Martin Macdonald

I stumbled on this less than 20 minutes ago across a twitter conversation concerning rankings for the keyword term “camper men shoes“. Its hardly a big money search term but it seems to be the subject of a bit of mud-slinging-intrigue.

 

I’m not one to start outling networks – Ive operated my own, and lost domains in the past.

But…. sometimes I just rise to a bit of trolling so here goes.

 

The story starts at this comment on ‘moz:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-much-does-that-keyword-cost-tool#jtc174246

 

but the bit that got me interested was:

 

“I did no networks. I own no networks. I did straight white hat SEO“
<<< I love that kind of statement!

 

So, lets take a quick look:  here is the page in question that is ranking for that query:

http://www.airconditioningrepairlosangelesca.com/camper-men-shoes.html

and here are a sample of the backlinks that *were* pointing at it:

Link from	anchor
http://www.awarnach.net	camper men shoes
http://www.timecafethemes.com	camper men shoes
http://www.lighting-linx.com	camper men shoes
http://www.persuasive2009.net	camper men shoes
http://aquariumsupplydepot.com	camper men shoes
http://animalesdecompania.net	camper men shoes
http://persuasive2009.net	camper men shoes

 

Sure, these three sites certainly DONT look like a network do they? (much)
http://www.awarnach.net/
http://www.persuasive2009.net/
http://www.lighting-linx.com/
… not only that, but they are pretty much a stock standard same theme rubbish network of bull**** posts – the kind you can pick up on warrior/dp etc. for $2 a post, writing included.

 

But that’s not all in this “secret SEO recipe for success“.

Lets take a look at the following sites:
http://www.bgglas.com
http://sebastian-brandt.com
http://www.belleserelle.com
So – we’re putting links on parked domains as well?  Not really that big a deal I suppose – again though, I would probably lean towards calling this a network.

 

My favourite links have to be the ones on the straight article submission sites though….  you too can have a trawl through all the sites that linked to that page with that anchor text in the last week by downloading the following excel file:

Fun Spam Links Spreadsheet <<DOWNLOAD LINK

 

So – the secret recipe of SEO success is as follows:

1) find an easy to target term
2) put a page up with the fundamentals right
3) stick a couple of hundred links around the place, that you KNOW you can remove quickly
4) wait a few days
5) troll people on twitter and seomoz
6) rely on stale-ish index’s like linkscape (sorry mozzers!) not picking things up quickly
7) look like a dick when you are outed.

 

Moral of the Story:  Don’t post bold claims you can’t backup, unless you’re damn sure nobody can figure out what you did!