SEO Black Hat: SEO Blog and Private Forum

Get Ready for the VIP Event at Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival!

After crushing it at Oktoberfest, the cries for “more, More, MORE” keep getting louder and louder for another VIP SEO bash. While another SEOktoberfest next year is a near certainty at this point, I’ve decided to host another event during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Living in Brazil these last four year has proven one thing for certain; Brazilians know how to party like no one else - and Carnival is their biggest party of the year.

Just like SEOktoberfest, we’re gonna have the top industry experts. Just like SEOKtoberfest, we’re gonna talk about the stuff that isn’t talked about at big conferences – the stuff that really works to rank and make money online. Just like SEOktoberfest we’re going VIP all the way. And Just like SEOktoberfest, we’re gonna be sold out long before the event kicks off.

The bar has been set pretty damn high but I think we’re up to the task:

At SEOktoberfest, we met, did our sessions, and partied for 2 days and nights. At SEO de Janerio, we’re going all out for 3 days and 4 nights.

At SEOktoberfest, we had 6 German Playboy Playmates. At SEO de Janerio, we’re gonna get 30 Brazillian models to party with us.

At SEOktoberfest you missed your chance to go. This time, you’ll get off your ass in time for the best mix of business and pleasure anywhere in the world.

Our shindig in Rio will include a Boat Trip, Kayaking, Jet Skis, Hang Gliding and more Brazilian Bikini’s than you can shake your stick at. Basically, it’s gonna be packed so full of awesome your head will fucking explode.

The dates are Friday February 20th – Monday February 23, 2009. The last day of Carnival is February 24th, so you’ll probably want to at least stick around for that as well.

Once again the cover is gonna be 5000 Euros. But hey – why make all this money if you’re not gonna spend it on stuff that’s fucking cool?

Most everyone at SEOktoberfest said they’d be down to do it again at Carnival in Rio, so don’t expect availability to last on this one.

Don’t wait. Contact me now to reserve your spot at SEO de Janerio - because this is something you absolutely do not want to miss.

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Greg Boser’s SEOktoberfest Wrap up:

As far as the actual conference part of SEOktoberfest…ehm…All I can tell you about what happened is that I can’t really tell you anything. I will say that Marcus and Quadzilla were unbelievably amazing hosts.

 

And, of course, we were very happy to have Greg and Barb at our event.

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There’s a cool article on Gormet.com about tipping the maître d’ at booked out restaurants to jump the cue (or get a table when they are “fully booked”).

. . .[the maître d’] suggests it will be closer to an hour. We retreat to the bar.

Seconds later the woman departs and the man is left alone. This is my moment, I decide. I reach for the twenty and positively bolt toward the podium. I crane my left arm around the side. “I hope you can fit us in,” I mumble, and slip the bill into his hand. I am sweating; my heart is racing. “Oh. Thank you,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

Two minutes pass—two minutes!—and the woman approaches. “We can seat you now,” she says, and leads us to a corner booth. “This is one of our best tables,” she adds. Suddenly I’m Frank Sinatra. I’m King of the Strip.

 

I’ve been doing this for years. Who wants to wait in a 45 minute cue to get a table? My time is worth considerably more than $100 per hour, and I wouldn’t be at a restaurant like that if I were alone. So if my party and I can avoid a wait for $50 or $100 - it’s well worth it.

The two more tips I’d like to add are that this works at Every Club/disco I’ve ever been to in the World (and i’ve been to clubs in 33 countries and most of the US). There’s no need to wait in line if you have the cash.

Another example comes to us from SEOktoberfest. Joey had missed our caravan of shuttles from Oktoberfest to P1. Trying to get a cab at closing time at Oktoberfest turns out to be rather difficult. He asked the first cabbie who was there for a ride. The cabbie said “I’m busy”. Two more cabbies both replied “I’m busy.”

So finally Joey says “What If I give you 100 Euros, are you still busy then?”

“No Sir! My schedule just cleared up and I’m no longer busy for you.”

What’s your take? Is tipping to jump the cue “fair”? Is it right? Is it . . . . black hat?

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A quick thank you to our congress for voting down the 800 Billion dollar bail out Theft from the tax payers. It would represent the largest Swindle in the History of the world. Hopefully, they will stick to their guns and continue opposition.

Here’s the NY Times writeup

Oh, and the stock markets tanked today - GOOG is below 400 for the first time in 2 years and Apple is trading at a 52 week low. They look like great buys here - but then again, it might be like trying to catch a falling knife . . .

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Marcus has a quick writeup with links to the pics on flickr.

Also, some of the first responses are in:

Sistrex

what I can say is that this was the best SEO-event that I have participated in to date. Permanently interesting and focused people who want to get things moving, a perfect organization (my thanks go to Phillip, again) and great planning on the part of Quadszilla and Mediadonis.

 

Nerd Girl in Skirt

I can only say that this was the greatest, inspiring, most amazing, brainfucking event I’ve ever been.

 

ein-uwe.de

It was the most ingenious feast which I have experienced so far.

 

Quality Nonsense

SEOktoberfest was the opposite of most webmaster conferences: no BS, no fakers, no newbies, no self-promotion. Just 25 or so serious internet entrepreneurs from the four corners of the world.

I’ve never been to any webmaster conference where people speak so frankly: how they make money online, which traffic tricks work now, which strategies will pay off longer term.

I met people driving more traffic in a day than some of my sites get in a year. I met the man whose site took 5% of Google.de’s traffic at one point. I saw huge deals signed on a BlackBerry screen at 5am.

 

Pano 360

As a paying participant I can honestly say, the SEOktoberfest of the 24/25 September was a absolute success story. . . . from my point of view the 5′000 Euros were just the perfect filter which led to it, that we had highly motivated participants registered. Quality has its price, right?

 

So, yea - it was amazing.

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SEOktoberfest was absolutely incredible. There will be a full write up soon with a photo stream, but I just had to say “WOW’ - we knocked this one out of the park!

You won’t have to take my word for it; you can ask anyone who attended. I would honestly be shocked if any attendee said they’d ever been to a better event.

It was really that amazing.

But the real point of this post is to say “thank you” to everyone who took part – after all, it’s the people and personalities that really made SEOktoberfest shine.

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Uhh . . . i don’t think i meant that.

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So AIG has failed and there is YAFBO (Yet Another Fucking/Federal Bail Out). Seems the “too big to fail mantra” is alive and well in America.

But AIG’s Failure surely means that it must be replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial average. The placement is ultimately up to NewsCorp which owns Dow Jones.

Interesting potential picks include AAPL, BRK, or maybe (just maybe) the Big G.

Why does it matter? Because tracking funds have to balance large portfolios to mirror the DJIA. It’s usually good for at least a 10% upwards move upon inclusion in the index.

Is GOOG a likely candidate? Probably not - but it would make for an interesting and bold selection by NewsCorp.

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As promised, today we’ll go over some more of the trends in Black holes and what steps you can take to create or take advantage of their growing dominance in the SERPs.

First, the micro niche site is dying. Why build a site dedicated to (for example) bee-keeping, set theory, Jainism, or even Salvia Divinorum when right off the bat you’re conceding 43% of your Google traffic to a black hole?

Behold! The size advantage. Today, you are far better off running one or two mega sites than 10 or 100 niche sites. The last remaining vestige of an SEO advantage for running a specialized site is in a name match in the domain name. It’s like the specialty store vs. Wal-Mart all over again. Who do you think’s gonna win this one?

Look for social media sites (Digg, Twitter, del.icio.us . . . etc) to evolve into “everything for everyone” sites. The Twitterpedia, del.icio.us catering listings, and Digg shopping section will arrive shortly after their management’s realize just how much they can dominate the SERPs across every conceivable profitable niche. Answers.com, about.com, and the wikipedia are all examples that are close, but aren’t being nearly as aggressive as they could be.

If you’re doing SEO and have an extremely trusted site as a client, it certainly makes sense in the current Google environment to recommend an “Everything for everyone” strategy.

Additionally, because these strategies are not yet being pursued as aggressively as they could be, the valuations of highly trusted sites are fractions of what they could potentially produce. It would take some cash, but buying and transforming highly trusted sites into everything for everyone sites looks to be a very profitable business strategy.

If you can’t buy -em, Join ‘em

Another business model that makes sense: forming “strategic partnerships” with these companies. Why buy links when so much value is place on the trust of the domain? Plus, Google has stated that buying links isn’t Kosher. But there’s nothing currently in the rulebook about getting your own page or folder one or two clicks from the home page on a trusted domain or emerging black hole site.

In black hat SEO, we often try to parasite off the trust of such a site, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t make a symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties.

This really works: Rent out and develop some valuable real estate property on digg.com/dvd-rentals/, twitter.com/diet/, or reddit.com/wedding/. Stuff like this is already being done all over the Net but rather under the radar . . . and not with the sites named above (to my knowledge).

Create a Closed SEO Cartel

In experimental SEO labs, others are toying with the hypothesis that if you do not have a massive enough single body to create a black hole, you can try to create one with a network of tier 2 or 3 trust sites. Similar to the single black hole site, these tiny blacklets only link to other sites within their network. As these experiments are still in their crudest forms, they can still be identified in many cases by their identical footer links.

Most of these networks are currently created either by link selling / trading arrangements or are owned entirely by one or two firms. But as they evolve, look for all off network linking to be no-follow. Look for tighter agreements to create massive conglomerates. We see blog networks grasping at the edges of this idea, but they’re clearly not there yet.

Take page rank sculpting to the next level. Make it page rank sculpting across a closed network. Create a Link Juice Cartel with a dozen or a hundred trusted sties. Don’t external link to anything without a no-follow. Try to make all links be on site or on network.

But a word of caution, don’t be flagrant about your SEO ambitions with any of the above strategies. If you call it SEO, brag about it, and it works, Google going to penalize or try to make an example of you. Google doesn’t like to be gamed . . . and they really don’t like it when you brag about it. Use other language and tiptoe around what you are doing like a politician.

When you do any of the above and they work, remember the latest and greatest strategy in SEO is to just STFU about specifics and let the money roll in.

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Black Hole SEO employs a technique that causes the normal laws of Google Physics to break down. Link juice flows into a massive body, but can never escape. When employed on a massive body, it tends to dominate the SERPs.

A black hole site is created when an tier 1 authority site ceases to link out to other sites. If a reference is needed, the information is rewritten and a reference page is created within the black hole. All (or virtually all) external links on the site are made nofollow.

The first example of a black hole site was the wikipedia. The internal links formed a network that passed link juice from one page to another allowing obscure articles with no external links to rank number 1 in the SERPs. This #1 ranking begets natural links from external links. When a webizen wants a quick reference, they consult Google and link to one of the top results. This causes more link juice to flow into the black hole and the body’s trust becomes more and more massive over time.

1. Link juice flows in, but it can never escape.
2. External Sites lose link juice at the expense of the black hole.
3. The relative link juice mass of the black hole expands exponentially.

Other Google Physicists realize what is happening and are now modeling their sites and networks to become black holes as well. One example of a burgeoning black holes is The New York Times. They will not link out even when relevant to the article. All links in any of their articles will go to a “Times Topics” page.

Business Week is following suit and their practices will soon mirror the New York Time’s. However, because Business Week is not yet massive enough, they cannot yet be classified as a black hole.

For massive sites with a tier one level of Google trust, there is virtually no benefit to linking to any external sites without a link condom. That whole “link out to authority sites” mantra of yesteryear’s SEOs does not apply to black holes.

We could debate how Google could fix this problem, but that’s not the focus of this site. This site is about how to become one of those who dominate in the SERPs regardless of how Google chooses to determine who “deserves” to rank.

The dynamics of Google’s current algorithm tend to create black holes. The homogeneous nature of the SERPs will only become more pervasive over time. In the near future, expect to see the same pool of 40 or so black holes account for ~70% of all top 10 results.

Do you want to have one (or more) of those 40 black holes?

My next post will discuss how to create your own black hole - it’s not quite as easy as you might expect but it can be done. Stay tuned . . .

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