A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around how some sites that rank well in Google but only have links from sites they actually own.
The disturbed SEO said:
Last week, a competitor that is normally on page 3 to 4 on Google has started to rank number one or 2 for a highly competitive term. When i was evaluating their backlinks, 85% of the 20 links they have are all from blog / low content sites they own. When I say low content I mean one post on a blog with a unique url over 6 months ago. The other 15% are from low quality directories. I thought Google was trying to get rid of this type of spam links, not reward them... Anyone else seeing anything like this?
Guess what? It works. It doesn't necessarily matter if the sites that link to you are sites you technically own. If you have good quality content and the links are somewhat quality, then it will count. If you abuse it, then Google may take action, but otherwise, it is fine.
Let me quote Wheel, a Senior Member at the forums, who said I "use it myself thank you very much. Works great. And remember, that doesn't invalidate the content or usefullness of the site that is ranking."
He added other methods he uses:
I personally prefer to have a stable of high quality sites to give myself backlinks from but there's a variety of things you can do:- lots of crap sites as you've described. I haven't personally seen this in a long time, but I'm not surprised.
- build out related but different sites in the niche and drive backlinks to them, get them hosted etc distinctly. Makes for valid backlinks and as long as Google can't connect the dots they should look good. I've got a widget site in my niche and a forum in my niche. Both are great sites on their own. I give myself links from them.
- buy dropped domains in your niche, rebuild them somewhere else. Maybe even let sit somewhere with content on them for six months or a year. I've actually got a whole bunch of pr4-6 websites with content on them that were dropped a couple of years ago. Today they're not dropped sites, they're pr4-6 2 year old sites.
- buy existing dormant websites. Go looking for dormant websites in your niche, offer them some small amount, see if they bite. If they do, leave the site as about untouched as you can and then drop yourself a link.
What do you think?
Let me be clear, this does not mean you should go out and build thousands of blogpost blogs and link them all to you. If it looks unnatural, Google will eventually get you.
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