A New Age Of Seo - Link Buying Taken To The Extreme, Who says you can't buy the Google #1 spot? Options

[Jones]

Google's guidelines clearly state that you cannot buy listings in the natural search results. We all know that link buying has clouded the distinction between paid and natural search, but I think we've just entered a new era that if left unchecked, threatens the whole premise of Google. I'm talking about Link Buying here, but more specifically, link buying on a mammoth scale.

Take a look at the Google UK results for 'car insurance'.

As of right now, you'll find ASDAfinance.com (part of the Wal-mart group for anyone who doesn't know who ASDA is) at Number 1. A couple of weeks ago they weren't in the Top 50. Car Insurance is one of the most competitive terms in SEO, so how did ASDA do so well, so quickly?

By spending around £10,000 per month (a rough guess) and amassing 200,000 back-links in a couple of weeks, ASDA have shaken up the Google results for one of the biggest terms out there.

So, who says you can't buy the Google #1 spot?

p.s. My first post, so Hello to all you SEO people.

This post has been edited by Jones: Mar 30 2007, 05:15 AM

[eKstreme]

Welcome to Cre8 Jones.

Your first post is quite amusing. Got any more evidence for it? Could it be a Google SERP update? Maybe ASDA is tweaking the site?

And if that's true, and Google is really as good as it says it is at finding out people who game it, this shouldn't be a long-term situation, no?

Pierre

[Jones]

Any more evidence? If you take a look at their back-links on Yahoo Site Explorer, you'll see they only have around 7,000.

However, do the search on Yahoo Site Explorer for asdafinance.com/car-insurance.html, and the story is a little different as I'm sure you'll see.

Be pointing all of the bought links at the car-insurance.html page, they've gone all-out for the term 'car insurance', and ensuring visitors land on right page. They don't rank well for any other keywords, instead going all out for one big term and disregarding any kind of natural link building strategy. I think this is a bit of a blinkered approach, it's unwise, and shouldn't be viewed as long-term SEO strategy.

This post has been edited by Jones: Mar 30 2007, 05:22 AM

[JohnMu]

So what are the 10k/month going to be worth if Google hits them with a manual penalty or automatically raises the bar for the links that they have to bring to continue to support that position?

I don't want to assume that Google would target a site like that individually (they don't like doing that - they prefer "algorithms"), but it certainly is possible. A competitive situation will result in competitors checking the reasons for the ranking (like you did) and it will result in spam-reports if they can find even the slightest off-white spot in their site-support.

How would the SEO explain that the 10k/month might be the reason why they drop down to #30?

Also, I understand how bought links can be a part of a long-term strategy, but to me it would be much to shaky to be the basis of the long-term strategy. You can buy links, but they will not guarantee top placement. Like you said, it's unwise - but perhaps there's more behind it than just that? Or perhaps the SEO is just doing what he was told (or they're testing the water for an even larger campaign).

How could those 10k/month be better spent for SEO goals?

John

PS Welcome to cre8asiteforums, Jones! Good to have you here. Great thread.

[projectphp]

...and shouldn't be viewed as long-term SEO strategy.

And it probably isn't

f your offerring is compelling enough, I am sure that even a short period of time for a massive traffic influx that is targetted would pay some dividends.

£10,000 really isn;t a lot of money, heck £100,000 isn;t a lot of moey if the results are there. A billboard, sponsoring a football team, building a brand most anyway takes cash.

I mean look, http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/UKm/searc...ner=userbidtool shows that 1 click @ Yahoo costs £3.83, and they report 3,293,540 searches a month for that term. £10,000 on text ads = 3,000 clicks and you are square if you spent that money on CPC.

I it worth the punt? Your call

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, Jones.

The other interesting thing about that #1 entry for ASDA is that the snippet for the entry includes 155 characters and spaces from that web page's description as usual but does not include the word car. I assume that Google treats motor as semantically equivalent to car. You can also have some interesting speculations about the semantic equivalence of such words in UK English as compared with US English.

I too would go with Michael's suggestion on applying that same money to PPC campaigns. I think it would be far more effective. Although they did quite nicely with how their organic search result appeared, on my view of it they are below three sponsored ads for insurance. I'm pretty sure the normal assumption that people click preferentially on the organic result rather than the PPC ad is completely wrong when it comes to insurance.

[FP_Guy]

I find it hard to believe that that amount of incoming links did not set off the spam filter at Google and am inclined to believe they chanced upon an update favorably.

But who knows????

[Jones]

That quantity of links is very blatant, very transparent, but whether or not it will trigger a spam filter is a difficult one.

Consider a fantastic new piece of content, a tool or popular download - these will too attract thousands of back-links in a short space of time but these are exactly the type of sites that should be at the top of SERPs.

The fact that ASDA only have around 50 or 100 links from unique domains, each of which is a near-site-wide link resulting in over 5,000 back-links, should surely trigger some sort of spam switch in the Google HQ - but this is happening so much and in so many different markets, whether it is possible for anyone to do anything about it without handpicking sites to drop from the search results, is unlikely, at least for the time being.

[Jozian]

Jones-

I always imagined that this was possbile. Seems to me that this action isnt all that unpredictable.

Are not we all doing this on a smaller scale? Maybe not buying the links outright, but paying for directory inclusions et all

Still, the scale and effectiveness, if your data is right, is quite scary.

-Jeff

This post has been edited by Jozian: Mar 30 2007, 11:15 AM

[morepro]

I find it hard to believe that no one in here has purchased links before - whether it be for themselves or for a client.

When links are going for $10+ per link and sites need thousands of links to compete for popular keyword phrases, spending $10k on links a month isn't much at all.

$10 x 1,000 links = $10,000

And 1,000 links wouldn't do anything in several markets.

[Jones]

I'm sure everyone here purchases links Morepro, but what we're talking about here is not your run-of-the-mill link buying.

Firstly, I was talking about £ not $. Secondly, we're not talking about buying 1,000 links, we're talking about 200,000.

I spend all day every day analysing the natural listings I've never see link buying on this scale before. The very fact that ASDA have managed to scale the car insurance SERPs in matter of weeks is testament to the fact that this is something a little out of the ordinary. If this was commonplace they wouldn't have found this possible, as their competitors would simply have already been doing the same.

Granted, to you spending $20,000/month on links may be small-time, but in my opinion that's a big risk on a grey-hat SEO campaign.

And by the way, if it is costing you $10,000 to generate 1,000 back-links, I'd suggest you find a new broker

[Halfdeck]

I don't want to assume that Google would target a site like that individually (they don't like doing that - they prefer "algorithms"

Right. The sad thing is Google hasn't perfected the art of paid link detection. If they could algorithmically detect 99% of all paid links, then Google would never ask anyone to use nofollow.

ASDA would have to be manually banned IMO.

Granted, to you spending $20,000/month on links may be small-time, but in my opinion that's a big risk on a grey-hat SEO campaign.

I agree. It's quite stupid really. Spending $20,000/mo on Adwords make much more sense because you are virtually guaranteed to see a good ROI.

[debraM]

Jones, is the ASDAfinance.com site a competitor of yours/one of your clients?

This post has been edited by debraM: Mar 31 2007, 04:14 PM

[projectphp]

Right. The sad thing is Google hasn't perfected the art of paid link detection.

How is that sad? And how can SEs ever measure intent (the difference betweena paid and "free" link)? The legal profession has tried for centuries and failed to factor in intent, what makes people think Google can measure intent with an algo I don't know.

Granted, to you spending $20,000/month on links may be small-time, but in my opinion that's a big risk on a grey-hat SEO campaign.

I agree. It's quite stupid really. Spending $20,000/mo on Adwords make much more sense because you are virtually guaranteed to see a good RO

To say "not worth the risk" is identical to saying "not worth the gizmotasticallity", i.e. using a word you haven't defined.A "big" risk is the same, in that it needs context.

Language is full of such words, and our failure to clearly state their meaning in context gets us in all manner of strife (just ike Humphrey B. Bear).

So what is "risk"? Risk is something that you quantify and assess in a specific situation.

Risk of being hit by a car. Risk of being bitten by a shark in 10 minutes when I go for a swim. Risk of heart disease if I eat to many fatty breakfasts. Risk of being killed by an asteroid. Risk of boring my reader with a long winded explanation of risk

Risk, once defined, then has to be measured against some pay off. I may live 5 years longer if I quit booze, but I will be infinitely less happy, therefore I choose to continue drinking. Risk (death). reward (live longer). Cost (boring life). Decision (keep drinking).

So what is the risk that you perceive in this case? That you will be considered bad, or that you will suffer some actual SEO damage? Is it the risk of no ROI? The risk of loss of rankings for a year? For a week? Rosk of a banning? Without knowing the risk, when can not decide if ti is silly or not, especially when we know that someone can make enough money @ 3 and a half pound sterling a click to make PPC worth the expense. 3,000 clicks to break even @ 10K and you be square?

Risk / Cost / Reward: what is higher / better, and why?

[egain]

I agree. It's quite stupid really. Spending $20,000/mo on Adwords make much more sense because you are virtually guaranteed to see a good ROI.

Not quite sure I would use the word stupid, risky seems a more appropriate term.

Getting such activity right on a wider scale, could and most probably would return a higher ROI than PPC activity (obviously dependant on the scale of coverage of the SEO) as research suggests taht a higher percentage of users click on unpaid ads than paid. However I am suprised that they undertook such a campaign (if indeed they did), without at least compensating it with a high visibility PPC cammpaign.

[Jones]

Jones, is the ASDAfinance.com site a competitor of yours/one of your clients?

debraM - yes ASDA is a competitor (or rather their SEO company is) but that's not my reason for starting this topic - rather to discuss the level of link buying spend, the speed at which such a competitive search term can be 'bought', and the impact on search in general.

phpproject - you're right that the financial returns from this investment are certainly going to be huge. Some are paying £5 ($8-10) per click for 'car insurance', so it's not hard to see that buying the Google #1 spot for a term generating millions of searches per month is going to pay off - but the risk I talk of is the transparency to the campaign and the potential to be blacklisted in some way if Spamoogle ever decides to get of its donkey and do something about link buying.

You say that the legal profession has been trying hard to factor in intent, but Google could end the link buying market in a flash if they simply put a more stringent algorithm in place when evaluating the quality of an inbound link. How about simply disqualifying any more than one link from the same domain? If they did this ASDA would have less than 100 back-links, not 200,000.

In my opinion, Google have a very good reason for not clamping down on link buying.

[projectphp]

but the risk I talk of is the transparency to the campaign and the potential to be blacklisted

And therefore... You have outlined the risk, what is the reward, what are the potential cost/s, and is it worth it? You need to finish the equation

but Google could end the link buying market in a flash if they simply put a more stringent algorithm in place when evaluating the quality of an inbound link.

Do you really believe that? And if you do, that clearly means you have a solution Google could use. Why not sell that to them

In my opinion, Google have a very good reason for not clamping down on link buying.

Which is....? I can't see why they have any reason to like it. There is just no way to know a link is paid for. As I said, intent. How do you measure that with an algo? Can you really tell what links are and aren't paid? And what about links as reward? Are they paid?

Stopping isn't Google, or any other SEs goal, it is minimising the bad effects, and not thoriwng out too much baby with the bathwater

[Jones]

Nice points projectphp, sounds like you want some numbers...

Here's some conservative estimates:

On Yahoo in Feb 2007, there were 3,000,000 searches for 'car insurance' (Yahoo makes up at best 20% of searches).

Google #1 for 'car insurance' - generates 2,000,000 clicks per month (based on 10,000,000 searches, 40% CTR).

Paid Search for this traffic would cost around £5 - 10 million.

ASDA are probably paying around £10,000 per month on links.

Even with a 0.001% conversion rate, this would mean they are getting 2,000 customers per month at a CPA (cost per acquisition) of £5 each.

These numbers (based on very conservative estimates) are a little scary, and would p***k up the ears of virtually every single online marketer out there. The ease of which ASDA have scaled the SERPs for this term can only mean many others will follow suit, seeing SEO as the new goldmine - which is not a good thing for any white-hat SEOs.

[A.N.Onym]

I hope those search queries numbers are correct. But yes, if you have lots of money, you can buy yourself a way out.

But with the same amount of money, it is more efficient to invest them in creating content for the visitors, which will include articles, tools, videos (especially on car insurance/general cars), etc. I can already think of a couple of link bait schemes for the car topic.

[debraM]

debraM - yes ASDA is a competitor (or rather their SEO company is) but that's not my reason for starting this topic

My apologies Jones for asking the question, probably a result of seeing too many dropped forum posts and an extremely hectic week. (and it's only Tuesday!)

I find it hard to believe that no one in here has purchased links before - whether it be for themselves or for a client. When links are going for $10+ per link and sites need thousands of links to compete for popular keyword phrases, spending $10k on links a month isn't much at all.

I have and do buy links for clients all the time, but not on the scale outlined above. I don't use a broker and depend on finding them myself or using the database of sites I've amassed over the years. This basically means I work slow and steady and with an eye on quality although I will admit to being seduced by fast and easy at times.

It's been my experience that businesses in the more competitve areas with high traffic and large adwords spends tend to get "away" with a lot more than the average Joe webmaster with a less competitive keyword. Add to it they get millions of searches and clicks a month and it stands to reason the race to analyze algos on the competitive sites isn't as great and they're given a greater leeway for changes.

The sad thing is Google hasn't perfected the art of paid link detection. If they could algorithmically detect 99% of all paid links, then Google would never ask anyone to use nofollow

The optimum word here being "perfected". Inbound links don't come in waves unless it's very unusual circumstances (hot news, hot releases, etc) So when a bajillion pop up in a category - they notice. But I'm not sure it's because of the speed of aquisition as much as the type of new inbound links pointing at them. Which is pretty much what was said here:

but Google could end the link buying market in a flash if they simply put a more stringent algorithm in place when evaluating the quality of an inbound link

The ease of which ASDA have scaled the SERPs for this term can only mean many others will follow suit, seeing SEO as the new goldmine - which is not a good thing for any white-hat SEOs.

But can you wear white if you're playing in the big competitive leagues?