SEO Dirty Tricks

Peter van der Graaf is apparently considered a "Link Building Expert," at least according to a recent post at  SearchEngineland.com.

The SearchEngineLand.com post is covering this post at Pole Position Marketing in which 12 Link Building Experts offer their advice on Link Building Strategy. Mr. van der Graaf's entry can be found here, but in summary it advises and condones the following:

1. Building a fake website that has nothing to do with the content you're attempting to generate links to.
2. Trading links with unsuspecting external web sites based on the fake content you've just created.
3. Deliver cloaked 301 redirects to the Yahoo and Google bots and do your best to hide the fact that you're showing site visitors one page, but the search engines another.

If this is not an indication of how low and desperate the SEO industry has become, then I don't know what is. When a well respected site like SearchEngineland.com covers a story on a middle tier site like Pole Position Marketing, which is clearly advocating  marginal and deceptive tactics, they tarnish their own reputation in the process.  If I were Rand Fishkin or one of the other Link Building Experts listed in that article, I would be concerned as well.

Comments

[Doug Heil]

Since you got the attention of people in a good way, maybe you know the answer. Who puts these type of people out there as "experts"? Who actually are the people who make these people experts? I'd be interested in knowing how people who spam the search engines are experts, and if they are indeed experts, what makes them an expert? Is it because they are spammers? Or is it because our leaders in this industry proclaim spammers as experts for some reason?

[Tin Pig]

In one sense, I have the same question. My expectation is that these are folks who are simply very active in the community and have achieved some success in link building campaigns. The problem, of course, with the "expert" label is it's a bit of the wild west right now. There's practically nothing in place to regulate the industry, with the exception of Google maybe catching on and banning a site or two.

Look at it like this - let's say in a more traditional marketing campaign the marketer planned a party and sent out invites. And let's say all the invites said the last 12 playboy bunnies would be at the party, admission was free, and there would be open bar all night. Now let's say thousands of people show up, the party is a huge success, but when everybody got there it was really a used car salesman convention and beers were $12 each. Is the marketer who planned the party an "expert" simply because they got lots of people to show up? No, they're just a liar.

And in the traditional marketing world they would be labeled as such.

[Adam Lewis]

I wonder why people would make sites with no content or 301 redirects, ultimately what reader base are they hoping to get?
Or are sites like this built in order to create a sellable domain?
Good post

[Peter van der Graaf]

Here's my own comment!

I don't claim to be an expert in any way. I've been doing SEO for 10 years now and still I'm learning everyday. And companies like pole positioning are certainly not the parties to give anyone the expert status!

The Bukkake example however is nothing more than an eye-opener. 99% of my linkbuilding is totally whitehat and so far fairly successfull. But because nobody ever shares any blackhat tricks, I wanted to amuse people with this example. And according to the reactions to Johnbukkake.com that is just what I did.

Next time I will post more decent tactics.

Kind regards,

Peter van der Graaf

[onimodglobal]

i only use white hat tactics and i have to say i do fairly well the only point to doing this that i can see is for the domain name to jump in the rankings and bang its up for sale.I allways say if there is a black hat tip published somewhere on the web you can guarentee google will know about it.I used an alleged seo expert when i had my first website i spent ages building it up to pr3 only to see my site banned from google since then i have jumped head first into learning as much as i can and finally to what they claimed to be i am now as i class myself a bit of an expert in this field and doing fairly well helping others achieve their goals.
good post

[seo services]

This is really useful information and interesting to read, thanks for the info.

[web hosting coupons]

Well about the SEO field it is really one of the best thing i have ever seen in my life and i think this is the only way through which one can indexing for it's blog or website. Now a days people are trying some special and unfair techniques to get the quick results. So according to me it is not fair and as it will come in light it will penalize.

[gravestone]

HI,
I Think this is really a good thing that people are focusing about the SEO field. SO i think excess of any thing can give you lots of knowledge about the topic. So this is really happening with the SEO field. There are some tricks through which one can get easy results but those techniques are really not fair.