These Guys Are Killing It! But How???

I've been out of the blackhat world for the past 4-5 years, I found that staying compliant had a better ROI in my niches. But in the past year it seems Google has lost their minds so I'm ponderinng putting my Black Hat back on.

I just see too many spammy sites kicking my ass in various niches these days so I figure - If you can't beat 'em - Join 'em!

One case in particular has piqued my interest and I was hoping that some of you experts could fill me in on how they're doing it.

I have a couple sites in the International Dating Niche and over the past 6 months I have seen a network of sites taking over rankings for ALL the best keywords in the niche.

I have found 13 of their sites so far and more seem to pop onto the front page of the SERPS every week.

Here are the current top 5 results for the search term "mail order brides"

brightbrides.net/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride
mail-order-bride.com/
rose-brides.com/
mail-order-bride.net/

Everything except wikipedia.org is owned by the same group.

Here are the current top 5 search results for the term "Asian mail order brides"

bestasianbrides.com/
rosebrides.com/asian-brides.html
mail-order-bride.com/asian/
brightbrides.net/asian-brides/
realmailorderbride.com/asian/

Everything except rosebrides.com is owned by the same group as above.

They own the top 5 results of 90% of the SERPS - I've never seen anything like it.

But what baffles me is that they are building links like it is 2009 and it is working like gangbusters.

I ran the Ahrefs intersect tool on a bunch of their sites and it returned 27,000 links that the network shares. Some of the links are high DR, but all the content that contains the links is horribly spun dribble with titles like:

A Spotlight on No-Hassle Programs For Mail Order Brides
A Background In Factors In Free Mail Order Brides
The Options For Sensible Mail Order Brides Systems
INSIDE FAST ADVICE IN MAIL ORDER BRIDES

Also, some of the sites gained 18,000 links in under 4 months and have a 20% anchor text ratio for money keywords.

Some of the linking sites have 300 links hidden in the html - they are pretty much violating every single one of Googles webmaster policies without triggering any penalties.

How are they getting away with this? Since this seems to be the new reality in the niche, I would love to duplicate their success but I can't imaging spending that kind of time and money on techniques that should have stopped working in 2011.

What am I missing here?

Any insights would be appreciated. Here is the link to my intersect spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l1OtP_iFrlYrEHghzDPpjLMAtYSVdSG-TysBkmqYZNs/edit?usp=sharing

I checked the first one (brightbrides.net/) and looks like it's very new. The links where built recently.

I think the owner is just building burner sites... build a bunch of sites and spam it with links. It'll rank high for a bit until google catches up and then remove it.

Also, there don't see to any 'legitimate' sites targeting those keywords. The other search results are news articles.

Interested. Waiting for seniors expose the secrets.

bilalownsu said:

Also, there don't see to any 'legitimate' sites targeting those keywords.

Click to expand...

Just wondering what elements you would like to see in a "legitimate" site? Not trying to be snide - I really am very curious what a non-biased viewer would consider legit in this niche as my site has 2 college professors writing for it and people still call it spammy.

A lot of full articles on wordpress sites with spun garbage as text too.

Following because I want to know also.

burnsai said:

Just wondering what elements you would like to see in a "legitimate" site? Not trying to be snide - I really am very curious what a non-biased viewer would consider legit in this niche as my site has 2 college professors writing for it and people still call it spammy.

Click to expand...

I meant from a backlinks point of view. All the top results are either that spam network or untargeted news articles.

Maybe a targeted site with a few high quality links might be able to out rank them.

burnsai said:

Just wondering what elements you would like to see in a "legitimate" site? Not trying to be snide - I really am very curious what a non-biased viewer would consider legit in this niche as my site has 2 college professors writing for it and people still call it spammy.

Click to expand...

If someone is just worried about the people writing content for their website, I would call it spammy. It's not about how well the content is written, it's about the value the content provides for the user. Users searching for mail order brides are almost always looking for real access to mail order brides, not information on mail order brides. Articles can make up a part of the content, but users would expect the same website to actually provide them with access to view real mail order brides profiles.

bilalownsu said:

I meant from a backlinks point of view. All the top results are either that spam network or untargeted news articles.

Maybe a targeted site with a few high quality links might be able to out rank them.

Click to expand...

Yep - the other heavyweight in the niche is Rosebrides.com. They are not a great site but about 15 years ago they got caught scamming guys. A news article was written about the scam and it was syndicated so they picked up a bunch of links from legit news sites. Before this group of sites started ranking Rosebrides had EVERY top listing in the niche - sometimes they had the top 3 listings.

yes, google has turned back the clock and it gives a lot of credit for exact match keyword as backlinks. i think it has to do with how rank brain works. i think rank brain thinks that the more exact match anchor words you have as a backlink the more relevant your website is.

Ok guys,

I think these sites are owned by a BHW member. Be careful what you expose here. Don't destroy a fellow BH ers work. We know Google plays "follow the trail"

I'm seeing the same shit. It's really weird that shitty backlinks seem to work so well recently.

The competition in those search words is incredibly low. How are you not ranking on any of them? Maybe you're seeing this effect because the competition is low, thus it takes them less work, possibly even low-level blackhat work suffices, to rank so high? Maybe the issue lies with the amount of work you've yet to put into your site?

Try building a few links and see if you catch up to these guys. Links will always work. They will never die out. Neither will blackhat anything. Blackhat and cutting corners isn't ever going to be outdated, in any field

I am also waiting to reveal the secret.

Those links look like there are injected using exploit.
Hundreds of domains, aged, not spammed, all do follow - what a waste of links on brides

I would like to know how they make it,maybe they have some relatives/friends who work for Google.

The big question is not so much how they are able to build all these links but - how are they able to avoid penalties.

I was under the impression that Panda and Penguin run in real time now. Some of their sites have been ranking for 4 months now and just keep getting stronger.

Also, I thought Panda did a pretty good job of tossing out links contained in spun content. These sites use some of the worst spun content I have ever seen. Like they used 3 articles to feed 18,000 sites! How is that possible?

What's funny is that some of their links look like they were created with Link Farm Evolution or some similar tool. I trashed my copy of LFE about 6 years ago. Maybe I need to go digging thru my old drives to see if I can find it!

seojen said:

I would like to know how they make it,maybe they have some relatives/friends who work for Google.

Click to expand...

Yeah - my business partner is convinced that these guys paid some rogue element at Goolge to hit the "Spam Override" switch on these sites.

I noticed the dating (not adult) niche has its own set of rules and sites ranking no.1 with 90% exact KW!

burnsai said:

I've been out of the blackhat world for the past 4-5 years, I found that staying compliant had a better ROI in my niches. But in the past year it seems Google has lost their minds so I'm ponderinng putting my Black Hat back on.

I just see too many spammy sites kicking my ass in various niches these days so I figure - If you can't beat 'em - Join 'em!

One case in particular has piqued my interest and I was hoping that some of you experts could fill me in on how they're doing it.

I have a couple sites in the International Dating Niche and over the past 6 months I have seen a network of sites taking over rankings for ALL the best keywords in the niche.

I have found 13 of their sites so far and more seem to pop onto the front page of the SERPS every week.

Here are the current top 5 results for the search term "mail order brides"

brightbrides.net/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride
mail-order-bride.com/
rose-brides.com/
mail-order-bride.net/

Everything except wikipedia.org is owned by the same group.

Here are the current top 5 search results for the term "Asian mail order brides"

bestasianbrides.com/
rosebrides.com/asian-brides.html
mail-order-bride.com/asian/
brightbrides.net/asian-brides/
realmailorderbride.com/asian/

Everything except rosebrides.com is owned by the same group as above.

They own the top 5 results of 90% of the SERPS - I've never seen anything like it.

But what baffles me is that they are building links like it is 2009 and it is working like gangbusters.

I ran the Ahrefs intersect tool on a bunch of their sites and it returned 27,000 links that the network shares. Some of the links are high DR, but all the content that contains the links is horribly spun dribble with titles like:

A Spotlight on No-Hassle Programs For Mail Order Brides
A Background In Factors In Free Mail Order Brides
The Options For Sensible Mail Order Brides Systems
INSIDE FAST ADVICE IN MAIL ORDER BRIDES

Also, some of the sites gained 18,000 links in under 4 months and have a 20% anchor text ratio for money keywords.

Some of the linking sites have 300 links hidden in the html - they are pretty much violating every single one of Googles webmaster policies without triggering any penalties.

How are they getting away with this? Since this seems to be the new reality in the niche, I would love to duplicate their success but I can't imaging spending that kind of time and money on techniques that should have stopped working in 2011.

What am I missing here?

Any insights would be appreciated. Here is the link to my intersect spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l1OtP_iFrlYrEHghzDPpjLMAtYSVdSG-TysBkmqYZNs/edit?usp=sharing

Click to expand...

It looks like someone creating a lot of similar sites and trying to get one or two of them on the top. Google is baning it, and he's repeating it. Looks like blast random fresh sites and paying for google