7 replies to this topic

[Breakline Marketing]

Hello all,

I'm working on the SEO for a client and we have found that one of their competitors have bought a URL using optimum key words and then created an entire website with links interlinking pages on the website and then suggesting only our competitor's product. So they only have links going throughout the pages on the website and the only links going out are pointing to the "real" website with their product.

So my question is, what effect does this dummy/fake website have on the "real" website's rank and traffic? Does it work?

It might be a good marketing method, but I fear that it will look very suspicious to Google and then you run the risk of be de-indexed.

Has anyone heard of this?? PLEASE HELP

Best,

What to do?

[Jill]

So my question is, what effect does this dummy/fake website have on the "real" website's rank and traffic? Does it work?

Since you know what sites you're talking about, you tell us the affect.

Is the real site doing well or not?

[Michael Martinez]

Sock puppet sites are an old tactic. They sometimes work, sometimes don't. Usually, in order to make a good sock puppet, you have to put as much effort into developing the second site as the primary site. Many sock puppets therefore employ parasitical tactics.

This isn't something I would recommend for a typical ecommerce site. There are many legitimate ways to get other sites to link to ecommerce sites and send converting traffic.

[Breakline Marketing]

Well the competitor's site is doing great.

But this is not their only linking strategy, so I'm not sure if it even has that great of an affect on their rank.

They dummy site has a lot of content, and actually they have 3 dummy websites and 1 blog that they are constantly posting to. The websites & blog are all interlinked and then all linked back to the competitor. So it's a web of domain URLs.

I guess I just answered my own question. Since they are doing well, the websites and blog "web" are at least not hurting them.

Thanks Jill.

[Breakline Marketing]

Many sock puppets therefore employ parasitical tactics.

What do you mean by parasitical tactics? Like you said these sock puppets sometimes work and sometimes do not, but I would think that links like these might look spammy to search engines.

[Michael Martinez]

What do you mean by parasitical tactics? Like you said these sock puppets sometimes work and sometimes do not, but I would think that links like these might look spammy to search engines.

Parasitical Tactics = Stuff that Jill would prefer people not discuss in her forums (and which I don't endorse).

[Breakline Marketing]

Not a problem. Thanks for your advice!

I think I've drawn the conclusion that these micro sites don't push too much PageRank over to the main website because they are only pointing/linking to one site. Which looks spammy anyways and is not what we are goin for. Though they don't hurt the website's PR at all I think that it they don't help it all that much either.

[Jill]

What if all that different content were all on one site?

The way they're linking would be fine.

Which is why it is fine what they're doing. It's the same as having one site. They're not trying to hide the fact that all the sites are owned by the same company, and there's nothing wrong with a company who wants lots of sites that offer different information, if that's what they want to do.