$15 Million Blogger Used Black Hat Tactics

Posted by ChrisMonty on October 17th 2008 Filed Under: Marketing

bankaholiclogo1 $15 Million Blogger Used Black Hat Tactics If you recall, earlier this month, we reported on a blogger who sold his Bankaholic blog to Bankrate for $15 million.

Now, it seems that our friends over at Black Hat World have uncovered a story indicating that this blogger may have been using some black hat tactics to generate backlinks to his site.

As we analyze the backlinks to Bankaholic, pay special attention to the following link:

http://goviolet.com/?m=200501

Let's take a look at this website, specifically, take note of the footer:

Notice, when you visit the actual website, what happens when you hover over the words "Interest Rates".

Hello! What's this? It appears that perhaps our blogging friend also designed blog templates in his spare time. As an added bonus, he managed to hide a backlink to his Bankaholic website, along with appropriate anchor text, to the footer of his templates. Everyone who downloaded and installed these templates then automatically gave him a backlink to his site.

Interestingly enough, I experienced something similar with one of my other financial blogs lately. I decided to change the Wordpress template, but the one that I installed had a hidden link at the bottom pointing to a "faxless payday loans" website. I, therefore, ditched that template.

So, it appears that, in this case anyway, a few black hat strategies paid off in a big way. I am not encouraging or discouraging these types of link-building strategies. I am merely opening up your mind to the creative possibilities of the internet. Is this truly black hat...or just "thinking outside the box"?

One thing we know for sure...it was extremely profitable.

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Ruck

Honestly could care less what some people think is blackhat or not. However, I think the little research you did here was pretty good man. I knew about the site because we've been reading it for awhile and then caught the news on the sale. Whether people think it's blackhat or not there is a damn good lesson taught here to the serious entrepreneurs.

Blake Stone

Blackhat, whitehat. Doesn't really matter. He made an ass ton of money off of it, didn't he?

Chris

@Ruck - Hey, Ruck. Good to hear from you. I totally agree. Like I said, I was just trying to open up everyone's minds to the possibilities here. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with a little black-hat activity as long as you're not ripping anyone off or causing harm in any way. I personally haven't been able to stop thinking about this since I wrote it...lol.

@Black - Bingo. Again, you hit it on the head.

Chris

Actually, I guess one could argue, "Well, did he 'rip off' the company that paid $15 million (Bankrate.com)?" I don't THINK so, because that site IS getting a ton of traffic so they should get what they paid for. Although, as I read on another forum, I suppose Google could 'flip off the switch' any time they wanted to.

Kris

Maybe he didn't design the themes. On DigitalPoint Forums, they have theme designers who let people bid/buy links in the theme footer for SEO purposes (yeah, go figure, DigitalPoint, the home of everything cesspool).

The thing that bothered me about Bankaholic was that the owner was spamming every blog he could find in the financial niche. He spammed several of my financial blog's comment forms.

Insider

I work in the same competitive niche as Bankaholic and have been for the past 2 years. My site ranks well for many of the terms he's targetting. If you look hard enough, you may know who I am.

His links did come from DigitalPoint. His backlinks were purchased, almost 95% of them. If you look at DP, his username was "thebulltrader" now banned.

Just look at some of his Itrader --

Theme purchases - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t...

66 blog links -- http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p...

The list goes on. You be the judge if it's a good backlink strategy.

movie fan

yeah, if people are using his blog template theme, it's hard to argue with him customizing it with a backlink built in... sort of like google putting a link to google on a custom search box

Tjen penger

I think the point is that he has not been open about the link being there. He was clearly trying to hide it and that qualifies for some questionable link building in my book. It is a pretty known black hat method, and it really works. I wonder what Google thinks of this kind of link building, they will have huge problems dealing with this problem at least..

Sharon

Footer links, I think are more grey than black...I think of black hat as uing markov engines, tools like blogger generator, and stuff like that. Trading links, footer links are sort of grey. I think Googles only accepted ways for linking are directory, articles, and organically from people liking to you...I think that if you use only those methods you'd probably starve! :) Sharon

<abbr></abbr><abbr>Sharons last blog post..Best Types Of Aerobic Exercise For Fat Loss</abbr>

Fotballsko

@sharon:

I totally agree. If one should sit around and wait for the links to come in naturally, you would never get your site on any index. This is however in the dark grey area. If everyone who used his template did get info about the link being there, i guess it would be alright, but i doubt that has happened. It is a very sneaky method to use. Fortunately it requires some work that most people are not willing to do.

Tjene Penger på Nett

That is not always true. If you write good enough content, you will naturally get the links you need to rank for just about any term you want. But you will have to write content that not only is unique, it has to be well written and probably something that is revolutionary.

$15 Million Blogger Used Black Hat Tactics

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