Advanced Link Building Techniques the Black Hat Way

I won’t claim to have all the pieces to the puzzle when it comes to marketing and making money online. However, if you are a marketer that has been struggling to making it online, you could learn something new here that may change your life. In other words, you can’t afford NOT to read this…

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The title of this post may be a bit misleading because I don’t consider myself a black hat marketer.  In fact, I don’t hold much stock in what the majority of black hat marketers do (because it is really nothing more than a name..albeit a name that conjures up mystery).  That said, I can tell you that paying attention to what some of the successful black hat marketers are doing will help you dominate markets if you are building micro-niche websites in low competition markets. I will explain.

A couple years ago, a black hat marketer that was wanting to rank highly for search terms would simply purchase a lot of cheap domains, ram them with backlinks and rank for a second before they got blacklisted.  This was pretty useless information for the regular marketer.  After all, we didn’t have the automation tools necessary to really get the ball moving and for most marketers, the idea is not to grab a buttload of money quickly but to build a solid business that actually lasts. (in other words, not operate a revolving door of domains).

Google got better at figuring out what was spam and what wasn’t and if you recieved too many links at once from “suspect” places, you would get sandboxed until you proved to the search engine that indeed, you are worthy of getting ranked.

This changed with web2.0 and suddenly opened the door to other strategies that they could use en masse to get quick rankings off of parasite hosts.  In layman’s terms, black hat marketers figured out that if they couldn’t get ranked via purchasing a domain and pummeling it with links because of trust (or lack thereof), what would happen if they rode on the backs of domains that google already trusts?

And this is where this post begins…..

Can I make money online if I have little experience and no money?

I mentioned in my 114 internet marketing strategies that it is a better idea to have money to leverage your site and it is largely true.  However, there are other ways to make money if you don’t have any to begin with.  The answer is you have to know how to look for opportunities and how to use those opportunities to leverage authorityto gain search engine rankings.

The answer is to use hosts that already are trusted and funnel that traffic to your offer.

This is pretty simple in context.  After all, bum marketers have been using ezinearticles as leverage to rank quickly in the search engines off of long tails.  I did a little case study on ezine articles a few weeks back and determined that it was a heck of a lot easier writing a half ass article and getting it ranked on their website than writing the same article on a brand new domain and getting it ranked.

So what do you need to know to use web2.0 properties to market?

In order to market effectively and efficiently on web2.0 properties, you will need to know 2 things….

1. How to use search operators.
2. How to determine which web2.0 properties are **HOT** in google’s eyes.

How to use Search Operators

Last week, I attended a social media conference here in Memphis (my hometown).  I was expecting to meet other affiliate marketers there.  Instead, what I got was a lobby full of corporate types that were scared to death of social media.  In fact, out of all the people attending, there were maybe 2-5 people like me, who pretty much did marketing sans a corporation.

During one of the “networking” breaks, I happened to meet one of the 5 or so other affiliate marketers and we got to talking…..

The conversation centered chiefly on tactics that we used and I kind of casually mentioned using search operators to determine market likability in the search engines.  Being a ppc marketer, he didn’t really understand what the purpose of search operators because he never had to use them (and to be fair, I kind of looked blankly at him when he went over ppc techniques).

Let’s be honest here.  Most webmasters will use two search operators…..

1. Site: {yourdomain}- Most webmasters will use this operator to determine whether they are indexed in Google.
2. Link: {yourdomain}- The link function for google isn’t that good but many rookie webmasters will use it to find links that matter to google on someone else’s site OR what links your site is personally getting.

The link: {domain} query is pretty useless for what we are going to use it for in this case (although it is great for drilling down and finding some juicy links to use later)

However, the site:{domain} can be used for a myriad of other things other than simply seeing if your site is indexed.  In fact, this simple search operator can give you a wealth of information into the domain you are targeting….

For instance, you could use the site operator to determine how popular a site is to google. High indexability indicates that google likes the site and is likely to be living on the site, waiting for other user content to claim and gobble up.  It can also give you a good idea in some cases how much trust the site garners.  Just to give you an example, let’s take a look at two social platforms, one that you have heard of and one that you may not have heard of (that you will want to use NOW)

• Squidoo-  Squidoo has been around for a couple years now, was originally a marketers dream, has survived the “google slap” and probably has thousands of new user generated content added per day.  You would think that this would mean that the site would have a ton of indexed pages and that google would live on their site.  And while it is true that Google has indexed a lot of pages on Squidoo, (1.5 million..roughly), there are some that think that google isn’t as “in love” with Squidoo anymore.
• Justin.tv-  You have probably not heard about Justin.tv.  Justin.tv is a social media site that allows users to present live cams and “shows” to the web.  It is also newer than Squidoo.  However, the site has nearly 6 times tha amount of pages indexed by google.  Now, I am not a rocket scientist but you would have to believe that either there are more people who are interactive on this site OR Google really loves this site and it’s search bots are living there. (I know that this site is trusted…at least for now…read on…)

You can also use the site operator query to do market research and see what other marketers are doing.

This is where things get interesting.  I spend a lot of my research time, watching the ebb and flow of highly competitive terms online.  I do this not because I want to eventually enter the market of the niche I am studying.  I do this  to study what the most competitive sites are doing to get ranked.  I don’t pay attention to the sites that are obviously funding a link building campaign. I pay special attention to the ones that are getting ranked by manipulating social sites, .edu sites and in some cases .gov sites.

You can do this with relative ease, by the way, once you understand how to use the site operator query correctly….

As an example, let’s take a look at a highly competitive keyword that is largely dominated by the black hat world….Buy Tramadol…

If you do a google search, you will find that out of the first 4 pages (40 results) there are only two listings that aren’t social platforms.  In other words, you won’t find many personal domains that were built from ground up.  Instead, you will find forum profiles that are being used to funnel traffic to their offer.  You find video social site profiles that are funneling traffic to their site. You find…well, you get the picture.

We aren’t going to concern ourselves with the forum profiles (although you could).  Instead, let’s take a look at some of the more popular social sites….like Viddler.com (which is another **HOT** social platform in the eyes of google right now).

If you were to copy and paste the url and run a site search with the modifier, you will see how hard these marketers are targeting this keyword.

Currently 151 profiles are in some way, shape or fashion using Viddler.com to market this particular product.  If you were to go across the board for most of the other very competitive keywords, you would find more instances of this….in fact, you could pretty much guarantee to see some pretty high profile social sites being used for this purpose.

I should note that I have found many .edu sites that are linkable by using this technique.  I have also discovered a lot of social sites that I wouldn’t have known even existed had I not been following them.

So, what are the black hat marketers doing?

Like I mentioned earlier, what used to work was to pick up a domain and trounce it with links.  This changed though.  Now, there are other factors that play for a new site to get ranked…and usually this involves a courting time between Google and the domain….Google wants to know that you are a trusted source….it figures that if it doesn’t give in and rank you quickly, that you will get bored and move on….

Google is banking on the fact that if you are only in it for the money, that a few months in purgotory will be enough to scare away the “cheaters”.

Which brings me to an important point that (hopefully) will be an a-ha moment for you….

Forget PageRank….TrustRank matters more than you think when it comes to getting ranked

PageRank is nothing more than an indicator of how far your reach is.  It has a very little impact in ranking you though.  Most bloggers worry about pagerank.

TrustRank is something completely different.  To be honest, although people talk about it here and there, it is more of an apparition (much like the fabled but real “sandbox”).

To put it into perspective, your site will gain pagerank whenever you post a link that is followed somewhere.  You gain trustrank when another site of authority mentions your site.  It is the point when Google gives in and says “you win…I trust that your site is going to help others, not hurt them.”

For a site, this can open the door for a lot of things.  In particular, you can rank more quickly and easily for competitive terms.  It is the reason why ezine articles can rank so quickly for long tail keywords coming out of the gate.

Building PageRank is easy…building TrustRank takes more time….

I know it doesn’t seem like I have a point to this but I do….

Here are some things that you can do when you have built trustrank that a new site can’t do without getting sandboxed-

• Your link velocity can be much higher because it is expected to be- A domain that has gained authority is expected to get linked to.  Unlike a new domain, which should be expected to get few links, a trusted domain should have already passed the initial slow flow stage.  In other words, throwing up a couple thousand links may not have the same effect as doing the same on a new domain.
• Your link profile won’t be damaged if you link to bad neighborhoods or get shady links- After all, you have built trust with the search engines. Aaron Wall and Rand Fish have eluded to this in past posts.   In fact, you could actually rank for competitive keywords with iffy links if your domain has authority.

You said you could just rank with shoddy links?

Absolutely true. Once you’ve got domain authority, it’s pretty easy to rank with any type of link you can get your hands on, which means blackhat scripts and programs come in very useful. To see this in effect, all you have to do is keep your eye on the blackhat SERPs. “Buy Viagra” is always a good search term to see what the BHs are up to. It is pretty common to see Bebo pages, Don’t Stay In pages - or the myriad of other authorative domains with User Generated Content rank in the top 10 for “Buy Viagra”. If you check out the backlink profiles of these pages you will see, surpise, surprise, they are utter crap low qualtiy links.

The domains already have trust and authority – all the need is popularity to rank.

Digerati Marketing- Understanding Optimum Link Growth

See….I told you I had a point to this….

So, these marketers figure that if they can’t win quick with thousands of links to their domain, why not use a trusted site and then point thousands of links to their profile/sales page? After all, the vehicle doesn’t really matter, right?  It is the traffic that matters, right?  It is the targeted organic traffic that comes with being listed in the search results….

If you don’t learn anything else from this blurb, I do hope you learn this:

Google leans on some social sites and trusts them more than other social sites….the trick is to find out what sites they are favoring right now….

….and if you watch closely enough, you will start to see the same social sites over a given period show up over and over and over.

And to this, all you have to do is keep a keen eye on the marketers who have THEIR keen eye on the prize…in this case, it is a number one ranking for a competitive keyword.

Now, hopefully for those of you who have managed to get through this post, lightbulbs are going off in your head.  I am just going to assume that you aren’t interested in ranking for any of the prescription drug keywords.  You probably aren’t interested in cash loans or casino keywords.

But you may be interested in creating funnels to your website that sells vacuums via ebay.  You may be interested in driving traffic to a site that is promoting a brand new product launch.  You may be interested in promoting gucci or prada handbags.

…remember all of those Build a niche eBay sites that everyone was yammering on about last year…you know…the ones that have all been deindexed and are now just sitting on your server doing absolutely nothing?

What if you were to use the same tactics that these guys use and develop funnels to your BANS site?  Just a thought anyways…..

What if you were to use this tactic on your long tails to rank for other affiliate based products?

What if you were to use this tactic for an upcoming guru product launch?

Now, as of this writing, this is what these guys are doing.  These guys were doing something completely different to get ranked last year.  Next year, I imagine that Google will slam the door on this tactic and they will be onto a new thing.

The point of this blurb isn’t to show you some new way to get instantly rich…it is to show you how to stay one step ahead of your fellow marketer simply by watching those who are almost always a step ahead. It is an attempt to start thinking outside the box.  Link building can be an exercise in futility if you do it wrong.  It can also be a cash cow if done properly.  And the best link building strategies can be found by the ones that are in the most competitive niches…..

….and that is all I have to say about that….

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