Introducing The AfterBurner©
The AfterBurner© is a technique where the Black Hat SEO company buys up expired domain names and then uses them to host backlinks to their clients’ websites.
*Black Hat SEO is search engine optimisation that follows strategies that either conflict with or oppose search engine quality guidelines. They may not be illegal per se, but often involve unethical actions.
How does it work?
A domain name may gather some rank and authority for the mere fact that it existed as a live website for a number of years. It may also have gained backlinks and may have pagerank too from its content collateral. But when the business operating the website goes broke, closes down, sells up, or moves offline, then their domain name may end up expiring. Sometimes this also happens unintentionally, and if the business owner doesn’t promptly renew their domain it may end up back on the open market.
This is where the Black Hat SEO company hangs out. Watching for half reasonable quality domains that have expired. Snap them up and slap a basic 5 page website on it and you’ve just inherited the pagerank it earned from previous ownership. They do this before Google has had enough time to figure out that the domain is dead and has written it off the cache. Expired domains can remain in the cache for many reasons, and for many months.
The domain is now prepared for adding blog posts or articles that the Black Hat SEO company writes for their clients, and introduces contextual backlinks to their clients’ websites. Do this enough times and you might end up with a network of many websites all used as backlink farms. The backlinks pass remaining pagerank from the expired collateral for some time, until Google eventually figures out that the site is now just a link farm and the Afterburner effect is exhausted. I’d expect the burnout period would be somewhere around 6 months.
This sly technique provides “evidence” that you should “always continue SEO campaigns to keep up with changes”.
This means that the Black Hat SEO company has to keep buying up new domains as old ones become exhausted. They simply migrate or rewrite their clients’ posts, articles and backlinks to a new domain name. If they fail to roll their content to new domains in time, then their clients risk being algorithmically penalised by Google Penguin. The flip side of that is what happens to the client should they stop their campaign and cease paying for any SEO work: they may be left with a Google Penguin penalty that the Black Hat SEO company may leverage against their former client as “evidence that you should always continue SEO campaigns to keep up with changes”.
So what’s wrong with this technique?
- There’s an element of risk for the client if an algorithmic penalty is applied before the Black Hat SEO company has moved to a new set of domain names and websites.
- The websites do not provide any real value for a visitor, because they will consist of mixed content based on the Black Hat SEO company’s current client base.
- There is no valid reason for the website to link to the client’s website and pass actual human traffic, because it exists purely for SEO purposes.
- It defies Google’s quality guidelines.
- It’s a technique that fails as a long term strategy and is likely to be contrary to the underlying needs of the client to build a positive long term strategy.
- The Black Hat SEO company may use the eventual failure of the technique as a tool to scam their client.
- The technique leverages someone else’s good name and ranking credit and may breach Intellectual Property laws. It may also breach rules or regulations around use of domain names issued by the country authorities or Domain Name Registrar.
Read original or see other articles: https://crankedseo.com/black-hat-seo/
