Black Hat SEO still works in the online gambling industry

[Eduardo]

Take a look at this interesting blog (spanishpokerseo.blogspot.com) which provides an interesting analysis of the online Spanish poker and gambling industry that clearly shows that “Black-Grey Hat” SEO strategies still works at least in the Spanish speaking markets.

http://spanishpokerseo.blogspot.com

[ddm]

no point reading it. gaming is built on gray and blackhat, and thinking otherwise is naive.
edit: I suspect it is your own blog.

[Eduardo]

no point reading it. gaming is built on gray and blackhat, and thinking otherwise is naive.
edit: I suspect it is your own blog.

Well of course the online 3 Ps (Porn, Pills and Poker) are full of sites that uses black hat SEO strategies but they are also the toughest sectors online where Google spend a lot of resource watching out for bad SEO practises (getting your site in top 10 for poker, viagra o sex is nearly impossible in the English speaking market).

If you don’t want to read the report it is up to you but that one company can get up to 4 sites ranked in top 10 for a keyword like POKER (in google.es) by creating thousands of sites linking to their own websites is still amassing to me and I have been working with SEO for the last 8 years.

[ddm]

one company can get up to 4 sites ranked in top 10 for a keyword like POKER (in google.es) by creating thousands of sites linking to their own websites is still amassing to me and I have been working with SEO for the last 8 years.

if you've been SEOing for 8 years, I'm amazed that this amazes you.
it amazes me that these companies are so stupid as to host all their sites on the same IP's so that you can reverse engineer their network.

Is there a particular reason you are trying to expose this company? do you want them to get banned?

Maybe you should use your SEO skills for something productive if you have any

[Eduardo]

If you read the report you will understand why we have published the blog

We are initially not looking to get the sites banned in this case we would contact Google directly but what we are looking for is first of all opinions of other SEOs in the gambling sector and if we are lucky we can even get an official statement from some search engine.

Paul I appreciate your opinion so if you know of many similar cases please give me some examples.
I haven’t found anything similar in the English speaking gambling market (at least not for main keywords). But again that might be due to my lack of knowledge of gaming or SEO

[ddm]

The analysis was originally made for a Spanish company that have just entered the online poker industry

okay...

We have decided to public this analysis due to the for us at least very shocking results so that everyone within the industry (as well as the search engines can have a look at how SEO strategies that seems very suspicious can make a single company dominate a sector which is “supposed” to be one of the most controlled sectors online.

Really. How kind of you. A public service no less...

Our dilemma and the reason why we have decided to publish these results are that we are unsure of what to recommend to our client.

Publishing the results will help advise your client what to do?

Oh Please. This is such fail. you can estimate the # of unique IP links and cost needed to compete. you don't need to publish this hyped up "research" on an anonymous blogspot post and then publish it on gaming affiliate forums.

if this were a SEO forum I may be less harsh, but I really think you have an agenda. Why not do the math and tell the client what they need and be done with it? Its not like the process you are pursuing now gives you any value, or any links for your "research"...

Maybe you could step out of the shadows and tell us who you are / represent...

[FictionNet]

I'm undecided on the OP's intentions - I like to think the best of people - but I'm watching this thread with interest. There's much about SEO that has changed since I lived, breathed, ate it.

[Peter Willis]

I think his intentions are clear enough to me Rob! He's clearly working for a competitor of "Company A" and "Company B"... and the blog he has set-up is to do nothing more than "out" their tactics/sites.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw bricks, IMO.

[FictionNet]

Okay. Just read the article fully (which I should have done before) and I don't actually see anything new or 'amazing' in there. Build sites, link from them to your own bigger sites. If that's all that's being talked about then ... um, okay. Stop the press!

[LuckyLizzy]

Is link exchanging white hat? Are we allowed to link to a site you own from one of your other sites? Is there a list of SEO things that are black hat I can look at somewhere? I don't know much about SEO and just want to make sure I'm doing only things that are good.

[Eduardo]

Well I think my intentions have been clear from the first point. And yes I work for a company that provides SEO services for a competitor of company A and B - but that is also very clear in the blog.

I agree it is very normal in all sectors online to have a number of websites that help your main website rank better either by linking back to the main site or to use for link exchanges (3 point etc., testing new SEO tactics, etc) but what is new to me (and the rest of the SEOs I have been in contact with) is the scale of website building to promote your own sites (+1000 sites that’s a lot to me).
If you know of any similar cases let me know. I am very interested.

[Peter Willis]

I'm sure you are interested in seeing other cases, Eduardo.

Just because your company doesn't have the skill-set to build, develop and grow their own network... does not mean you should take the tactic of simply outing everyones elses network who does (though the fact you tracked down their network suggests they hadn't done a very good job - but that's beside the point).

Any good SEO wouldn't dream of outing this activity, you'd use the knowledge internally to give yourselves an advantage and out-gun your competitors.

EDIT: If you're happy you've done nothing "bad" here - feel free to let us know the name of the company you work for.

Cheers

[Topboss]

Oh Geez, I am lost here.

Please can someone explain in layman terms what is going on here.

One thing I can see for sure is that Peter and Paul are highly pissed off with Eduardo, but I think I have missed the point somewhere along the line.

Please can someone break it down for me.

[Eduardo]

As I see it (but of course I do not have any SEO skills according to both Peter and Paul) this is a question about white hat vs black hat SEO.

If you believe it is ok to do black hat SEO and try to out do the rankings of Google by creating tons of websites, locating these sites on different servers (with different IP class C, etc. etc so that Google don’t think these sites belong to you) and then linking back to your own site to improve your rankings then you are strongly against someone that starts to questions these tactics.

On the other hand if you believe in quality white hat link building (and yes there are companies within the gambling industry that succeed this way) then you properly think it is ok with an open discussion about these tactics.

By the way Peter you do not need SEO skills to build a huge network - just enough money I would be happy to publish the name of our company if it wasn’t because that might reveal the name of our client and I cannot do that.

[Betpartners]

Oh Geez, I am lost here.

Please can someone explain in layman terms what is going on here.

One thing I can see for sure is that Peter and Paul are highly pissed off with Eduardo, but I think I have missed the point somewhere along the line.

Please can someone break it down for me.

In a nutshell Eduardo stuck up the opening post without saying it was "his" blog etc with the sole purpose of outing his competitors.

Akin to me posting up saying i found this interesting post about another casino portal and the shady practices they are doing while not openly admitting that the interesting website was in fact my own.

Only when confronted did Eduardo admit that the link he posted was in fact analysis from his own company against competitors practices.

Then when motives etc were questioned and he was asked to name his company etc he becomes vague,

What i found funny like Peter and Paul was the use of the words shocking etc at the practices but wanted advice before they recommended these practices to their client lol

Couple of quotes

We have decided to public this analysis due to the for us at least very shocking results so that everyone within the industry (as well as the search engines can have a look at how SEO strategies that seems very suspicious can make a single company dominate a sector which is “supposed” to be one of the most controlled sectors online.

So shocking that he then writes this

As stated initially this type of SEO strategy seem at least very “grey hat” and before recommending something similar to a client we wanted to make sure that search engines approve such a strategy and listen to opinions of other gambling webmasters.

For an SEO expert of 8 years to be shocked then ask for advice if he should recommend similar practices to their client, well draw your own conclusions

[Peter Willis]

As I see it (but of course I do not have any <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> skills according to both Peter and Paul) this is a question about white hat vs black hat <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym>.

Eduardo if it was a question about White Hat vs Black Hat SEO you would not have published the sites owned by Company A and Company B on your "blog". So let's not even try to back track on your motives.

You're effectively trying to get Company A's and Company B's clients kicked out of Google by outing their network/approach (there is no way you can argue this isn't what you are trying to do). And that makes you someone I don't think any of us want in the industry.

Besides which, none of the top sites in Google for any of the major phrases in our industry have a totally clean approach, so please stop kidding yourself. Give me any site in the top 10 for bingo, betting, casino or poker and I will show you 10 examples of where they have been a little bit Black. Even historically "white" brands have turned to "other methods" in the last year as competition grew.

[arkyt]

The intentions were to get his link in his signature indexed - nothing more.

There are plenty of newbie members here who are doing the exact same thing (most pushing BS SEO) they post 1-2 lines of useless banter and get their sig link indexed.

IMO. these members should be deleted and their sigs / profiles removed!

[Peter Willis]

The intentions were to get his link in his signature indexed - nothing more.

There are plenty of newbie members here who are doing the exact same thing (most pushing BS SEO) they post 1-2 lines of useless banter and get their sig link indexed.

IMO. these members should be deleted and their sigs / profiles removed!

No, this is somewhat different if you read the post

[Betpartners]

The intentions were to get his link in his signature indexed - nothing more.

There are plenty of newbie members here who are doing the exact same thing (most pushing BS SEO) they post 1-2 lines of useless banter and get their sig link indexed.

IMO. these members should be deleted and their sigs / profiles removed!

Yup agreed

However on occasions it does pay also to expose them as well, so that if their signature is linked in google with the gpwa they get to read this thread

Can work both ways

But definately agree with your point about new members etc

[tryme]

Frankly, I think Eduardo has been getting an unnecessarily hard time here. He may well be leveraging this forum to benefit himself, but actually the blog posts and supporting information were interesting and far from worthless.

The guy is well within his rights to post whatever he chooses on his blog and he's also perfectly at liberty to start a discussion here if he wishes.

If you, I or anyone else wants to do a particular kind of SEO, than that's our right. It's the right of our competitors to expose this stuff if they see fit. Eduardo has already said he hasn't turned in a spam report to Google. I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from here as Eduardo clearly has something to say that may be worth listening to.

Give the guy a break.