In the past several months, it seems that it has been really easy for publishers to get top placement in google with some pretty basic keyword stuffing strategies, like buying domains with exact targeted keyword phrases in them, or worse.
Google preaches, design for users and the rest will follow, but these examples make that really difficult to swallow, and does nothing but encourage the opposite behavior.
Keyword Stuffed Domains
We saw this over and over again this year in the halloween costume space, like this site ranks #1 in Google for Alice in Wonderland Costume
And this site ranks number 2 for Pirate Costume in google.
There are dozens if not hundreds of that specific example, and they made a killing this year. (They’re a merchant, not an affiliate btw.)
They may not last at the top spots much longer, but they probably don’t even care. Mission accomplished.
I’m not judging the sites in question. I do have to wonder if this is really what Google wants at the top of their search results. (OK, maybe I’m judging a little.)
Spam Blogs and Redirects
Here’s another, dkny accalia, which is a certain model of shoe.
The sites in spots 2 and 3 both redirect to the same website. Spots 4 through 8 are broken sites, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that they were also doing the same (based on the domains).
Redirects? Seriously? We don’t know what these domains had on them before to get these ranks, but there’s little doubt in my mind that they were keyword stuffing. Actually the 8th site has a Google cached page, it’s a spammy wordpress blog. That DNKY Accalia post was from October 5th.
They got the ranks within a few weeks and then redirect it to an affiliate landing page, in this case with links to Amazon.
Where are the Good Guys?
Where’d the guys end up that design for users?
Oh here they are on Page 2…
I wonder how Stylefeeder, theFind, like.com, ProntoStyle, BizRate, etc. feel about their White-hat ways when stuff like this happens for even a few weeks in the prime holiday shopping season.
What’s going on?
Will these guys stay in these spots forever? Probably not (though the costume guys have been holding on for months now).
Is Google under so much pressure to produce real-time search results that they’re leaving the back door open again to spammers?
I'm Scott Jangro and I've been around the affiliate marketing space a long time. I've seen publisher businesses come and go. Heck, I've seen business models come and go. AffBook is about building sustainable web publishing businesses and funding them with what I think is the best way possible -- affiliate marketing.
