Ranking #1 for Someone Else’s 9,900 Exact Match Volume Search Term for $24.97 and 45 Minutes Work

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.

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Web Design Hertfordshire SERP – Headline Link Metrics

When I saw Tom from Distinctly Digital had taken a look at the [web design Hertfordshire] SERP in an attempt to see why the sites were ranking as they did I couldn’t resist having a dig myself.

After a quick glance at the backlink profiles of the top ranking sites three main points jumped out at me:

  1. The lack of variation in links pointing to the ranking sites
  2. The strong performance of the #1 site given its anchor text profile suggests it is massively over-optimised, and
  3. As a commenter raised in Tom’s thread, the apparent poor performance of AWDltd.co.uk relative to its link metrics

The tools I have used for this analysis are Majestic SEO, CognitiveSEO and Search Metrics.

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