Internal link spam and keyword bloat - Cheating your way to the top?

[Noddegamra]

I've noticed recently that a lot of competitors for a client of mine have spammed their way to the top of Google. Their SEO technique includes:

Having numerous keyword-stuffed links at the top of the page which all link to the home page.

Having a huge scroll down section under the website which is full of poorly written, keyword-stuffed content that just keeps saying the same thing over and over again.

Obtaining numerous backlinks from irrelevant sites that they have obviously bought or exchanged.

I thought Google solved this issue ages ago? It's not just one site, it seems to be all sites on the first page (I gave up checking after that). How can these cheaters be doing so well?

[tedster]

First, you cannot assume that everything you find is actually helping them to rank. But it sounds like these sites are pretty poor quality and you "should be" able to beat them with real quality, well marketed if course.

That said, Google's focus [obsession?] on freshness in recent times does seem to compromise the quality of some search results. Sometimes it feels like the clock was set back 8 years! Are these competitors adding new stuff [let's not call it content] frequently?

[Noddegamra]

No. There doesn't appaear to be any new content. I've done some pretty thorough checking and it appears that these sites seem to just be performing well using techniques from years ago. It makes no sense at all.

[kevsta]

I would agree with Tedster, its unlikely that the dodgy stuff you are seeing is helping them, but its often annoying when this stuff doesn't hurt them either.

[Planet13]

That said, Google's focus [obsession?] on freshness in recent times does seem to compromise the quality of some search results.

I would agree with Tedster, its unlikely that the dodgy stuff you are seeing is helping them, but its often annoying when this stuff doesn't hurt them either.

I would, for scientific purposes only, mind you, set up a new domain on a different host with different IP prefixes and registered under a different name and address, set up a spam site like theirs and see if you can get it to rank - for scientific purposes only, of course.

Top Level Domain names are like $12 a year (a lot less if you want .net or .us or .info) and hosting is like $3 per month.

Google's Matt Cutts has said repeatedly how much google enjoys original research (despite the fact that Wikipedia is just copied-and-pasted information from sites that originally HAD original research). So your original research on how spammy sites get ranked high in the SERPs would be well appreciated by google ;)