White SEO (this is not a very interesting block, you can skip :))
You all know what “white” SEO means. Content is king. Usability is the queen ...? Everything is in accordance with recommendations from Yandex and Google: post good content, make the site convenient, and it will advance. And if not? There are two options:
a) you have made poor content and (or) the site is inconvenient according to search engines;
b) You have good content and a convenient site, but you are just out of luck;
c) There is a third option, very popular. You think that you have excellent content and a convenient site, but in reality this is not so.
And what is the problem of doing everything right and getting into the TOP, for example, an online store?
1. Content:
a) The cost of finding an adequate copywriter. Both financial and temporary. Search for a balance of text quality and cost. After all, you need such content that other resources link to it (natural link mass). This is a headache even for me. I personally went through, probably, a hundred authors. Of these, only five work on a regular basis as a team.
b) Photos and videos. Everything is clear here. Either hire a separate agency, or buy equipment and do it yourself. All this is expensive and often not available in the initial stages.
2. Design and usability:
a) To make a unique (non-template) design is already expensive. And to make a UX design (when it’s not only beautiful, but also convenient for people) is generally a “tower”. And you still don’t get the ideal at the start. It will be necessary to "finish" the site throughout life. Like for example VK. Endless a / b tests and implementation of the results require at least a programmer.
b) The mobile version of the site is like a new site, only for mobile devices. It’s also expensive.
3. Technical support:
a) Support for all of the above from a technical point of view. Errors, download speed, correct functionality, etc.
b) Protection. Starting from an SSL certificate, ending with hacking, data theft and dos attacks.
4. Costs for SEO:
a) Agency - monthly fee;
b) Individuals who are responsible for each of the areas of work: finding resources for cross-hosting, managing copywriters, coordinating technical support (so as not to break anything in the SEO settings), etc. This can, of course, be taken over by the agency, but the best content is always obtained directly from the company, which means that there is still a need to spend time on this.
You can list a lot more. In addition, each of the items must be properly used and interact with it. Gluing it all together is an extremely difficult task. As a result: to make a good project and bring it to the TOP, you need a large budget and at least an understanding of digital marketing. At most, years of experience. And the most interesting, even so, there is no guarantee that he will fly.
From white to gray (for the remaining 90% of sites)
Gray SEO is when a specialist manipulates certain factors with the goal of tricking a search engine. The most striking example is the purchase of links. Imagine that you are a doctor and want to buy an advertisement for your clinic in a local magazine. What are your accommodation options:
a) Buy a regular ad (picture / banner);
b) Buy a small article in the "advertising" section;
c) Buy a place on the cover and a whole spread, with your own article, at the end of which there will be your contacts.
In the same way, we buy links through link exchanges or directly from webmasters. And the question is, is such a link a "trick" of the search engine? On the one hand, no one is responsible for the quality of the acceptor site (the site to which they link), with rare exceptions. On the other hand, buying a high-quality link (I wrote HERE about what a high-quality link is and how to choose them), the site is invested in advertising, which means it is confident in itself and its product (not exactly).
What is a SEO link?
Official definition from Yandex:
“An SEO link is a link created to influence search algorithms. The ability to place SEO links on intermediary sites is often bought on special services - link exchanges or aggregators. Therefore, they are often called “purchased” or “corrupt”.
SEO links are an attempt to fool a search engine by artificially increasing the credibility of a site. They do not improve the quality of the site and do not carry a positive signal for ranking. Therefore, Yandex considers SEO links search spam. ”On the one hand, it’s logical, and on the other, returning to advertising in a magazine. If this is a penny newspaper - most likely you yourself will not want to be placed there, but what if Forbes magazine? Where is the line between SEO link and natural link? This is the "gray".
A few more examples (shades?) Of "gray":
- Creating texts focusing not on the usefulness of the content, but on keywords, nausea, the number of characters and other factors that are poorly understood by an ordinary person;
- Crowd marketing - native recommendations (with or without reference) on the sites, social networks and other sites. This is often a paid comment;
- Satellites. These are sites with similar topics specially created in order to get traffic and transfer it to the main site using links;
- Other manipulations that are conditionally contrary to search engines, such as aggressive cross-linking. This is when in the basement there are 5 links with key queries, such as “Buy an apartment in Moscow region”, “buy a kopeck piece in Moscow region”. Few people do this already, but the method is certainly "gray."
Black SEO
The most interesting is the black methods of promotion. Specific example. Do you want to bring a key request in 1 week in TOP Yandex? Follow the small step-by-step instructions:
- We select the request which is at 30-40 positions;
- We take a mobile phone. We translate it into air mode, turn off wi-fi, turn on the mobile Internet;
- We enter our key request in the Yandex system;
- First we open in turn 3-4 competitor sites, look a couple of seconds and close;
- Finally, we find our site at 40 positions, open it, and carefully study the page that went to it for about five minutes.
- We move on to a couple of pages and perform any conversion action - for example, leave a request.
- Ask 3-5 colleagues to repeat these actions every day for a week.
- PROFIT
- No, you will not be banned. Unless of course you will not abuse (understand how you want :)).
Based on this example, we can understand what black promotion methods are now based on. First of all, this is a “behavioral wrapping”. Imitation of user actions on the site. This happens in 2 main ways:
- With the help of real people. This is when people are asked for money to perform certain actions on your site.
- With the help of robots. This is when the machine simulates the action.
The most common method of course is bots. We will analyze in more detail.
The principle of wrapping:
Such companies do not particularly advertise their activities (with the exception of some, of course, we all know them :)), you can often find them only by meeting or on word of mouth. Personally, I was in the office of one such Moscow campaign and talked with its owner. Principle of operation:
- There are a large number of servers in different parts of Moscow. This allows you to cut off the factor of virtual IP (or any emulators), I'm not very good at it. The bottom line is the physical presence of the server at a certain geolocation, as if it were a real computer;
- Each of them emulates certain user actions. Very similar to the formula above. You go to 2-3 competitors' sites for the desired key, then go to the target site. You click on 3-4 links, etc.
- The cycle is repeated every day until the request is displayed in the TOP.
Does it work?
Before starting to understand, I’ll say right away: I’m not trying in any way to advertise these services. All that will be said below is exclusively my personal experience of interacting with the wrapping. My personal opinion is that sooner or later all this will collapse like a bubble. In Yandex, everyone knows and sees everything perfectly. The consequences for such actions will be extremely deplorable. Hit the filter for cheating - delete the site. Like this.
Does wrapping work?
The answer - according to my feelings, in 60% of cases, yes. I tested on my personal projects and on client projects (with their consent, of course). This is a very interesting experience.
1. Search engines can not yet determine the wrap. Some projects hung on the wrap for more than a year and felt good. No filters or penalties. And this is amazing. And the most amazing thing is that any person familiar with the Yandex metric can easily determine whether there is a call or not. It is enough to go into the webvisor and everything will become clear. All clicks are strictly in the center of the link, clicks on a strictly defined key, as a rule, stand out from the rest, attracting attention with its commercial component: “buy Lada Largus bu”, “Largus bu price”, etc. All this is accompanied by a high jump in traffic, which can be traced on the chart.
2. I specifically tried to twist requests that for a long time (more than 4 months) were in 30-40 positions. 6 out of 10 such requests crawled into the TOP in 2 months, in addition, we pulled a string of other lower-frequency requests from the same cluster (for example, we move “bu largus”, additionally get out “buy bu largus”, “buy bu largus Moscow”, “Bu largus 100000”, “buy bu largus 2010 moscow”, etc.).
The final principle - we display one request in the TOP, it pulls in the TOP 30-40 other requests that were not even in the first hundred before, select the most frequency / profitable of the new ones, add to the wrap. And so on.
When does it not work?
- There is no normal site optimization (but this is not accurate). According to unverified information, even sites without any optimization went to the TOP, but, in my opinion, a minimum checklist is necessary. Meta tags, text, commercial factors, download speed, etc. It is impossible without this.
- Change of relevance. Example: today, for the query “buy largus bu,” Yandex displays a category page, such as “site.ru/bu-auto/lada/largus”, and tomorrow, by the same request, it displays the main page “site.ru”. This is the main reason for the failure of the wrapping.
- Great random. Sometimes it just stupidly does not work, that's all. For reasons unknown to me.
How much does it cost?
Extremely expensive, but you can agree. As I wrote earlier, PF co-operation campaigns usually work through acquaintances. Their services are often resold. It makes sense to work with a budget of 40000r. At least in my cases it was just that. The cost of the request is determined by its frequency. The plus is that payment starts from the moment the request hits the TOP. Minus - you can remove the request only after a month. If the request flies to the TOP in a couple of days, you will pay 29 days without being able to delete it. Request price from 50p to (infinity?). There were situations when I paid 6000r for one high-frequency request per day. I just didn’t manage to turn it off ... But here are the details of a specific service. The article is not about that.
Is it possible to kill competitors with this?
A difficult and controversial issue. I will write my opinion. On the one hand, if you use the wrapping insolently and not carefully, then the system must understand the source by analyzing the IP address. If there are links to sites - cheaters on it and it is not connected to the site where the cheat goes - the signals are canceled. On the other hand, there are various VPNs and other ways to hide the source of the wrap. Therefore, if you get confused, then you can probably. But on the third hand, on the contrary, you can help your competitor become even stronger in the TOP 10, and pay for it. In general, in my opinion - it’s better to improve your site than to kill strangers.
I summarize the main thoughts on black SEO
- To date, certain cheaters are not banned by the Yandex system. Verified by personal experience;
- It is expensive (at least - 40000r per month);
- This works in 60% of cases. Works well on optimized sites that are in the TOP 20-40;
- Requests fly on average in 1-2 months. Again, this is my experience.
- To hurt competitors with wraps is more expensive;
And of course, the main thing is that if you use cheating, your site will be filtered out sooner or later with a probability of 100%. If you are ready to take such risks - go ahead. I repeat, in this article I do not advertise software wrapping services. Here is only my experience and personal opinion. Draw your own conclusions. And if you read it to the end and you have questions about SEO, write to me at dima.dyadyukov@yandex.ru or in private messages VK. I will try to answer or give free recommendations. Thank you for attention!
Article author: Dmitry Dyadyukov, SEO-specialist