Possible HUGE hack to exploit:

Ok, I'm in the mattress business. I have a competitor who in the last year has completely dominated the search rankings. I've been trying to reverse engineer what they're doing, partially to learn from them, and also to hopefully find a weakness, etc. but they seem unstoppable.

I know a lot of the juice Google gives to sites for searched terms is based on the inbound link anchor text. I've been "naturally" building my links, but at nowhere near the rate of this company. (the company btw is overnightmattress.com).

I was crawling the forum & found a 2007 post from Kurt mentioning the site http://www.backlinkwatch.com, which offers free backlink analysis (more detailed than any of the services I was using). I like it because it shows you the actual URLs of EVERY backlink, as well as the anchor text used (if any).

I checked the backlinks of my site & a few other competitors & found anchor text about 30-40% of the time, with different terms. I then checked the backlinks for overnightmattress and almost fell off my chair; they accumulated over 6,000 backlinks in the last 18mths, with over 90% of them tightly focused on 6-8 main traffic keywords. Of course, they appear in the top 3 for organic searches for these terms.

My first thought was "this is inhuman!". Then, I just happen to follow a few of the links & this is what really blew me away. They are all blogs, where their keywords (mattress, cheap mattress, etc.) are just thrown into each page, either at the top, "other links", side column or bottom, (for example)

"About Us Privacy Mattress Sitemap"

all very cleanly linking back to their homepage.

Just about all of these sites have NOTHING to do with mattresses, and by looking at the positioning of the links, I really doubt they are all put there this prominent by the blog owners.

My only guess is they found some loophole to exploit.

Below are some of the links & anchor text used. Please see if anyone can figure out how they're doing this! See if you can see any footprints. How can we all do it?

The mattress business is tough enough without having this to compete against...but I'm up for the challenge!

Mike
SWAT

http://www.muscle-body.com/ (anchor=Latex Mattress)

http://www.freepuke.com/articles/new-burnout-content-for-2009/ (anchor=Mattress)

http://blog.eches.net/security/90-days-genuine-license-key-for-avira-antivir-premium-and-avira-premium-security-suite/ (anchor=cheap mattress)

http://film-rapidshare.com/high-school-musical-2-2007-rapidshare-236-megaupload.html (anchor=cheap mattress)

My first thought is, I like the guy/gal's use of "cheap". This is a buying keyword, as we should have learned from my psychographics related posts. People searching that use the word "cheap" as part of their search are looking to BUY, otherwise, they wouldn't be interested in the price.

My second thought is, 6000 links really isn't all that tough. Over 18 months, that just a little more than 10 links per day. And, the PR of his hompage is only PR3.

Get your list of your money keywords, your best 12 or so, and your list of secondary keywords, about 25-100.

Create silver sites using the main 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger etc., each focused on one of your MONEY keyword phrases. Almost all of these keyword phrases should have the word "mattress" in them.

For content, use my "100 chunks" method, although you don't need 100. Focus on your money keywords. Try to weave in your 25 - 100 secondary keywords. Write about things relating to sleep.

Next, go to Amazon and find products related to sleep that also cost enough to make a decent commision. Find products you don't sell yourself. Maybe sleep sound machines, a book or two on sleep disorders, etc.

Rewrite the descriptions so they are unique from Amazon's. Do NOT write them as a review, the FTC is cracking down on this.

Include your affiliate link to the product (using keywords as anchor text), as well as your money keywords and secondary keywords, using them as anchor text to other web properties or your's.

Using Amazon will give you something to write about, as well as a secondary revenue stream, killing two birds.

Combine your original "info" chunks with the Amazon chunks, so you have about a 50/50 mix.

Randomize them using the Randomz Tuel and my spinning methods to create tons and tons of articles, each containing 2-7 paragraphs.

Create your 2.0 sites using these as content.

Also, use the vBulletin hack to find some more blogs that generate RSS pheeds.

Submit all the RSS pheeds using RSSBot.

Set up Pingz for each.

Set up a "silver" network of 20 or so sites, with each one linking to:
- 1 or 2 other silver sites
- Your main money site.

Get some links to your silver sites, using the methods in the linking thread. Be fairly gentle, espcially with Squidoo, as they are banning people for "unacceptable linking".

Each time you create a new silver resource, either add its RSS pheed to your main RSS pheed (in BlogBomb), or create an RSS pheed for it by hand, using a different paragraph as the "description" of the pheed so that you have 2-3 items in your pheed for each silver site.

Note: An RSS pheed can have many different items. You are not limited to just 15. I've created RSS pheeds with 500 items and BlogBomb handled it without problem. However, your hosting may vary.

Next create some tin sites using any of the resources in the web 2.0 thread. Use your spun content for this. Point links to your silver sites. Be very agressive getting links to these sites. Use them as a buffer for your silver sites, which are a buffer to your money/gold sites. These sites should use your primary and secondary keywords, as well as any other keywords of "value".

MOST IMPORTANT: DON'T OVER-THINK. You will have created a good network of sites with built-in buffers. It's OK to get a tin site or two banned. Just don't use the same formula every time.

Remember, a page doesn't really exist in Google's eyes unless it has a link to it. If you set up a profile at a high PR forum, get that profile page a few links, etc.

Also remember,Bombing isn't about doing things the PERFECT way or the "best" way, it's about doing things all different ways. You don't want all of your sites to have the same linking pattern.

Thanks for the great post. Already started my bombing campaign per your advice. I had a quick question on one of your suggestions:

<Submit all the RSS pheeds using RSSBot.>

How is this different that pinging the pheeds using pingz? If I understand correctly, Pingz will ping the RSS engines with Pheed updates, but RSSBot initially submits them?

If they weren't submitted first, is using Pingz (RSS blackhole) a waste of time? I don't have a problem buying RSSBot, but just want to make sure it does something different than Pingz first.

Thanks,

Mike
SWAT

Some RSS directories need to be submitted to, others just need to be pinged, and some of them (like technorati), need both.

Submitting: Here's my RSS pheed, please include it.

Pinging: My RSS pheed has been updated.

I can get a little confused about the differences myself. But they are a little different and I recommend that you try to do both.

Also, many of the "submit" resouces are different than the "ping" resources.