Author Topic: A little mystery ..  (Read 4088 times)

gm66

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A little mystery ..
« on: February 14, 2014, 03:29:07 PM »
.. it's a mystery to me, anyway, i've only been in SEO for a year.

I'm researching some competitor sites and have noticed something strange with the backlinks pointing to one of them.

Out of around 70 backlinks, more than 60 share these characteristics :

1. The domains were registered on the same date and expire on the same date, Feb 1st 1995 (!) until Feb 2md 2020.
2. The domains are anonymously registered., through GoDaddy.
3. The domains have no hosting !

Of the ones that do have hosting, there are no links in the content, nothing in the source code ..

Does it seem odd or is it some standard practice going on that i'm ignorant of ?

This company is always number 1 or 2 for a couple of valuable search terms.


All the best,

Gary.
Civilisation is a race between disaster and education ...

Adam C

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2014, 04:40:49 PM »
any of those domains redirecting to the site you're analysing?

gm66

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2014, 04:41:26 PM »
No they are dead.
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Gurtie

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2014, 07:03:37 PM »
where are you getting the backlink report from?

and are the domains which are live good EMD domains for competitive keywords?

gm66

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #4 on: February 17, 2014, 10:22:26 AM »
I get the reports from small seo tools and backlink watch.

No, the live domain's aren't good EMD for competitive keywords.
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Gurtie

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2014, 10:51:04 AM »
in that case I'd check out the cached page in Google (if you haven't already)

it sounds a lot like someone had a network, decided to scrap it, but kept some sites alive because they felt there was a value in them? Either with new content or a bit of cloaking...

gm66

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #6 on: February 18, 2014, 11:14:00 AM »
Yes i checked a few and G has no cache of them.

I checked some on archive.org and they seemed to have been authentic sites at one point, but none of them were used for a few years after they were registered, which was in 95.

This one, for example, regged in '95 but nothing on archive until 2008 :

https://web.archive.org/web/20080701145322/http://www.storybiketrip.info/

I'm just trying to figure out why this company is high in SERPs.

G says they only have four links to their site, three of which are from their site.

But if i search G for the website in quotes there are about 100 results.

Most of the results are sites like pagesinventory and webstatsdomain.

I'm having trouble getting my own site high in the rankings and just trying to figure out what others are doing that i know nothing about.

A few companies i've checked out are a joke, like clicksubmit, they just spam links every 3 months for their clients, but having checked into them deeply i see their clients that theyh list on the website are way down in SERPS now so G obviously doesn't take long to figure out bad plays.

The more i do this the more it's like a giant computer game, probably the most interesting IT field i've worked in, but bloody frustrating !

Civilisation is a race between disaster and education ...

Gurtie

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #7 on: February 18, 2014, 11:35:29 AM »
well, you know G doesn't tell you about all links. And spam works (but not if the people spamming are stupid enough to list the clients they've spammed for on a website, may as well just make up a post t with 'kick me' on it).

If its a site you care about don't worry about what long established competitors did, worry about what you should be doing now - it's entirely possible if they've been around since '95 they have a couple of cracking links you could never achieve now - or a lot of spam which is past statue of limitations and would get you a hand job within a month if you did it today!

gm66

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Re: A little mystery ..
« Reply #8 on: February 18, 2014, 11:37:59 AM »
Thanks Gurtie, i'm lving and learning :)
Civilisation is a race between disaster and education ...