I can't figure out how this guy is doing this! Please help!

I figured I would throw this out to BHW with the hopes of getting some answers and insight. I'm at a loss to figure out how this website is ranking for some VERY competitive keywords! Here are the specifics:

The $ site is crap. No content, jacked-up url's, no metadata. The root has 25 (count em) backlinks.. most of them indexed 10/2011. No high PR links, no .edu/.gov etc... No real SEO at all really.

I looked into those 25 backlinks and this is what I found:

About 1/2 of them are domains that are owned by the same guy who owns the $ site. They are JUST URL's that have 301 redirects back to the $ site... no anchor text. The rest of the links come from weird search engines in Ireland and various other countries (gasta dot eu was one of them).

So, I started exploring the domains that were being 301 redirected:

DOMAIN X has 1,212 backlinks and ZERO indexed in the last 12 months (again, there is NO SITE here... just a parked domain with a 301). Most of this site's backlinks are again, weird no-name search engines (jordanstown dot com). A lot of this site's backlinks are from domains that are not even registered! WTF?

DOMAIN Y is another parked domain with a 301. This one has NO backlinks at all.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
This guy was able to rank a piece of crap, templated website (jacked url's, no content, no metadata) with just a few domains that have been 301'd. Some of those 301's domains have backlinks from weird search engines and some have no backlinks. Some of them AREN'T EVEN REGISTERED! This $ site is ranked for keywords with a TON of competition (SEOC in MS).

This guy is one of my client's competitors. My client is wondering why he's paying me for "real SEO" if his competitor can get ranked without spending any money. I don't have a good answer for him!

Anyone know what this guy is doing and why it's working? Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

whats the pr of the $ site

elvis1973 said:

whats the pr of the $ site

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PR-2. Don't ask me how!

He may have backlinks that you can't see as not all are available in public tools.

how long has he been ranking well for this niche? one of my sites was only showing 17 backlinks for months but I had built a shit load and knew that there where many more than that.

It actually took several months for them all to filter through and show, if anyone would of looked into my site they would of seen very few BL's but my site ranking well.

My site did have a lot of good content though so doesn't explain why this guy is ranking well with a shit site and what appears to be no decent backlinks.

The G moves in some very mysterious ways.

elvis1973 said:

how long has he been ranking well for this niche? one of my sites was only showing 17 backlinks for months but I had built a shit load and knew that there where many more than that.

It actually took several months for them all to filter through and show, if anyone would of looked into my site they would of seen very few BL's but my site ranking well.

My site did have a lot of good content though so doesn't explain why this guy is ranking well with a shit site and what appears to be no decent backlinks.

The G moves in some very mysterious ways.

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He's been ranking well for a couple of months now. Someone suggested to me that he's doing the following:

1. Buying up EMD's that he's hosting and doing 301's from those domains to his $ site
2. Dome some nominal link building for the EMD's (even though there is no site on the domains, the theory is that the off-site backlinks with anchor text will still get indexed for the domains)

In this person's opinion (another SEO guy I collaborate with), the SE's are somehow giving more juice to the backlinks for the EMD's because of the 301 redirects?!?! Almost like a link wheel in a way.



So the backlinks somehow carry through the 301's with more juice for the $ site than if he were to build links to the $ site.


I don't get it!

he could be building backlinks and using a 301 redirect to mask his real links.

What did you use to check his backlinks? MajesticSEO and Ahrefs would give you some detailed info.

unless you give us the URL's theres no way for us to tell...

sickseo said:

My client is wondering why he's paying me for "real SEO" if his competitor can get ranked without spending any money. I don't have a good answer for him!

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Just tell him there is a chance the website will get blacklisted from all major search engines due to defrauding their ranking system. Tell him that once a site is blacklisted, it can never be undone and the site will essentially be worthless.

Report his site as spam! It won't take G very much work when they look at his site to see something shady is going on.

elvis1973 said:

how long has he been ranking well for this niche? one of my sites was only showing 17 backlinks for months but I had built a shit load and knew that there where many more than that.

It actually took several months for them all to filter through and show, if anyone would of looked into my site they would of seen very few BL's but my site ranking well.

My site did have a lot of good content though so doesn't explain why this guy is ranking well with a shit site and what appears to be no decent backlinks.

The G moves in some very mysterious ways.

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This.
I'm ranked #6 for a 650k+ exact search term, and mine showed up as 19 links for over a month lol.

He might be one of us really, you can't tell,but who so ever he is,he's an seo master that knows how to legally get traffic from big G

flaw3d said:

he could be building backlinks and using a 301 redirect to mask his real links.

What did you use to check his backlinks? MajesticSEO and Ahrefs would give you some detailed info.

Click to expand...

I'm using Majestic to check his links

pointy said:

unless you give us the URL's theres no way for us to tell...

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Hell, he's not my freakin' client (these are dot coms):

$ site = redsticktickets

one of the 301's = buynflfootballtickets

If anyone can figure it out, it might help us all out!

If he's doing something legit, maybe it's the answer to Panda finally. Thanks everyone!

They are pretty legit. Is your client as legit as they are? Forget link building. Think reality. They are a BBB accredited business, I am sure Google takes that into consideration.

Kickflip said:

They are pretty legit. Is your client as legit as they are? Forget link building. Think reality. They are a BBB accredited business, I am sure Google takes that into consideration.

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This site is a template that any broker gets for free when they become an affiliate. They are all the same basic sites with an xml feed from the network. The template gives the user no ability to upload any type of content at all. There are TONS of these same sites out there (same colors, same xml feed, etc...). This is pretty much the only one that I've found with a PR and/or rankings.

Kickflip said:

They are pretty legit. Is your client as legit as they are? Forget link building. Think reality. They are a BBB accredited business, I am sure Google takes that into consideration.

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They would have paid about $600 for that BBB accreditation. The BBB is SUCH a scam and I have to believe that the big G gives them no cred for the affiliation. Many of my clients paid the same $600 for the "privilege" of using the BBB's seal too. I'm thinking that's not it.

Kickflip said:

They are pretty legit. Is your client as legit as they are? Forget link building. Think reality. They are a BBB accredited business, I am sure Google takes that into consideration.

Click to expand...

lol You shouldn't be sure about something so obviously false.
The 301 redirect is an old old method, I assume that the terms are pretty noncompetitive if it's working at all.
buynflfootballtickets.com has like 6 backlinks itself. so the redirect is literally doing nothing.

This guy is just a wizard

Expertpeon said:

lol You shouldn't be sure about something so obviously false.
The 301 redirect is an old old method, I assume that the terms are pretty noncompetitive if it's working at all.
buynflfootballtickets.com has like 6 backlinks itself. so the redirect is literally doing nothing.

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Do you know if Google considers 301's a violation of their webmaster guidelines? I know it's an old-school technique... I didn't think anyone still did it.