Now-“dodgy” previously equity-passing historic built links are the biggest threat to brands in 2014.

• Techniques that were common-place a few years ago can now have serious consequences
• Spam thresholds are continually decreasing
• Google aren’t afraid to take action against big brands
• Just because your link profile is cleaner than your competitors does not mean you are safe
• You never know when your link profile could be manually reviewed or reported
• Google will happily strip you of #1 position for your brand name

Here’s how I ranked #1 for someone else’s brand name which has 9,900 exact match monthly UK searches with 45 minutes work and $30.  This shouldn’t work.

in case you missed it, here is a helpful picture I drew pic.twitter.com/rtd7msjYQD

SEO Blogging: Crap somebody else has written about AND Crap we’ve never actually tried

— Joel K (@JoelKlettke) February 13, 2014

Disclaimer: I tried this

Backstory

GardenBuildingsDirect.co.uk are a retailer of, well, garden buildings.

It’s fair to say they have built a brand for themselves as people are actively searching for their site by name.

They are currently brand banned from Google and no longer rank on key generics.

 

I registered GardenBuildings-Direct.co.uk… (-£2.99/$4.97, ~5 minutes)

Set up a 1 page site of crap… (~25 minutes)

 

Bought some shit links… (~15 minutes)

100 blog network links (-$10)

250 Web 2.0s (-$10)

Real quality links:

• Back garden structures in these modern times are typically http://www.artpridenjstore.com/back-garden-structures-in-these-modern-times-are-typically/
• Organic garden homes as of late will most certainly be  http://www.genepoch.net/organic-garden-homes-as-of-late-will-most-certainly-be/
• Flower garden house presently usually are  http://www.thietkelogochuyennghiep.com/flower-garden-house-presently-usually-are/

 

Will it rank for their brand term?  Of course it would, but how high?

[garden buildings direct]

• #73 – 1st Feb
• #57 – 2nd Feb
• Page 6 – 4th Feb (morning)

Received email stating Web 2.0s completed, blog network links should also have finished around this time if they were drip-fed over 4 days.

• #7 – 4th Feb (afternoon)
• #8 – 9th Feb
• #16 – 11th Feb
• #17 – 12th Feb
• #16 – 15th Feb
• #1 – 17th Feb
• #1 – 18th Feb
• #1 – 19th Feb
• #1 – 20th Feb

The site remained in #1 position until I received a request to remove it from GardenBuildingsDirect.co.uk on Feb 20th.  I blanked the site because I am a nice guy so would expect to see that drop from the ranks pretty soon given it now has no content whatsoever.

Traffic stats (only added Analytics on the 18th):

 

Welcome to SEO 2014.