Now here is something I just cannot understand. An issue that leaves me cold every time I think about it. The supposed synergy between content and links. More than that. The relative merits SEO wise of each

We have always been told that content is king, and even on the darkest of SEO forums the whispers are that Effective SEO is moving in this direction. But is it?

But here’s the thing. There is content for your own site and the content that might surround your links on another’s site. Your link juice. Do either of these really matter? Is this all just smoke and mirrors. A “scare” tactic by Google if you like to make those in internet marketing afraid to spam links and poor content?

Of course there has to be some high profile examples of poor content and spamming failing. Black hat tactics been the ruin of some websites. This has to happen for the fear to spread.

But is this spread real or just some very specific tactical take downs, possibly 100% manual to give the impression of an effective algorithm when in fact Google,s crawlers and the computation machine it “calls home” to is just so much nonsense. The wizard behind the curtain is just one old man pulling the odd ineffective lever and shouting through a megaphone for effect?

The $64,000 question is….

Does this content matter? At all?

Some days I’m sure it must count, other days I’m sure it’s nonsense and that Google really hasn’t got a clue about content what-so-ever. Here is an example.

The Ultimate Demon Example

There are quite a few sites selling SEO and link building tools. Lovely. If used correctly they are a boon to White hat linking techniques, although experience tells me that most are bought by those people looking to leverage a less than pearly shaded colour of SEO. Anyway I digress.

In the Ultimate Demon niche, i.e  affiliates selling this product, there is some little competition for page one. However – in this competition there is one site that stands headf and shoulders (and chest, waist, hips, thighs, knees and ankles) above the rest. That site is http://www.demondemon.com

Here the web owner has provided more supporting content, advice and tutorials than I have ever seen for any SEO product ever. The site is now – in all but Google’s opinion apparently – an absolute authority. I counted getting on for 300 articles on SEO in general and Ultimate Demon in particular. None of this is scraped and a random test on Copyscape shows it as 100% original (not 80%+..but a genuine 100%) it reads well, is great advice and has been updated almost daily since the product was released. It is a labour of love from the author Paul Rone-Clarke.

It offers a good long lasting bonus and the same discount as everyone else. The bonus is likely better than  most – a private members forum where resources to help users of Ultimate Demon are added monthly. If you are a serious user this look like the best deal.

But  – you know what? It doesn’t rank for any of the buying phrases for Ultimate Demon. Not even close.

Now that’s fine. Hands up – no site has a right to rank. You earn it. Apparently you earn it with good content, social signals and some measure of link building to reinforce the issue. So let’s take a look at those sites that outrank it.

demonreview dot com and ultimatedemonreview dot com. (i’m not linking to them properly – for obvious reasons)

Look these up yourself.

Yup – “micro sites”. One page (or 2 page) wonders. The content on one of them is a direct copy of the software developers “features” list and 25 other words. It is 90% plagirised. Completely and utterly “copy and pasted” from the developers site.

Worse, Paul Rone-Clarke who owns the Ultimate Demon authority site is actually used as a quote on one of these sites. His quote, and his photograph lifted directly from the official Ultimate Demon site (where he gives the top testimonial)

Ultimate Demon copied content

Seriously? This image is taken from one of the microsite’s and is actually a quote stolen from the developers site of the authority affiliate. Im other words he’s being outranked by his own content, even though it’s (by then) third hand and copied. What sort of sense is that supposed to make? How does that tie in with Panda for instance?

His own words. plagirised, used by a two page micro site to out-rank his own authority site? How the hell does that happen.

The Answer Is Paid Links – Lots Of Them

A cursory look at the linking profile of both the sites that outrank demondemon.com shows how they win – and win comfortably. Paid links.

Majestic gives you the main authority links, and following them leads to closed Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, article and WIKI style sites. These are not sites you can apply to join. They are closed registration. All of them (and there are over 100) they all have Page rank and the links to these sites can be found there surrounded in each case by about 90 words of generic (100% copied – unoriginal) text on the general theme of link building. The word Ultimate Demon normally stands out quite incongruously on the page “The best procedures are Ultimate Demon for the SEO niche”? What the dickens does that mean?. But who cares? Google  loves it. It doesn’t seem to care a less about content repeated over and over again, old content, copied content, thin content or nonesense content. Just a link on a high authority site is all that’s required. Job done

Now if this was just one site, even 10 or 12 sites. Closed submission, tiny snippets of text with an anchor text link in it might just (though not very likely) be a coincidence. But it’s not. In one case Majestic points to 140+ of these “snippets with anchor text link” sites, all with PR, all created (or found by Majestic) inside a 10 day span. None of them are open to public registration or content submission, all of them have Page rank ranging from Pr1 right up to Pr7

These sites contain nothing but these snippets. The main URL is (in most cases) a category page, and inside each category there are 2 or 3 pages with 8-10 links and snippets like this per page. A quick look at WHOIS for a sample of 12 of these sites shows every one of these sites was auctioned to one of 4 buyers between April 2012 and February 2013. Interestingly all the buyers (I suspect there is only really one – and 2 “pen names”) live within the same U.S state.. within 3 miles of each other according to Google maps.

Not very likely is it?

Now, I can find out this information in 10 minutes. But Google has allowed these private link farms to exist for month after month and done nothing. But that’s not the real take away from this.

The real take away is “links win” The sites that are ranking have no social signals, no original content and are never updated (Panda where-art thou?) The links they have are on sites that have no connection to the subject matter (other than being bought and “categories” for snippets added very recently..is that all it takes?). The content that surrounds the links is 100% copied and most cases just the same 80-100 words repeated over and over again. Many of the links actually have no content what-so-ever and just sit on a blank page.

So while White hatters call for all these things like user engagement, regular updates, context, relevance.

This sort of proves that none of that matter one iota. At least as far as the Ultimate Demon affiliate niche goes. If you are an affiliate, I’d love to know, what is your experience in the niches you are working in?

Just buy some private links, steal your competitors content and slap up any old site in 10 minutes and your a winner. Sod content, who cares about social signals and proof, what matters is links and links only. The rest is guff, and those that say otherwise are not in full awareness of the facts or just engaging in “wishful thinking” about the way they wish SERPs worked rather than the way it clearly does.