5 ms·

SEO for Assholes

108 points by puranjay 15y ago

PaulHoule 15y ago
Be careful what you say. Eli Aliosi had a great blog where he talked about the kind of stuff that you're talking about... bluehatseo.com He went a little too far and got done in by Russian Hackers, the FBI and a delusional hacker who couldn't tell the difference between anime and reality. His server became the most burned server in the world.
- dchuk 15y ago
  lol Eli's doing fine nowadays he didn't really get burned that bad. Plus his SEO tactics still blow away anyone else in the industry, and he doesn't even do much SEO anymore
  - jaredmck 15y ago
    that's good to know, bluehatseo.com was an incredible blog, got so many ideas from reading it.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  Oh really that's what happened to him? No wonder his blog hasn't been updated for awhile. Smart, cunning guy
- danneu 15y ago
  Anywhere to read about what happened?
jpzeni 15y ago
The last paragraph made me laugh because it reminded me of when Google started to discount the power of link directories years ago. All the cutting edge SEOs just moved to new techniques and the exact same thing will happen again. It's a cat/mouse game and the people who continue to win are the ones who continue to innovate new ways of gaming the system. The guys who were really successful were the ones who were doing forum and comment spamming before someone decided to write a program that allowed absolutely anyone to do it. You can be sure none of them are lamenting Google Panda ... they'd moved on to new techniques long ago. Stuff like this is just one very basic example - http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographic....
getsat 15y ago
The article is supposedly about SEO, but the author spends half of it talking about fraud and implying that that is what blackhat SEO is about? lol Blackhat SEO is using programs like Xrumer and Scrapebox to build backlinks en masse, hiding content from search engine spiders by inspecting user agents, and building low-quality content farms of keyword-laden articles. Phishing and credit card fraud are totally separate.
- slouch 15y ago
  I agree. Blackhat SEOs don't necessarily break laws, and that sentence gave me pause as well.
- TomGullen 15y ago
  Xrumer spams peoples websites. As I understand it this is the main strategy employed by blackhates. Email spam is illegal (CAN-SPAM Act). I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. So it's not criminal to use Xrumer but in my opinion people who use it are on the same moral footing as common email spammers.
  - srl 15y ago
    > I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. Today of all days, be careful what you wish for.
  - stfu 15y ago
    As far as I know Xrumer creates member profile pages on forums and adds a link to the "promoted" website to the profile. At what point do you see the criminal offense? By creating a profile and posting nothing on the forum? By adding a link where the form gives a legitimate linking-home option? Even so I feel a bit like playing devils advocate here, but Xrumer profile creation seems to me one of the least annoying activities in comparison to blog comments or other "visible" activities. Plus the "illegal" argument is always a double edged sword. Just imagine someone else Xrumer'ing your own website and the consequential explaining you have to do afterwards. As soon as Google (or law...) declares a specific tactic as bann-worthy people will use it against their competitors.
AznHisoka 15y ago
The best techniques make it hard for any human to detect whether any blackhat was involved. Such as scraping content that is NOT already indexed and putting it on your own site.
brador 15y ago
Who's to blame for the necessity of such methods? Is it Google? Is it the spammers themselves? Is it the software makers or the SEO specialists? Maybe it's even us. The fact is, if you want to eat, you need to know SEO, most of which exists only to please Google. Why does an ecommerce site selling socks need 200 blog posts and an empty, keyword filled forum? because it works.
- puranjay 15y ago
  It's a little difficult to assign blame here. Blackhat SEO works, that's why it is so popular. Google's algorithm is far from perfect. There is little reason for an eCommerce site to market itself with blog posts, but the imperfect algorithm and the sheer scale of the competition makes it imperative to do so.
puranjay 15y ago
Wow. Front page of Hacker News. I can tell you from personal experience that it has become far harder to game Google after the Panda update. The SEO rats are coming out of the woodwork screaming for a solution. True, there is still a massive amount of spam on the internet, but Google is learning how to filter it down. The ubiquity of Facebook comments, Disqus, etc. is cutting down on the amount of comment spam. Not to mention that Akismet is becoming really good at its job. Spamming forum profile links gets you nowhere these days. And Google can somehow sniff shit content from a mile off. There will always be spam on the internet, but as long as it stays hidden beneath the carpet, Google is doing a good enough job.
- puranjay 15y ago
  P.S.: How ironic is it that a blog post about spam comments invites tons of spam comments? I've already deleted 10 from my Akismet queue!
mquinlan 15y ago
From my own experiences (viewing SEO as a "hobby"), I do think the type of semi-blackhat SEO that's most prevalent - the 20k blog comment blasts and automated WhoIs reports - is righteously dying out. It may take a while since a lot of people still believe that's the easy way to rank highly (and I think a lot of the SEO world fuels that notion to a degree), but I'm at least hopeful. But I also think it's hard not to use a majority of greyhat methods and, because of that, current greyhat methods shouldn't be totally discredited. It's really time consuming do to a lot of things without using blackhat tools like ScrapeBox and SEnuke X. However, recognize that these tools can be used for more than just spamming. Many popular tools are great for finding a few really targeted sites to, for example, actually post legitimate blog comments to. And I doubt methods and tools that are used by so many blackhats will die out soon. They can still be a vital asset to people who do take into account the health of the Internet and use greyhat methods responsibly.

108 points by puranjay 15y ago

Be careful what you say. Eli Aliosi had a great blog where he talked about the kind of stuff that you're talking about... bluehatseo.com He went a little too far and got done in by Russian Hackers, the FBI and a delusional hacker who couldn't tell the difference between anime and reality. His server became the most burned server in the world.

dchuk 15y ago
lol Eli's doing fine nowadays he didn't really get burned that bad. Plus his SEO tactics still blow away anyone else in the industry, and he doesn't even do much SEO anymore
- jaredmck 15y ago
  that's good to know, bluehatseo.com was an incredible blog, got so many ideas from reading it.
AznHisoka 15y ago
Oh really that's what happened to him? No wonder his blog hasn't been updated for awhile. Smart, cunning guy
danneu 15y ago
Anywhere to read about what happened?

jpzeni 15y ago

The last paragraph made me laugh because it reminded me of when Google started to discount the power of link directories years ago. All the cutting edge SEOs just moved to new techniques and the exact same thing will happen again. It's a cat/mouse game and the people who continue to win are the ones who continue to innovate new ways of gaming the system. The guys who were really successful were the ones who were doing forum and comment spamming before someone decided to write a program that allowed absolutely anyone to do it. You can be sure none of them are lamenting Google Panda ... they'd moved on to new techniques long ago. Stuff like this is just one very basic example - http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographic....

getsat 15y ago

The article is supposedly about SEO, but the author spends half of it talking about fraud and implying that that is what blackhat SEO is about? lol Blackhat SEO is using programs like Xrumer and Scrapebox to build backlinks en masse, hiding content from search engine spiders by inspecting user agents, and building low-quality content farms of keyword-laden articles. Phishing and credit card fraud are totally separate.

slouch 15y ago
I agree. Blackhat SEOs don't necessarily break laws, and that sentence gave me pause as well.
TomGullen 15y ago
Xrumer spams peoples websites. As I understand it this is the main strategy employed by blackhates. Email spam is illegal (CAN-SPAM Act). I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. So it's not criminal to use Xrumer but in my opinion people who use it are on the same moral footing as common email spammers.
- srl 15y ago
  > I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. Today of all days, be careful what you wish for.
- stfu 15y ago
  As far as I know Xrumer creates member profile pages on forums and adds a link to the "promoted" website to the profile. At what point do you see the criminal offense? By creating a profile and posting nothing on the forum? By adding a link where the form gives a legitimate linking-home option? Even so I feel a bit like playing devils advocate here, but Xrumer profile creation seems to me one of the least annoying activities in comparison to blog comments or other "visible" activities. Plus the "illegal" argument is always a double edged sword. Just imagine someone else Xrumer'ing your own website and the consequential explaining you have to do afterwards. As soon as Google (or law...) declares a specific tactic as bann-worthy people will use it against their competitors.

AznHisoka 15y ago

The best techniques make it hard for any human to detect whether any blackhat was involved. Such as scraping content that is NOT already indexed and putting it on your own site.

brador 15y ago

Who's to blame for the necessity of such methods? Is it Google? Is it the spammers themselves? Is it the software makers or the SEO specialists? Maybe it's even us. The fact is, if you want to eat, you need to know SEO, most of which exists only to please Google. Why does an ecommerce site selling socks need 200 blog posts and an empty, keyword filled forum? because it works.

puranjay 15y ago
It's a little difficult to assign blame here. Blackhat SEO works, that's why it is so popular. Google's algorithm is far from perfect. There is little reason for an eCommerce site to market itself with blog posts, but the imperfect algorithm and the sheer scale of the competition makes it imperative to do so.

puranjay 15y ago

Wow. Front page of Hacker News. I can tell you from personal experience that it has become far harder to game Google after the Panda update. The SEO rats are coming out of the woodwork screaming for a solution. True, there is still a massive amount of spam on the internet, but Google is learning how to filter it down. The ubiquity of Facebook comments, Disqus, etc. is cutting down on the amount of comment spam. Not to mention that Akismet is becoming really good at its job. Spamming forum profile links gets you nowhere these days. And Google can somehow sniff shit content from a mile off. There will always be spam on the internet, but as long as it stays hidden beneath the carpet, Google is doing a good enough job.

puranjay 15y ago
P.S.: How ironic is it that a blog post about spam comments invites tons of spam comments? I've already deleted 10 from my Akismet queue!

mquinlan 15y ago

From my own experiences (viewing SEO as a "hobby"), I do think the type of semi-blackhat SEO that's most prevalent - the 20k blog comment blasts and automated WhoIs reports - is righteously dying out. It may take a while since a lot of people still believe that's the easy way to rank highly (and I think a lot of the SEO world fuels that notion to a degree), but I'm at least hopeful. But I also think it's hard not to use a majority of greyhat methods and, because of that, current greyhat methods shouldn't be totally discredited. It's really time consuming do to a lot of things without using blackhat tools like ScrapeBox and SEnuke X. However, recognize that these tools can be used for more than just spamming. Many popular tools are great for finding a few really targeted sites to, for example, actually post legitimate blog comments to. And I doubt methods and tools that are used by so many blackhats will die out soon. They can still be a vital asset to people who do take into account the health of the Internet and use greyhat methods responsibly.