I’m about to pour one out for my white hat homies out there but with a grey hat twist, here we go.
From years of experience in link building, I have seen the “trust” element that many SEOs speak of firsthand. And in my early days of link blasting, Google would really stump me with some sites, and then with others, just a light blast would dominate.
At the time, I concluded the problem was lacking diversity in link type (it wasn’t anchor text diversity, my anchors were quite diverse). But as time went on I started to observe some sites performing well that consistently had some element of a positive brand signal.
Then I soon realized that manipulating these signals was vital to be a successful grey hat link builder. So I started braining up anything I could that was scalable and would cause G to accidentally give my sites the brand card. I say accidentally, because most of the time these sites are not brands, they are complete shit, but I am attempting to use Google’s brand bias against them.
There are three main areas where you can incorporate these elements in your campaigns (if they are not already naturally occurring); Link Signals, On-Site Signals, and Search and Social Signals.
Link Signals
Create Social Profiles – Not social signals, but profiles with activity. The big 3 at least. FB, Twitter, and Pinterest. The more the better, and get some activity going on these profiles to make them look legit.
Create a Fake Persona – Create a fake name, snag an avatar, make an about.me, the whole nine.
Than go drop some pro blog comments on the cream of the manual approve crop using variations on your made up first and last name. If the name is “Bob Dole”, use “Bob” and “Bob Dole” for your comment drops. Easy money.
Build Links from a Diverse Set of Platforms – This is by far the biggest and easiest thing automated link builders miss. Automated link tools are coded to hit OPEN SOURCE PLATFORMS!! Sure users can scrape and add their own sites but if 95% of your links are composed of 5 different open source content platforms, you’re in the danger zone.
And earth to tiered link builders, the list of Ultimate Demon accepted platforms can leave an a an awful footprint (what myself and many link builders use for Tier 1 links).
Web 2.0: Elgg, Dolphin ,PHPizabi ,Jcow ,Phpfox
Wiki: Mediawiki, Wikkawiki, MoinMoin, Tikkiwiki, Dokuwiki
Articles: Article Beach, Article Dashboard, Article Friendly, Article MS, WordPress
Bookmarking: Pligg, Scuttle, Scuttleplus, PHPdug, PublicBookmark
Directories: phpLD, PDP weby, WSNLink
Doc Sharing: iDocScript
Videos: Phpmotion, Clipshare
Now if you have a baller site list and get successful submissions to all these different platforms then you’re going to be fine. But say your web 2.0 submissions skew heavily towards only Jcow blogs, then you’re in the danger zone.
The Solution – Get links from other site types!! Custom web2 platforms like Squidoo, press release sites, manual quality blog comments, guest posts with a body link, image links, etc. Pretty much anything that requires getting off your ass or having something custom coded.
Note: I did not list anchor text diversity because we should all know about that by now. Since we’re on the topic though, here are the anchor text ratios I play with.
Exact match – 5-15%
Partial Match – 20-40%
Brand and Naked Url – 40-70%
Generic – 5-15%
I put ranges down because I often mix it up depending on many factors. Along the lines of brand signals through anchor text, here is how I hammer down on branded and naked url anchor text.
Jacob King
Jacob
JacobKing
jacobking.com
www.jacobking.com
http://www.jacobking.com
And some spintax, because let’s face it, who doesn’t like spintax?
{Jacob King|Jacob|Jacob{K|k}ing|{J|J|j}acobking.com|www.{j|j|j|J}acobking.com{||||/}|{h|h|h|h|H}ttp://www.{j|j|j|j|J}acobking.com{||||/}}
On-Site Signals
Besides the obvious shit like bounce rate, page views, return to search, etc. let’s talk about some elements that any link builder can incorporate on-site.
Logo – Get one, hit up Fiverr if you have to.
Favicon – Hit up Fiverr again if you’re feeling spunky.
Create The Standard Pages – About me, Contact page, Privacy Policy, and TOS – Make these pages and make them good. Sure it’s a pain in the ass but these little things set you apart from other sites.
Comments On Your Posts – Big brand blogs don’t have 100s of posts with 0 comments. So create hundreds of fake avatars, have some comments written, and drip them in.
For my super white hat sites, I will have my writers go to the actual posts and write totally legit comments. Half in a complimenting or critiquing nature referencing something specific in the post and half asking a specific question. For the comments with questions I will have my VA go through and genuinely answer the questions. Also ads some fresh quality content.
If you want to get super black hat with it you could use Scrapebox. Now isn’t that ironic?
Link Out, and Link Out Right – Don’t be greedy and link to some authority relevant sites where it makes sense. Hoarding link juice is about as old school as meta keywords.
Search and Social Signals
Search volume – Not for your keyword but for your brand (domain). You can take it even further and have volume for your “brand” + “keyword”. If you haven’t thought of this before then prepare to have your mind blown. Authority sites have search volume for their brand and domain name. Let’s use CNET, SEOmoz, Moz, and ShoeMoney in G’s keyword tool for example.
Cnet – 5,000,000
Moz – 823,000 (you sly dogs got yourself an EMD)
SEOmoz – 110,000
Shoemoney – 4,400
The term “CNET” gets 5,000,000 global searches per month. Holy shit!
Let’s take it a step further. “CNET iPhone”
33,100 global monthly searches!!
What could be a more powerful signal than thousands or millions of searchers themselves typing your site + a keyword?
Or the better question, how can we manipulate these signals?
Hit your own site through proxies. Now this is a topic that requires a post and tutorial in itself so I will just leave you with a taste of an idea I’m testing.
With some sites I’m currently blasting links at, I’m hitting the sites through a variety of brand keywords and url variations through Google while rotating proxies. If there is anything there, I will be sure to post about it.
Social signals – Give me a decent sample of authority site crushing with killer content and zero social shares and I’ll take back the next statement.
Quality sites usually have some social shares. Now I don’t think social shares in general have a huge impact on rankings but they are a piece of the overall trust puzzle. Without them, you could be in the danger zone again.
Hit up Fiverr, Syndd, or any other bogey social signal provider for a little love. Don’t go crazy though, be careful with those G+s!
Or you can always create some good content and try to put it in front of the right people. The choice is yours…
Marinate on all this and ask yourself the following question when it comes to the sites you’re trying to rank.
What can Google track that is difficult for SEOs to manipulate?
Now make sure you incorporate at least some of those elements in your SEO game. Otherwise you’re a sitting duck.
I’d like to close by giving a shout out to the best looking man in the world. Without him and his stunning good looks, this post would not have such an ass kicking title.
Thanks Joel!
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This is some really top stuff Jacob.
I tend to take the white hat approach for client work and a slightly ‘washed out white’ for my personal stuff ;-)
A little bit of fiverr never killed anyone, problem starts when people use it as a solution to everything.
Great note about linking out too, the amount of people I see trying to funnel pagerank etc is just sad.
Thanks Krystian, and thanks for the shares. You’re the man.
Great article as always Jacob. I just wish I understood half of it! lol BTW, Bestlookingman link is broken.
Hugs!
Oh crap, thanks for noticing the link.
Thanks for the compliments as always Laura!
Just bumped into this (pointblankseo tweeted it) and was immediately impressed – like your style. Will now have to take time to go through the rest of your stuff :)
Thanks Abdi, at this point there is really only two posts worth anything on this blog, this one, and the Link Building Empire.
-> http://www.jacobking.com/link-building-empire
But I have some really cool shit in the works.
The Ultimate Guide to Scrapebox is going to blow people’s heads off.
Cool man – I’ve read that. I must admit though…all the Google BS over the last couple of years has made me ‘whiter’ than ever. I need to get back to my grey days and get some test sites rolling…
Look forward to your upcoming shit in the works…
I’m just wondering how many of these comments are ‘real’ ;-)
Seriously though, got some interesting points. Nothing that could be used for clients, but it is always good to play around and test different things like this on personal projects.
Haha, that’s funny, I hadn’t even thought of my comments on this blog.
On that topic though, what made me think of it is I relaunched a sweet expired domain and had been pumping it with content. Top notch stuff but it was all just thrown up there really.
After about 2 weeks the site took off and went from ~10 organic to ~400 per day. Looking at the site I got that feeling in my gut that is all too familiar.
Something didn’t feel right, and when you get that feeling you’re one step away from falling face first into a Google bitch slap.
So randomly I thumped interior pages with social signals and dropped comments randomly as well. Some posts with none, some with 1-5, 5-10, and I dripped them in.
Now when I look at the site, no more bad feeling. It makes me feel like going golfing actually. And you know what? I don’t even know how to golf ;-)
On the client side of things, there is a huge application here.
There are so many ways to get quality links and engage when you have a persona to work with. If your client has an online presence then continue with that but for link building purposes. If they don’t have one, get them set up and you could even educate them to be active on social media on an ongoing basis. G+ perhaps?
Food for thought.
Thanks for the comment Michael!
Also here from pointblankseo.com. As a writer looking to improve in writing copy for the web, I appreciate the info. Thanks.
Hey Michelle, thanks for dropping in!
Jacob this is a beautiful article. I was playing electric guitar all day since it’s the 3rd and somehow, someway I found myself researching new SEO knowledge and here I am… very thankful to have taken a break. ;)
Haha, thanks Ben, glad you enjoyed.
The next few posts I have in the works are going to put this one to shame.
Great post but I have a quick question. You mentioned creating “fake” comments for your posts and dripping them in over a period of time. Do you know of a way to automate this? I’m thinking a WordPress plugin or something?
Hey Shaun, there are a couple wordpress plugins out there. I haven’t tried either though.
1. http://codecanyon.net/item/xcommenter-wordpress-auto-comment-seo-plugin/1578465
and
2. http://blogpig.com/
You can also use scrapebox to blast your own site, then approve a few of the comments each day.
great post. I do this on every project. I’ve even gotten to the point where I’ll register a Google Local (and go full scale Yext Style) for most stuff, even my own name.
Couple other tips:
1. Schema markup is great for Google Brandalizing. NAP for local, Organization for logo, Authorship, Person, etc.
2. Open Graph markup really works well for elements like images (Pinterest Rich Pins), Facebook Sharing, and some other location based stuff.
3. If you run out of ideas for platforms to get links on, hit up knowem. Figure out where you still need links from and locate similar sites to those.
Good Job Jacob, and I’m here off a Brian Dean Tweet… subscribed for more.
Hey Jeremy, thanks for the tips!
Brian is a good dude, his post on trust rank inspired me to write this actually.
Thanks for subscribing, I will be dropping some killer tutorials in the next few weeks and I’ll hit you up.
As for outbound links go, if I include 3 internal links in any given article, I’ll also include 3 outbound links to authority sites. So many people forget this and I can only believe it ads a huge trust factor in the eyes of Google. It shows G that you’re not afraid to send people away from your site to another site that may have quality, related information. And don’t nofollow them either. You want Google to think that you trust where you link out in this situation.
Great post and I am thoroughly impressed with the ideas and detail of your post. It is nice to actually see a % for anchor texts as well since many people are running scared after Penguin.
Do you have any thoughts on how Co-citations are going to come into play though?
Hey Travis, thanks for commenting dude.
I actually threw those percentages in the post quickly when I was trying to beef it up before publishing, haha. It’s important to have ranges and really change it up.
From my experience Google has niche specificity when it comes to anchor text sensitivity.
That’s why I get crazy with it, build tons of sites, blast the crap out of them, and see what works.
But at the same time I have a few money brands that I’m mostly playing the white hat game with. And at the same time pushing and beating up that stupid algo to see what works best. Playing two games essentially.
As for co-citations I haven’t spent much time researching it. To busy building direct links, haha.
Thanks for dropping in!
Jacob,
Thanks for the response and I too like to put up sites and test what I can get away with, some things work better than others but how can we know unless we test it.
Thanks again for the post and I enjoy your style of writing!
Hey man, epic post.
Cant w8 for your next stuff.
Thanks dude, I’m 3500 words deep on this SB guide, this thing is going to seriously fuck some shit up.
Hi Jacob,
I am a regular reader of your posts and this one again is great. I can’t wait to see the Scrapebox guide come to life, but I am sure it is going to be epic, as always.
Take care.
Regards,
Daniel
Hi Jacob,
Do you think its better to follow or nofollow About me, Contact page, Privacy Policy, and TOS pages?
thx
Hi Jacob,
I actually came across this blog as someone suggested it along with a few others on a post that I read on seounite.
Great stuff, really like the things you mention about using various tools to diversify your footprint. I am currently using a few tools but not ultimate demon, would you recommend it for tier 1’s to the baller money site?
If one is careful… most of what you advise here is Gold, thanks Jacob :-)
This the best SEO post I ever read,
Chalk full of funnies and SEO secret sauce.
I signed up, you gots me. You gots me really good.
Like your blog dude! Especially the seo assholes section hahaha. I only just found you today but I’ll be back for sure. Check out my blog if you have 5 mins free.
Thanks for stopping in Nick, glad you enjoyed the assholes!
Great article! You’re the real deal Jacob! I small tut on dripfeeding comments and other social signals would be the bomb!
Thanks David, I’ll add those to my other tut suggestions.
Freaking fantastic, dude. Mind blown! I would love to see more on blasting search volume + keywords to your sites through proxies. Totally intriguing concept.
Subscribed and followed you on Twitter.
Thanks Brendon, I definitely need to research that more. I know with ScrapeBox and some tweaking it would be possible.
Jacob: You are on a whole different level man- I feel more successful just by reading your posts, great stuff!
Hey J, thanks for the motivation to keep this war machine going.
YOU DA MAN, Jacob
Happy christmas dude :-)
Enjoy a cup of Google juice. . . . . . . . . . . .
Love your style
Hello, what were the results of improving the search signal by hitting Google with your brand keywords?
great post
thanks
Not sure, never managed to run any legitimate tests. High PR homepage links seem to be enough ;-)
Awesome danger-zone !
Thanks for this funny alternation in the middle of the SEO-Jungle 2014 xD
And wtf is “Jcow” ?^^
Danger zone!
Jcow is a CMS, content management system that link spamming tools can submit to.
Hummingbird zone!
Ah okay..thanks..no I recognize that to google some words I don’t understand would be useful…ehem..
Scrapebox shows for footprint ‘jcow’ more links than I thought I would get.
You should include a reputation-button for this article^^
Thank you..page is bookmarked!
Sounds like you’ve got some good VA’s that you trust to log-in to your money sites and make insightful comments and such….where do you find these VA’s? Desk? BHW? CL? I need to hire some quality people.
I used to have VAs, found them through hustle and elance.
Create a replicable hiring process and be ready to churn some people, best advice I got right there ;-)