Ahrefs shows 55k organic traffic for this spam link profile affiliate website

[vbestic]

Hey,

I was doing some competitive research and came a cross a website with growing organic traffic & link profile with lots of suspicious links:

When looking at the link profile, the most powerful links by Ahrefs UR were homepage footer links with lots of referring domains pointing to it:

One of those footer links was dropped and the error on website looks like this:

"SAPE ERROR" - I suppose the guy is using a Russian link network Sape.ru.

Other links in his profile are:

• Forum & other profile links (a lot of them, sometimes even 10+ different profiles on single domain to link out to different articles)
• Blog comment links
• Some guest posts
• Social media links (scoop.it, folkd.com etc.)
• Some PBN links (or at least looking like PBN)

Overall, the website has all the links white hat SEOs don't advise getting but it's still managing to rank so well on Google.

This example is obviously built to target a keyword:

Many links have no anchor or use dot anchor:

Still, this website manages to have over 10,000 keywords ranked in top 10 with 2,500 of them being in the top 3 positions. I'm sure this website earns at least $6k per month (at least $150k buyout). You can analyze the website yourself - the10pro.com and see its link profile & traffic.

I was thinking - if this does work for this website does it make sense to do this as tier two links on already established backlinks?

What do you guys think of this & the website overall?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Overall, the website has all the links white hat SEOs don't advise getting but it's still managing to rank so well on Google.

White hats aren't saying these links won't help you rank. They will big time, but temporarily. Eventually this site will see a penalty. Typically there's a window of opportunity between offline filters (like Penguin) where you can thrive until the hammer drops again. That window used to be very wide. Now it comes around pretty quickly unless you manage to escape one, then you get two "window lengths."

To me it seems pretty obvious that there's a time period of data collection and then penalization comes with the next integration of the filter. If you manage to start spamming the site late in the "data collection" period you can escape the filter and survive a bit longer.

The window doesn't only refer to periods of time where you can thrive with spam, but which type of spam is effective. I've seen them clamp down on a certain type while releasing another, to keep spammers on a wild goose chase. By the time they figure out what's working in this period, it's a bit too late to really take advantage before the window shifts over another spam target.

If you're willing to churn and burn, then by all means go for it and do this direct to your site. I wouldn't do it to tier 2 links to my precious white hat money sites though. I'd either go all in or not. That's me though. After a certain length of work and growth, it stops making sense to take those types of risks, to me. Especially when you can pull marketing stunts and get powerful links that way.

But yeah, those . (period) and no anchor links used to be a slick way to get links in blog comments in order to get them approved.

 

[Encrypted]

Those homepage links are what i call "Corporate PBNs" in the sense that they are not PBNs per say because they don't look like one and you don't own them , but are just as powerful as PBNs.

So how it works is that you approach professional websites of free softwares (e.g plogger.org , ghostbd.org) e.t.c or less popular organization websites , to ask for a homepage link to your website in exchange for a "donation" or some kind of sponsorship.

Some of these websites (e.g ghostbd.org) have donation plans starting from as low as $5/month and you get a juicy homepage link as a "Sponsor". So if you do the math , you'll be paying around $60/year. Quite cheaper than some high Quality PBNs.

So , you get the concept. Its like PBNs but not PBNs.

If you already have a large link profile for your site , you can add a couple of these powerful links and not get flagged for penalty. The sites are for real organizations and may easily pass a manual review than a PBN. So the risks are kinda lower.

However , it gets risky when these links make up a large portion of your link profile , although its not uncommon for sites to rely heavily of this and not get penalized.

Productexpert.com (formerly top9rated) had a $700k+ exit march 2018 with their site HEAVILY reliant on these links. The site has been live for 2years+ and is going strong.

Hoistnow.com is also reliant on this method and is ranking for some juicy keywords.

Its worth a try if you have a small site that wouldn't hurt much if you lose. But if you have a site earning 4 or 5 figs a month , you've got something good going. Don't risk it.

 

[Golan]

One should be quite cautious using all those Ahrefs numbers. Keywords, it's hard to even imagine sometimes where do they get them. Also traffic.

 

[Poplanu]

Seeing these sites all over the SERPS sure as hell makes me want to try running this model...

• (Optional: expired domain)
• Come up with a system/SOP for keyword research & article layout
• Outsource the writing for the cheapest price possible
• Automate the publishing process
• Buy links
• Reinvest profits
• Exit

Hope they all get banned before I get around to doing that. But something tells me that ain't gonna happen. Most of these sites got pumped with the June update.

Edit: Also that 10beasts monstrosity has been around forever and shows no signs of dying.

 

[bernard]

(Optional: expired domain)

If I did this, and I might try it, not only will I require an existing domain with age and links, I would also require it to be a real site. I might buy some site middling around making a bit of cash already, but with 3+ years, so it has some trust. Then I'd give the content an overhaul, then follow up with these kind of links.

 

[Cash Builder]

I have a site like this that’s just popped up in my niche. It only has 50 referring domains, and that are all spammy. The content itself is broken English and really doesn’t answer the queries well at all, but it’s starting to snipe some decent keywords.

I’m not really worried about it at the moment, it should only be a matter of time before it’s wiped out. At least, it should be wiped out, but these days who really knows what Google is up to?