Black hat link building network UNCOVERED
An integral part of search engine optimisation (SEO) is link building. Inbound links from other websites are viewed as votes or recommendations by the search engines. Google monitor and reward websites which have a progressing number of inbound links with better ranking in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
Link building at times can be a tedious and painstaking task which has led webmasters to look into new and innovative ways of gaining links easily.
Coast Digital has recently discovered a link building network which guarantees thousands of links for a relatively low cost and they claim Google view their links as natural.
It was discovered when we were monitoring a website’s inbound links which went from 6 to over 1000 in a few weeks. This intrigued us and after some digging around we found a link network.
Initially it was difficult to spot as the source code was always very clean and didn’t indicate anything but a natural link. The break came when we noticed that the links were appearing in a similar position on every blog.
We decided that the links must be generated by a widget or plug-in of some kind. So we set about finding a WordPress blog and accessed its “wp-content/plugins” directory. After researching every file in this folder, we finally stumbled upon the link network plug-in.
The link network claims “it is practically impossible to find out if a site is participating in our system”. Coast Digital managed to trace them after 15 minutes.
What can we learn from this? Although link networks may seem a quick and easy way to gain inbound links, trying to deceive the search engines into thinking you have suddenly received hundreds, if not thousands of links naturally isn’t the recommended way forward.
Any means by which you try to artificially gain inbound links to gain better positions in the search engines will be detected and you will then be penalised by Google. It’s just a matter of time.
Digital content - Apple leads the way
The internet is continually blamed for "killing" the film and music industry. What a load of rubbish!
The film and music industry only have themselves to blame. They have spectacularly failed to recognise the internet as the biggest opportunity since CD's and DVD's.
Perhaps if they had re-invested more of their profits into looking at ways to deliver digital content then they wouldn't be in the mess they are now.
It's about time these high paid executives woke up to the fact that digital content IS the future.
One company that really understands the opportunity, and responds with great products and solutions, is Apple.
The iTunes store has sold 4 billion songs since launch, and on Christmas day over 20 million songs were downloaded in one day!
What Apple and iTunes demonstrates is that people are happy to pay for content as long as it's reasonably priced and easily accessible.
So last week I was excited to see that Apple has now launched iTunes movie rentals which will allow you to rent movies at the click of a mouse from just $2.99 per movie.
With Apple's great iTunes user interface and all of the major film studios already onboard this is surely set to be a huge success.
The other announcement from Apple last week was regarding the new improved Apple TV. This device plugs directly into your widescreen TV, requires no computer, and allows you to download and watch movies instantly in DVD and HD quality.
You can rent or buy movies using Apple TV at the click of a mouse and start watching the movie within 30 seconds. And of course it's all highly accessible through a great user interface, which is something Apple has become justly famous for.
The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinion of the author and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of Coastdigital Limited in any way
