Black Hat SEO Case Study - Private Link Network - How is this still working?

[howardd]

I have been studying my competitor's link building strategies and one guy (affiliate) in particular really caught my attention. He has been using a strategy that has been working really well for the past six months or so.

How well? He owns about 80% of search results for highly competitive keywords, in multiple industries, that add up to about 200,000 searches per month in total.

As far as I can tell it's a private link network. Using Ahref and Open Site Explorer, I found out that he owns 1000s of bought domains, all linking to his sites. Recently, all he's been doing is essentially buying high pr domains, redesigning the site and adding new content to rank for his keywords.

I reported his link-wheel scheme to Google and posted a message on the webmaster forum - no luck there. So I'm wondering how is he getting away with this? Isn't Google's algorithm sophisticated enough to catch something as obvious as this?

Everyone preaches about White Hat SEO, but how can honest marketers/SEOs compete with guys like him? Any thoughts would be very helpful.

I can include some of the reports I've gathered if anyone is interested to study this further. thanks!

[bbkahlich]

I am seeing it with providers of local SEO services - either having over 10 "resource" pages with links to totally unrelated sites or linking each letter in the word "Copyright" to a resource link page. These are clearly link manipulation schemes - why is it that Google hasn't penalized more of these sites? And SEO providers are still selling and profiting from these services. Disgusting.

[howardd]

Chris, that's true. Most of these blackhat techniques work temporarily but that doesn't seem to pose an issue since the blackhatters can put together a new site within hours. Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in joining them. I'm just trying to figure out how can a whitehatter ever succeed in a market that's filled with blackhat techniques.

[Chris.Menke]

Well Howard, it's very true that there are many blackhat techniques that work.  The reason they're called blackhat is that they go against search engine guidelines and thus are risky, short-term strategies.  People aren't going to be arrested and thrown in jail for using them (typically) so everyone does have an opportunity to join in that fray.  If you're not up for techniques that may leave you high and dry when you wake up tomorrow morning, or that don't add long term value to a commercial domain, it may just be enough satisfaction for you to know that people employing techniques like those you're describing are often the ones screaming the loudest in forums about how they got scerwed by Google and how much money they lost when Google updates their algorithm.