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Referer – Spam, Spoofing, and Marketing

July 15, 2008 By: Justin | 10 Comments

When a Internet browser moves from one page to another an HTTP referer is passed to transfer information about the source page. This information is sent to the server via HTTP headers.

Simple Example

When you come to my homepage your browser carries over information from whatever page you were looking at previously. My server can tell if you came from Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, or from a link in a blog post. This is how analytics software is able to track your visitors.

Analytics

Lets pretend you search Nashville SEO and click the link to my site. When you search for Nashville SEO, you will see this address.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nashville+SEO

That is the URL for page one for Nashville SEO. When you click my site’s link, your browser will pass to my site that you came from the page “http://www.google.com/search?q=Nashville+SEO”

This information is captured by the server (and any analytic software). From this link, your analytics software can determine two things. Visitor is from Google. Visitor came via the search term “Nashville SEO”

That’s the basics of how referers work and how they are used for common tasks like analytics.

Spamming

Have you ever checked your analytics and found referral traffic from a page, but when you check it out there is no link? Well, they just referral spammed your site.

It is possible to manipulate and fake your HTTP headers and insert various information. This can be used to insert false information. When you move from one page to another, you can block the real header from being transferred and send one of your choice. So you can browse the Internet and every site interprets the visit as referral traffic from the URL of your choice.

Why Do People Referer Spam?

There are two major reasons to spam your referer.

First, many sites use to publish their analytics (and some still do). These would be a browsable print out of analytic information which could be crawled by search engines. Naturally it become an option for back links. By by faking your referer, you could show up on their referral tables and get a free back link! A lot of people stopped having public stats, but some sites still publish them.

The second reason is manipulation of the newbie blogger / webmaster. When you first learn about tracking your visitors, you’ll catch yourself checking your stats constantly to see where people are coming from and who is linking to you. Many times you’ll click through and visit the site. If a marketer has a product or site that appeals to webmasters in a certain demographic, they insert the URL of the site they want to promote and simply browse sites of people they want to promote to. When the newbie checks their stats, they’ll follow the referral through. The spammer successfully got them to visit their site. This can be automated to spam 1,000’s of sites, which results in 100’s of visitors.

How Do You Spam Your Referers?

The are multiple ways to do this, but here is a really easy one. Refcontrol is a simple Firefox Add On. You can insert a global URL to fake (used on all sites) or you can set specific referrals for specific sites. It’s very easy to use.

Spoofing

This isn’t really SEO related, but while we’re talking about referers, lets discuss spoofing. When you are faking your referer, you are referer spoofing. So referer spam is referer spoofing, but for use to market and promote your site. You can spoof for other reasons too. The other common use of referer spoofing is to by pass website security. Some low quality security setups work by checking the referer of the browser. A person must by pass the security system to get into the private or members area, but the only internal security is to check that they came to each page from another page inside the member area. By placing a URL that is inside into refcontrol, and then pointing your browser at the member area, you are able to bypass the security check because it thinks you were already inside (since you have the referer). This method is used heavily by those who break into porn sites. Its a really simple method of breaking into adult sites.

Conclusion

I wrote this to help explain a question in a forum I’m a member of. A lot of new webmasters are left scratching their head when they see a referral site without a link. I hope this explains things. This information can be used for some pretty nasty grayhat / blackhat type marketing. You can use it in the ways I mentioned, but can also be used to manipulate traffic trading scripts that use headers to track incoming traffic. If you get creative, you can do some fun stuff. I don’t suggest doing any of this, because a lot of it is either unethical, blackhat, or in the case of hacking a site, potentially illegal.

Filed Under Sneaky

Dateless Sniper BANS Template

July 13, 2008 By: Justin | 13 Comments

Another Free BANS Template from SEO Zombie. This time with a little twist. Over at Court’s Internet Marketing blog, he has blogged about a concept called keyword sniping. For the process, he has developed a few Wordpress themes. The most recent was the Dateless Sniper 2.0 theme.

I’ve taken this Wordpress theme and modified it for BANS. Now you can have a BANS site that looks just like Court’s keyword sniping site. This has a few advantages. First, the theme has decent SEO. Second, the theme doesn’t look like a traditional BANS sites. Which is great, because Google has been slapping thin looking BAN sites This template helps make BANS look more legit. Lastly, the theme integrates well with a blog running Court’s Dateless Sniper theme. You can install a blog and store on the same domain and use the blog to help index your store pages by filling the domain with unique textual content.

So check out this theme.

Dateless Sniper BANS Template

Dateless Sniper BANS Template

Download Sniper BANS Template

New template, so let me know if you have any bugs. This is a free BANS template, all I ask is that you keep the link back to my blog that appears in the footer. Credit to Court for the original theme. Tried to give him some extra link love here.

I would suggest using the theme to cloak your BANS site. Integrate it well with a Wordpress blog using Court’s theme. The blog can be used to gain trust from Google, since the biggest flaw of BANS is the thin content. I have a couple ideas in mind about ways to trick Google into trusting .info BANS. Google seems to trust .info blogs more than BANS, so make it appear less “BANS like”. Not sure how well this will work, but I’m going to test it.

Hope you enjoy the new BANS template.

Filed Under BANS

Semantics for SEO

July 11, 2008 By: Justin | 6 Comments

Semantics is the study of meaning and relationships and plays a role in SEO. Google makes its money from being successful at crawling, indexing, and ranking data. One important aspect of this procedure is being able to understand content in a manner that is more complex than keyword density. One way of doing this is Latent Semantics Analysis or LSA. Google may not use this exact approach, but Google is sure to use some similar system of semantic analysis to look at textual content.

Intro to SEO Semantics

By using semantics, search engines can have a basic understanding of the English language. There is an understanding of synoyms, antonyms, and polysemes. In addition, Google can related niches and keywords. They’re able to develop complex relationships with keywords through their huge database of information and linking relationships.

For example, Google can understand the following relationships for a Make Money Online site.

Make Money Online

  • Make Money
  • Make Money Online
  • Make Money Blogging
  • Make Money on eBay

Internet Marketing

Social Media Marketing

  • Social Media
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Web 2.0
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon

Blogging

  • Blogger
  • Wordpress
  • Plugins
  • RSS Feed

SEO

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Link Building
  • Article Marketing
  • Directory Submissions
  • Dofollow
  • Nofollow

Google knows that the usage of any of the above keywords is related to the primary keyword of make money online. It can relate long tail keywords as well as related keywords and the long tails of those related keywords.

Role of Semantics when Writing for Search Engines

Knowing that Google uses semantics is important when writing your site’s content and building links. You should use this knowledge to solidify your page’s focus on a keyword.

Quick Note on Keyword Density

Google content analysis is more advance than keyword density. Do not stress keyword density. Keyword density will not help you rank higher. Anyone still teaching you to achieve a certain density is wrong. Keyword usage is important, but there is no set density that you should target. Simply use it natually, but ideas like LSA moves Google away from basic keyword density analysis. Keyword density is not a direct measure of relavancy. The usage of a keyword 10 times does not make it more relavant than a page that uses its keyword 3 times. If anything, the over usage of a keyword can hurt your rankings. The usage of semantics can be used to determine if a site is using natural language. An over optimized keyword stuffed page does not use natural language and may hurt your rankings.

Use Long Tails

Instead of trying to use your primary keyword over and over, use long tails. Research your keyword before you write your article to determine long tail keywords. Select two or three long tails that have your main keyword as their parent keyword. Use them in your content to support your main keyword and do it without keyword spamming. Not only does this create natural content, but this increases the number of terms you can rank for. You can now work your primary keyword as well as the long tails.

Related Terms

In addition to long tails, use related keywords. If you’re writing about SEO, talk about internet marketing. If you talk about McDonalds, talk about hamburgers. If you talk about hamburgers, discuss hot dogs. If Apple, discuss Mac and Ipod. These related terms will support your main keyword because Google understands the relationship. In addition, it will increase the number of keywords you can rank for.

Role of Semantics when Link Building

The classic advice of varying your anchor text. If you get too many links with the same anchor text, Google will consider it a Google bomb. Varying anchor text is important for two reasons. First, it looks natural. Having the same anchor text is a sign of self generated links. Second, semantics comes into play. You can use related anchor text to support your primary target keyword.

A post about BANS (Build a Niche Store) could use any of the follow keyword(s) as anchor text and still support the primary keyword.

  • BANS
  • BANS site
  • BANS ebay
  • Build A Niche Store
  • Make Money on eBay
  • Make Money Online
  • eBay Niche Store
  • Build an Online Store
  • eBay Affiliate

Google understands that all of these keywords are related.

Dominating Multiple Long Tails Keywords

By using this approach instead of keyword stuffing one keyword phrase, you’re able to dominate multiple keyword listings for long tails. You can rank for many long tails by simply mentioning the keyword. Instead of repeating one keyword phase over and over, use a semantically related keywords. This will reinforce your main keyword while also increasing the number of long tails you can rank for. As your page gains authority for the main keyword, your authority for the semantically related keywords will also increase. And the opposite is also true, as you gain authority for the semantically related keywords, your authority for the main keyword increases.

Conclusion

Understanding that Google uses semantics to evaluate content can help you improve your on site SEO. Simple measures like keyword density are out dated and should not be used to determine how targeted a page is. So when developing content, consider developing a list of long tails and related keywords that you can sprinkle through your content to help support your targeted keyword.

Filed Under SEO, Search Engines

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