlinks from high PR sites.

1 - Low competition
2 - OnPage its good. YSlow has 92 points, heading tags it's almost ok, friendly urls and lot of backlinks.

lover said:

They got lot of backlinks from high PR sites.

Click to expand...

Where are you seeing this? I see one PR3, PR4, and PR5 as far as the referring page. One is a blog comment, one is a dead page. 98% of their referring pages are unranked. If you are talking about the root page, they have a few, but mostly shitty comments and spammed edu links.

EMD for sure the X doesn't hurt the URL

Sounds like bobbyloves he always mentioned using YourNicheX.com sites.

jstover77 said:

Where are you seeing this? I see one PR3, PR4, and PR5 as far as the referring page. One is a blog comment, one is a dead page. 98% of their referring pages are unranked. If you are talking about the root page, they have a few, but mostly shitty comments and spammed edu links.

Click to expand...

I found it via Majectic Seo & Ahrefs.

it's because the webmaster is not posting a question here. He's doing real work and it works ...