Blackhat Winners after Penguin 2.0
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I know I'm not the only one that's seen this. After Penguin 2.0 some obvious blackhat SEOed sites flew up in the rankings. There's obviously a hole that hasn't been closed. I'm surprised it's been a month and that hole still hasn't been patched. I have no problem with other legit companies out ranking ours for various keywords. In that case I can feel alright knowing it's just something they were able to do that I wasn't but when I see complete blackhat sites ranking that's a whole different story.
Estimated traffic before and after Penguin 2.0: http://goo.gl/gurXt
What are they doing that's blackhat?
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Hidden text - compare the cached version vs. the live http://goo.gl/YYGDK
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301ing lots of domains, many irrelevant. http://goo.gl/RjOJu
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Using a trade marked brand (steelers) - not SEO related but I'm sure the NFL wouldn't be happy.
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Linking between other domains they own. Notice how spammy these sites are.
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http://pittsburghwebdevelopment.org/2013/06/23/website-development-firm-website-design-pittsburgh/
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http://seoinpgh.com/2013/06/23/website-designer-pittsburgh-affordable-web-design-in-pittsburgh-pa/
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They were inflating their social presence. Wanted to show you but looks like twitter already took care of them https://twitter.com/seopittsburgh .
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Also making client sites link to them .
I've talked to other people and they've seen similar things. Thoughts, opinions?
Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
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I agree with y'all, this is definitely a short term win for your competitor. I've seen a lot of our competitors have short gains since penguin 2.0 with spammy tactics. It'll come back to bite them, we just don't know when.
EGOL, is right too, they are pretty dang good at blackhat. If there is a way to spam up the universe they've got it down to a science. I haven't looked at their backlink profiles, but I'd expect to see quite a few chinese domains in there.
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Yes I have seen a lot of this too. I'm in competition with a bunch of companies using blackhat link building techniques and they are outranking me (sometimes) using these. Literally they are just doing article/link submission blasts with keyword targeted anchor text and it's working. Part of me thinks perhaps it's because EVERY site fighting for that phrase is using blackhat techniques and part of me thinks Penguin just isn't working well.
Either way I'm frustrated and each Monday I come in thinking.. "maybe today I'll start some blackhat link building."
The clock is ticking!
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Yeah I agree it's only a matter of time before they're shut down. Just so frustrating to see and causes me to lose a little faith in how far along Google really is with this new playbook. I really like the direction they are going in. Just going to be a while before all the kinks are worked out.
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Thoughts, opinions?
Looks like they have a site that is less than one-year old on a domain that might be infringing and are using a number of things that google is likely to penalize them for. They might be doing this same type of work for their clients. This sounds like a short-term problem for you.
One thing about Google is that relatively new sites doing shady stuff can persist for a while in the SERPs before Google finally slaps them down.
I think that you will eventually get their customers.
Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
Yes. They are pretty good at blackhat.... not the answer that you want... but I think its a good answer.
Was driving down West Liberty Ave one day and saw a new hair styling shop that opened. They had a sign out on the sidewalk... "Haircuts $5"..... about two blocks down the street a shop that has been in business for a long time put out their own sign.... "We fix bad haircuts $18".
You need to make a sign... "We fix bad SEO"
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