First JC Penneys Now Ehealthinsurance Google Domination...

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Ehealthinsurance.com is definitely doing some shady tactics. A quick glance at their 85k+ backlinks show that they aren't too concerned about quality or relevance, and these definitely aren't organically developed backlinks.

My favorite is the link to ehealthinsurance.com from "HangersNest.com"- gotta give them kudo's for finding a way to connect coat hangers to health insurance. Can you find the link? I'll give you a hint: here's the link tag in the page on Hangersnest:

<a href="http://www.ehealthinsurance.com" style="color: #000000; text-decoration: none;">​

The style details in the link basically say "make the link look just like regular text". In other words, hide it from humans. Google clearly says that this is a no-no, yet ehealthinsurance.com seems to be doing just fine (at least in terms of search traffic).

Now here's the funny thing: if it works, it works. Blackhat SEO might be against Google's guidelines, but it isn't against the law. JC Penney saw their online revenue grow in November by 12%, largely because of black-hat SEO tactics. If you're a executive or shareholder of Penney's, which would you prefer - a 12% increase in online sales, or a gold star from Google?

Just some food for thought...

Aaron

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

ok I'm gonna throw down 10k for backlinks, who wants to buy leads? $25 exclusive, first come first serve!

 

[STIBROKER]

FOR $5,000 I will back link your site........

ok I'm gonna throw down 10k for backlinks, who wants to buy leads? $25 exclusive, first come first serve!

 

[dmiller90]

Ehealthinsurance.com is definitely doing some shady tactics. A quick glance at their 85k+ backlinks show that they aren't too concerned about quality or relevance, and these definitely aren't organically developed backlinks.

My favorite is the link to ehealthinsurance.com from "HangersNest.com"- gotta give them kudo's for finding a way to connect coat hangers to health insurance. Can you find the link? I'll give you a hint: here's the link tag in the page on Hangersnest:

<a href="http://www.ehealthinsurance.com" style="color: #000000; text-decoration: none;">​

The style details in the link basically say "make the link look just like regular text". In other words, hide it from humans. Google clearly says that this is a no-no, yet ehealthinsurance.com seems to be doing just fine (at least in terms of search traffic).

Now here's the funny thing: if it works, it works. Blackhat SEO might be against Google's guidelines, but it isn't against the law. JC Penney saw their online revenue grow in November by 12%, largely because of black-hat SEO tactics. If you're a executive or shareholder of Penney's, which would you prefer - a 12% increase in online sales, or a gold star from Google?

Just some food for thought...

Aaron

Ask that same executive now what he thinks about that 12% gain, and how his store has tanked with traffic. Bet he wishes he had that Gold Star from Google Now. Overstock.com played the same game and was hammered as well.

Daily Artifacts - Filed under 'Chitika'

JC Penny Penalised by google for buying links

The full effect of the Farmer/Panda update has not even had its full effect across the web.

 

[ksigmtsu]

Wonder what the result would be if tons of us started reporting E-Health for their links that violate google's tos at once. If they got like 100 reports in 1 day I bet they'd find it hard to ignore it.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Ask that same executive now what he thinks about that 12% gain, and how his store has tanked with traffic.


JC Penny Penalised by google for buying links

The full effect of the Farmer/Panda update has not even had its full effect across the web.

A few things:

First: I want to be careful to point out that I don't advocate black-hat SEO tactics for site owners looking for long-term gain. If you don't already have an established brand and good traffic from non search engine sources, black hat tricks will burn you hard in the long term.

Second: Dave, can you provide details on what the chart is that you linked to? It looks scary, but I don't think it's at all relevant to what's happening to JC Penneys' traffic. The labels are hard to read, no site is listed, and it ends in January 2010, one year before this whole thing with JC Penneys and link-building went down. According to compete.com, they didn't see traffic flatten after Google's corrective action - JCPenney.com simply saw traffic return to their normal pre-link-building level. In other words, for a few months they got an extra 10 million visitors per month, and then went back to business as usual.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

DRUDGE REPORT 2011®

I bet you if we all individually filed to Drudge Report (breaking news tips on lower right of the page) and Google, it would get covered like JC Penneys, and exposed.

Can you get a sticky to put on the health insurance forums??

 

[ksigmtsu]

I'm going to start filing on drudge daily. Remember anyone else that does it, make sure you mention that the Obama administration gave them 19 million dollars to build the state exchange AND they're specifically promoting their own site with black hat unethical tactics like JC penny did.