Crazy SEO question (maybe I'm missing something?)

[Greg_Gifford]

OK -

so one of our customers just called us and told us an interesting story:

A local SEO company called her yesterday to try to sell their services to her. She's in the process of starting SEO services with us, so she told them she wasn't interested. The sales guy told her that they were better (without even asking who she was currently using) and asked her for a term that she'd like to rank higher for.

She said she'd like to rank higher for "spray in bedliners northern ky" and he said "Gotcha, call you tomorrow"

He called back just now and told her to look at Google. She's now ranking number one for that term. He didn't have access to her site, so he wasn't able to change anything on her site.

He won't tell her what he did, and told her it was legitimate - but it seems to me that with only off-site tactics, it'd be nearly impossible to white-hat her site to number one overnight...

Any ideas what he's doing? First of all, we want to be able to tell her what he's doing, because she's curious. More importantly, we want to be sure he's not doing anything black-hat that's going to hurt our client's site.

Thanks for your help, Mozzers!

[JamesNorquay]

Because "spray in bedliners northern ky" is a low competition/no competition term, hence why ranking with offsite can easily be done -

They just provide a huge number of automated links over night from websites like:

http://pezis.com/linexofky.com (for example, guessing this is your client's site)

Tell her to say ok we want to rank for "bedliner" when they call back,

Kind Regards,

James Norquay

[RyanKent]

To echo what the others shared, the results work because of two reasons:

1. The term is a long tail and very specific phrase "spray in bedliners northern ky". It is 5 words and no one else on earth is targeting that phrase in that exact manner.

2. Google loves fresh data and links. It is easy to spam social media or various sites with new links which are given weight today but quickly fall to obscurity tomorrow.

Using Google's Keyword tool you can see there is absolutely no traffic at all for the given phrase. If you want to rank #1 for a keyword that no one searches for, the world will let you. It is pointless.

Try again with the phrase "bed liner". That phrase has over 100k searches a month (compared to zero for the other phrase) and it also has competition.

[rtavs]

The reason he got her to rank for that keyword very quickly is because there is no search traffic behind the term and no competition. You easily spam a couple hundred blogs/forums.directories/other crap link source with the exact match anchor text and rank pretty comfortably.

Get her to pick a keyword that is searched for and tell them to try again.

[EugeneF]

I looked into a bit and think I found the links on Blekko and IceRocket.  several anchor text links.  Juice fading fast.  I think it started out  on PR 7 (PA 89) and it looks like a few PR4 (PA 66) sites. Not sure if the links started on the front pages, but they are not on the front pages now.  I will send you the links.   Didn't take much for such a specific phrase

[EugeneF]

Check the back links.  you should see what they pointed to her site.  I doubt they did anything that is repeatable for many keywords.  They probably made short article and placed it somewhere with a lot of juice.  Great for a demonstration, to valuable/expensive a spot to use for a lot of keywords.

[EGOL]

To work that fast, I am betting that they have a link from a page with enormous power.... PR8?

Of course, "spray in bedliners northern ky" is a wimpy term to rank for... tell her to call him back and ask for a real money term.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Maybe Google have started their own SEO business??

That would be a sure way to wipe out the competition and earn some cash!

Seriously though, unless they have access to some amazing link resources then this has to be black hat doesn't it? unconsenting at that! like you say, if it's dodgy then some serious damage could be made here in the long term.