SEO

Link Laundering

May 17, 2008 By: Justin | 12 Comments

Link laundering is basically a method of masking spam links and links for link farms. This isn’t a new concept at all, but I thought I’d add my explanation into the subject and provide a simple guide to set up sites for link laundering.

Warning: This is not white hat SEO. Google will not like you doing something like I am about to explain. I do not consider it black hat, but it is gray. Its a link scheme that will allow you to mask shitty spam links but still get the juice that bad link methods can provide.

Side note: Scrapper sites, guest book spam, blog spam, directory spam are all low quality links that can be gained in the numbers of THOUSANDS. Google is good at detecting them and discounting them. Google is not perfect, it doesn’t detect 100% of them and doesn’t discount them 100%. So having massive amounts of incoming links that are low quality can build up a fair amount of juice.

The problem: You do not want to use this type of link building on legit sites. You don’t want your personal blog or flagship blog to have 1,000s of spam links coming to it. You might piss someone off and they’ll report you to Google for link spamming.

One possible solution: Link Laundering

What is Link Laundering?

I’m sure you’ve heard of money laundering. It’s basically the idea of cleaning money to make it look like it came from a different source than its original source. Its done basically by spreading out the money through different accounts, business deals, transactions, and investments. Eventually the money is pulled out at the end source and there is a legit source for the money.

Now, lets apply this to links. Spam type links are considered “dirty” / “spam” / “blackhat”. What I’m going to explain is a basic way of cleaning these links and converting them to higher quality back links. Its a method of passing juice through a chain of sites and mixing in more authority to mask the dirty authority. All will eventually generate a high quality 1 way back link that you’re not scared of competition finding.

(I wouldn’t suggest using this on a highly competitive niche. There are a lot of savvy SEOs who might catch on to what you’re doing and lay it out for Google)

Generating Dirty Links

Dirty links are easy to get links that are usually obtained through some form of spam.

Possible Types of Dirty Links

  • Forum Links (profiles, sigs, posts)
  • Blog Spam (comments)
  • Guestbook Spam (lol old school)
  • Social Bookmarking Sites
  • Low Quality Directories (1000’s of these)

The Link Laundering Process

For this example, you’re going to need a small blog farm of seven sites in addition to your legit site. This is a simple explanation and you can vary the number of sites and the networking, but this should explain the concept.

Set up a couple of accounts at wordpress or blogger to set up a few free blogs, this will be your link farm. Each blog should be about a different topic. In these blogs write naturally and post legit content. Write like a normal blogger by rambling about different topics. You do not want the blogs to look like the same person runs all 7 of them! Stay under the radar. IMPORTANT: DO NOT MONETIZE THESE BLOGS. DO NOT PUT A SINGLE AD ON THEM. These are for links, not money. Do not put adsense or an affiliate on these. Try to post quickly on each one to get them going. Go and get each one indexed by getting some links pointing to them. At this stage you want 100% legit links coming it. You want them to look legit at day 1.

Consider making 1 of the sites closely related to your legit site’s topic. This will be the “yellow” site, which I will explain in a moment. Then later, I will explain why we’re making it related.

Now, let me show you the overall concept of what I’m about to explain. Look at this image, it will explain this concept in general. Then read my explanation below.

Link Laundering Diagram

Phase 1:

After getting them indexed, lets start the building process. Look at the diagram and you’ll see I used 3 different colors for the laundering sites: red, orange, and yellow. I will be using these colors to describe the process for each site in each phase. These phases doesn’t have “time periods” on them like “2 days” or “1 week” because it will vary on the amount of time you invest daily.

Red: Hit the links hard. Start with the least spam and work your way toward the worst. You want to keep it looking legit at first and slowly bring in larger and larger bulks of links. These are your crap sites and you’ll be slamming them with links. Do not link out with these sites yet.

Orange: Build links here slower than with the red sites. Use moderate quality links. These are the higher quality link directories. The better article submissions. Dofollow blogs. Site wide blog roll link exchanges. Three way links. Nothing thats too “shady”, but still pull in those higher quality crappy links. Also try to pull in a couple of legit authority links. You want to keep the profile of these sites fairly clean. Do not link out yet.

Yellow: Build this site 100% clean. Do not give Google a single reason to expect anything. Clean links all the way. Slowly build these links.

Post one or two more posts to each site at varying time intervals. Make them look live and fresh.

Phase 2:

You should have built a fair amount of links for each type of site. The reds should have 1,000’s of low quality links coming in. The oranges will have a 100’s. And the yellow should have less than 100.

Link the red sites to the orange sites. Look at the diagram and point a links from the red sites to the orange sites. The best way to mask these is to leave the links inside the content of a post or drop a comment link (must be dofollow). You can put in a post’s content and make sure the post stays up on the homepage for a while. Then work your internal link authority so you build the authority of the page linking.

Do not link the other sites yet. Your two red sites should now link to your orange sites, thats it.

The reason reason we’re taking time with this is to allow each stage to build some trust and link age from their authority links before they get linked into the red sites community.

Now build links. Build more for each color and remember that each color gets a different quality links. Red can get bads. Orange can get mediums. Yellow gets clean links.

Post one or two more posts on each site at varying time intervals, keep them fresh.

Phase 3:

Just like before, we’re going to link up the sites. It is now time to link the ORANGE sites to the YELLOW site. DO NOT LINK THE RED TO THE YELLOW!

Follow the same linking suggestions in phase 2.

At this point the yellow site will have been around for a few weeks, built legit links, gained trust and authority and not shown itself to have any bad associations. It has legit links to help mask any dirty link juice coming in. And the juice coming from the orange sites isn’t 100% dirty because it has a mixture of links and they’re not all spammy.

Again, build links just like in phase 2.

Post one or two more posts on each site, vary the intervals, keep the sites fresh

Now we’re just going to wait a little while and let these links we’ve built gain a little authority over time and allow Google to find more links.

Phase 4:

Now its time to hook up your sites. This entire process could have taken 1 to 3 months easy to build. During this time you should have also been building your legit site using as many legit means as possible. Your legit site is the green star in the diagram. It should be around for a few months and look clean in Google’s eyes. The yellow site should be fairly clean in Google’s eyes and carry a fair bit of authority due to all the links from 6 sites funneling to it. It should have a fair bit of PR. Lastly, if you remember when I started to explain this, I said to make it related in some way to your main site’s topic.

Now it is time for the “perfect” link. Go to your yellow site and make a post. Follow my guides about links and writing for search engines. Focus the post at your legit site’s keyword. Optimize the post to death. Then in the content drop a keyword anchored back link back to your main site. Don’t update the yellow site quickly for a while and let the link sit on the home page for a while.

And there you have it. You converted 1,000’s of horrible low quality links into 1 high quality, high authority, highly related, keyword anchored back link.

Benefit of Link Laundering

If you don’t see why this is useful. There are lots of places on the net to gain low authority links in bulk, but you do not want to associate those types of link building methods with your site. Link laundering allows you to mask your methods by filtering the authority through multiple layers then condense it down into 1 high quality link.

Again, this topic is taboo to white hats and is not suggested for anything you’re serious about. Unlike some SEO’s, I am not against learning different link methods no matter what shade they are. The more I know, the more effective I am at SEO.

Filed Under Link Building, SEO

Link Exhanges That Work

By: Justin | 3 Comments

Site wide blogroll type links for link exchanges don’t count for much these days. People started manipulating link exchanges with mass lists of links and multiple sites would exchange links and enjoy increased rankings. Google got better and now discounts these types of links heavily.

You can still receive benefits if you do site wide link exchanges with a fairly small number of highly related sites, but the days of manipulating with exchanges is nearly dead.

There is a way to link exchange with a large number of sites and keep it “natural”. Find an article, page, or post on another site. Contact the webmaster of the sites and tell him you’re interested in a link exchange. Explain to them that you plan to write a post about “X” topic and you will link to their related article. Ask them if they would mind finding an article on your site that they like and either: 1) work the link into an existing post or 2) to include it in a new post.

The key to this is to make it look as natural as possible and not like it was an arranged deal. Both sites should link to each other naturally in a paragraph. Not simply “check out this site <link>” If the other webmaster is SEO savvy, discuss with them keyword anchor options. Don’t make it look too obvious with the keyword anchor, but there is no reason both sites can’t get a anchor benefit from this link as well.

The overall goal of the exchange is to be “natural”. And the linking can also benefit your readers if you actually pick useful articles. The more related the page linking is to the page getting links to, the more useful this link exchange becomes.

This is an easy way to work on building your links in a more “natural” way and doesn’t leave you dependent on directory submissions, article submissions, and bookmarking on social sites (all which are getting discounted). A well thought out plan and a savvy SEO can use exchanges like this to extend their ability to build links.

Filed Under Link Building, SEO

Future of SEO

May 15, 2008 By: Justin | Leave a Comment

Recently Shoemoney made a post that claimed the future of SEO is dead. The post had a big response and since that post he’s made two more post exploring the definition of SEO and his view of the definition of SEO. Well the SEO field is an area I am becoming increasingly involved in, so I thought I give my view on the future of SEO.

Well first, what is SEO?

Simply the definition of SEO is Search Engine Optimization which is the art of understanding the factors that search engines use to rank a website and influencing those factors to rank higher. It comes down to issues like keyword focused content, crawlability, and incoming links.

Check out this post by Shoe where he asked several top SEO guys their definition of SEO.

So do I think SEO has no future? I disagree there is no future, but I do feel that “SEO” in the traditional sense will decrease and we will need to develop a better term. Right now SEO it the buzz word, but it’s more about SEM, website optimization, online pr, and internet marketing. The problem is that SEM is usually considered email and PPC campaigns and not traditional SEO.

I think the future of SEO is that it will merge more with SEM, traditional marketing, public relations, and social media. SEOs will grow into a type of website / online publicist with search engines being one source of exposure.

Why the Change?

Algorithm is Getting More Complicated

Google is constantly developing its algorithm. Its getting harder to predict and they are getting better at discounting low quality links. Aspects of black/gray hat are getting harder with more and more of the gray spectrum becoming “spam”. Article and directory submissions are getting discounted. Social media sites are slapping nofollows everywhere. Easy links are getting harder. Google is getting better at detecting “natural links”. So search engine manipulation is getting harder.

Personalized Search and Geo Search

The idea that all search results are going to be the same for everyone is coming to an end. Google’s goal is to return the most relevant results to their users (a goal that is directly tied to serving more related ads and having higher CTR and ROI). So keyword and SERPS data is going to change drastically. Earning first page for one person may result in a page 3 for another. This will complicate things.

Not All SEO Will Die

The fact is basic SEO will be around for a while. Take a look around the net and you’ll quickly notice the huge number of sties with basic SEO road blocks like: not having a preferred domain, not using header tags properly, duplicate content, horrible crawlability, use of table layouts and flash, etc. Until web designers design with SEO in mind, someone will always need to clean up their mess. The technical side of of SEO will stay around until it merges more into traditional web design practices.

And link building will not die. Traditional methods like directories and article submissions are going to become much less effective. So are link exchange schemes. At the end of the day though, links will still be king. The link building field will still be valuable and so will the footwork required to get these links. You still need someone to take the time to contact webmasters and work out a link deal. Link building will become a more time consuming task, but it will still exist.

As long as Google dominates the market and as long as search engines drive traffic, there will always be a monetary benefit for placing well on search engines. People will still work hard to place well in search engines.

Niche Markets and Long Tails

The result of the actions of Google will be what they’ve been pushing for a while. It will increase niche markets. It will push people down the tail. There is always less competition in long tail niches and this will be the area where traditional SEO will be most effective in the future. In the areas that Google has less data and fewer results, the basic SEO tricks will have a larger effect. Also, personalized results will not effect these areas as heavily because their are fewer relevant results to use.

Depends on the Future of Google

This is what makes me laugh about discussion about SEO. Almost all discussion is Google dependent. Well it wasn’t that long ago Yahoo ruled the net. There is no promise that Google will dominate the search market forever. There is always a chance Yahoo could make a rebound or a chance that two college students are developing a search engine that will change the entire search engine market.

Lastly, will Google get a monopoly slap? We sit and watch Google dominate the entire search engine market. When they make a policy change, they effect the entire internet marketing industry. They can single handedly destroy professions like SEO. Yes, webmasters don’t have to follow policies like the nofollow on paid links, but to be successful online, you have no choice. They’re a 1000 pound Gorilla ruling the online market. We see the effects of such behavior with things like Microsoft. There is always a chance Google could get a slap for monopolizing the search market.

So don’t always bank the future of an entire industry on the actions of one company. The future and actions of a company are not always constant. They have to keep up with changing regulations and competition. Take a look at the history of Apple and Microsoft.

The Future of SEO

Like I said, I think SEO these days is more “website marketing”, “website PR”, “website optimization”, and “social media marketing”. All of these aspects will indirectly provide SEO. The new way to increase your search engine rankings is to increase your site’s visibility on the web. Then you’ll need to make sure your website uses the best practices, so you do no hinder search engines crawling your site. SEO will a mix of quality web design and generating buzz.

Filed Under Bloggers, SEO, Search Engines

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