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Why do people build thousands of backlinks to keywords with low search volume

by nest28
26 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I just found a great keyword with 8,100 exact search monthly. Top ten results are four pr 0s and the rest are pr 1s.The most back links anyone has is 47. So basically a easy term to rank for. Now while I was checking to see if the emd was taken I decided to use one of Mosa's techniques and check the on page seo and backlink profile.

The keyword's emd, the dot com version , had 195,000 backlinks. The .com,.net. , and . org are not in the top 100, maybe from latest G updates who knows.

But my question is this, what would possess somebody to build almost two hundred thousand backlinks for a term that only gets 8,100 a month.

I mean if the search volume was say 30,000 with a high cpc than I could understand.
I also saw similar situation where a IMer built 10,000 backlinks to a keyword with 880 searches a month.

Edit: After further analysis using majestic seo, I discovered his top backlinks come from other emd, probably his, I'm check these keywords out lol.
#backlinks #build #keywords #low #people #search #thousands #volume
  • Profile picture of the author pdrs
    all depends on the term but it's really not that big of a deal to blast out a few hundred thousand BL's through your various spam tools.

    8100 exact match could be worth a hell of a lot of money too... depending on the term
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    It really depends on the ROI.

    I've targeted a keyword before with only 30 searches a month. However, the competition was nonexistent, and the product I was promoting paid me a commission of about $200/sale. I was making 1 sale for about every 11 visitors from that keyword.

    On the other hand, if they are building that many backlinks, they are probably using some kind of automation and it is really probably not costing them a whole lot in time or money either.
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  • Profile picture of the author imsun
    Panic ..Every one wants to run well before others...That's why they are blasting our tons of links...But few contextual links and edu links can equal those numbers.
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  • Profile picture of the author nest28
    One was a ugly green and black mfa site, the other 2 were amazon affiliate type sites. I'm guessing before penguin and the unnatural links penalty they were probably in the top spots. Also the fact that they built that many links makes me think this keyword must have been profitable.

    The new Google penalties and updates really have leveled the playing field, normally I focus on searches anywhere between 1,000 and 4,400 because any higher than that and you'll face tough competition, but now I'm starting to see keywords with higher search volume have less competition post panda,and penguin.

    I think we need to learn from our past mistakes though, instead of ugly green and black mfa sites, make nice looking sites with good navigation and that provides a good user experience. Also don't go building thousands of backlinks. Also why in the world would you make a one page site for a term that get's 8,100, I would have defiantly made at least 20 supporting pages especially if I was making good money from the site.

    Edit:Mike, that's pretty clever to target a search term with only 30 and still make 200.00 for every 11 people that came to your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author lossman29
      Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

      One was a ugly green and black mfa site, the other 2 were amazon affiliate type sites. I'm guessing before penguin and the unnatural links penalty they were probably in the top spots. Also the fact that they built that many links makes me think this keyword must have been profitable.

      The new Google penalties and updates really have leveled the playing field, normally I focus on searches anywhere between 1,000 and 4,400 because any higher than that and you'll face tough competition, but now I'm starting to see keywords with higher search volume have less competition post panda,and penguin.

      I think we need to learn from our past mistakes though, instead of ugly green and black mfa sites, make nice looking sites with good navigation and that provides a good user experience. Also don't go building thousands of backlinks. Also why in the world would you make a one page site for a term that get's 8,100, I would have defiantly made at least 20 supporting pages especially if I was making good money from the site.

      Edit:Mike, that's pretty clever to target a search term with only 30 and still make 200.00 for every 11 people that came to your site.
      There may have been reasons why the guy was blasting links. He was definitely using some black hat tools for one. To be honest, though, judging the number of links to be made by keyword searches alone is not a good idea. I've often dealt with keywords that had very few searches, <1000 but had tremendous competition and number of backlinks. The opposite can be sometimes said for keywords with high volume searches. All depends on the context.

      You're right about the guy just making a single page. You'd definitely want to have various levels of content and pages and links pointing to different sub pages.

      Things are evening up, as you said after the latest G update. Most link emphasis is starting to be placed on social networks, it seems.
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  • Profile picture of the author Employ Filipino
    You can build that amount of links really easy it isn't hard... isn't good though!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Simple - backlink blasts. It probably didn't cost them more than a couple hundred $$ total and the ROI was there (or they were planning to sell the site for good profit). Most likely got killed by Penguin.

    I'm finding strong PR5+ insurance sites that got killed by Penguin - now that'd be a pretty big loss to stomach eh.
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  • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
    Ive made thousands of dollars a month off of keywords that have less search volume than that. Without knowing the keyword its tough to say but 8,100 can be an absolute goldmine with that right keywords and monetization methods. Just keep in mind Adsense is not the only way to change the commercial and financial value of a keyword.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      As Bnet and Mike indicated it really doesn't say much. People put their blasting software on auto pilot and walk away. Whats stupid is people are still doing this even with unnatural links notices and Penguin. Many of them are doing negative SEO to their own sites.
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      • Profile picture of the author nest28
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Many of them are doing negative SEO to their own sites.
        Lol that's funny and sad at the same time.
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    • Profile picture of the author nest28
      Originally Posted by dp40oz View Post

      Ive made thousands of dollars a month off of keywords that have less search volume than that. Without knowing the keyword its tough to say but 8,100 can be an absolute goldmine with that right keywords and monetization methods. Just keep in mind Adsense is not the only way to change the commercial and financial value of a keyword.
      This is in the clothing niche so I was thinking amazon/adsense for monetization , average cpc is a couple dollars, and average price for these items are between 50.00 and 200.00. on amazon.

      Actually when I first saw the keyword I was like naa, I know this has high competition, but I said wth let me check anyways, so now I have set my filters to a higher search volume. I will no longer make any assumptions about local search having tough competition.
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  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

    I just found a great keyword with 8,100 exact search monthly. Top ten results are four pr 0s and the rest are pr 1s.The most back links anyone has is 47. So basically a easy term to rank for. Now while I was checking to see if the emd was taken I decided to use one of Mosa's techniques and check the on page seo and backlink profile.

    The keyword's emd, the dot com version , had 195,000 backlinks. The .com,.net. , and . org are not in the top 100, maybe from latest G updates who knows.

    But my question is this, what would possess somebody to build almost two hundred thousand backlinks for a term that only gets 8,100 a month.

    I mean if the search volume was say 30,000 with a high cpc than I could understand.
    I also saw similar situation where a IMer built 10,000 backlinks to a keyword with 880 searches a month.

    Edit: After further analysis using majestic seo, I discovered his top backlinks come from other emd, probably his, I'm check these keywords out lol.
    Pretty simple, really. It's a lot easier to load up a few programs, press a few buttons, and let them go to work.
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    • Profile picture of the author nest28
      Originally Posted by JSProjects View Post

      Pretty simple, really. It's a lot easier to load up a few programs, press a few buttons, and let them go to work.
      I know it's easy but if your competition only has 50,41,12,78,9,0,0 or something like that, I just don't get why somebody would build 195,000 links even in a pre-penguin era .
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

        I know it's easy but if your competition only has 50,41,12,78,9,0,0 or something like that, I just don't get why somebody would build 195,000 links even in a pre-penguin era .
        Not many people actually bother analyzing their competition. Big mistake.
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        • Profile picture of the author lossman29
          Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

          Not many people actually bother analyzing their competition. Big mistake.
          I'll have to emphasize on this rather strongly as well. Too many people simply do not analyze competition. They do the keyword research, find keywords which they think will be golden for them based on their "searches per month" and "CPC value" and then go to town on those keywords.

          I used to do this myself, a few years back. hahaha. Lesson learnt.

          Once you identify keywords, analyzing competition is the next, most important step.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
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        Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

        I know it's easy but if your competition only has 50,41,12,78,9,0,0 or something like that, I just don't get why somebody would build 195,000 links even in a pre-penguin era .
        Maybe they did a link blast years ago?

        Or even better, maybe they recently discovered fiverr, lol.
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        • Profile picture of the author Daniel Ray
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Maybe they did a link blast years ago?

          Or even better, maybe they recently discovered fiverr, lol.
          I agree... That is a lot of links though... seriously.
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  • Profile picture of the author nivatias120
    They want to rank their site faster
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Ray
    Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

    But my question is this, what would possess somebody to build almost two hundred thousand backlinks for a term that only gets 8,100 a month.
    With that many links, and such a low search volume, we must all be thinking the same thing here... I don't know the site or keyword, but would guess they are automating the backlinking, and honestly, sounds like it's pretty risky SEO.

    If we think it's suspicious, I wonder what Google would think about it.

    That being said, if you build quality, I be it would be possible to beat that site no matter how many backlinks they have.

    It just sounds fishy to me. If there were 10,000 links, then apparently at least 10,000 people must have searched for it at least, right? But really that would assume that every single person that searched for it actually built backlinks... See what I mean?

    It just seems unnatural. Google will notice too.
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Ray
    Another thought...

    Someone could be trying to sandbox their site... Too many links, too fast will make the site drop out of the rankings. That's a possibility too.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasono
    That's because they might want to target those people who search for such terms and are sure that they would really get visitors for such terms. Also, it might that for other terms, sites that are ranking in the first page cannot be beaten such as amazon, yahoo, etc/, while the other term can easily be beaten.
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  • Profile picture of the author krestup
    They are some keyword that very important to some website, even if the average search is low but its more targeted to their website and the visitors are more targeted than a similar keyword with 10,000 search
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    • Profile picture of the author Carl Brown
      I think those days are over. Thousands of worthless links seems to be a good way to lose your site.
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      • Profile picture of the author luxl85
        Originally Posted by Carl Brown View Post

        I think those days are over. Thousands of worthless links seems to be a good way to lose your site.
        Before the panda update, the Thousands of worthless links is very useful
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  • Profile picture of the author hilarious89
    It depends on the method you use blasting backlink is a easy job for the spamming tool.
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  • Profile picture of the author LiftMyRank
    Yes, i would say these links were built pre-penguin, when turning up the quantity of links really helped, now days it's more about quality of links...
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