Link Laundering - Link Building Like An Internet Mobster

How To Turn Low Quality and Questionable Links into High Quality One Way Links

Warning: The following method of link building (link laundering) is looked upon as either a Gray or Black Hat technique by many in the Internet World. I feel it’s my duty to educate my readers about these tactics so you’re aware of them if you ever see your competition using them against you.

link launderingHave you ever ran across sites that ranked higher than your site, but felt your site was much better, so you wondered how that could happen? Some of you may have actually used tools like SEO Quake or SEO for Firefox and found that those sites had more links to them than yours did.

“How could they be getting so many links when I’m busting my ass for a few links a month?” you might ask yourself

“My content is better, my on page SEO is better, site design is off the chart, I have more RSS subscribers, my domain is older plus I’m better looking than those guys” you may think to yourself

Come my friend, let me introduce you to the underworld of link laundering.

Let’s me start by saying that link laundering usually involves a network of sites or blogs that the Webmaster owns or has access to. It can be done without a network, but link laundering is easier in many regards if you own or control a network of blogs or websites.

Link laundering is a lot like money laundering. You take low quality, crappy links and turn them into high quality, relevant, one way anchored links pointing to your main site. In reality, you’re turning these low quality “questionable” links into high quality “trusted” links.

What many of you do not realize is that many of the “White Hat” bloggers and Website owners out there use this same technique to boost their rankings.

I’ve spent hours upon hours of following their foot prints to figure this out. Some hide it better than others, but with a little determination you can find out where your competition is really getting those high quality relevant links.
How Can a Website With Fewer Links Outrank My Site with Hundreds or Thousands of Links?

Let me sidetrack just a little bit here to explain why this happens. First off, we’re talking about Google here just to make things clear.

In a nutshell, Google looks at the links pointed at your website and gives these links a value. If you have thousands of links coming into your site but they are all links from low PR sites, they’re passing very little link value (juice) to your site.

Let’s say your competition only has a few dozen links coming into their site. However, unlike the links coming into your site, your competitor has links from Websites that have related content and these sites have high PR.

Google looks at this and decides that your competitors site should be ranked higher because he has links from “trusted” (high PR) sites that are related to his site. Their way of thinking is these other sites are “voting” that your competitor has much more relevant information for the chosen Keyword because of all these one way links with the keyword in the anchor.

There are other factors that determine how much “value” or “juice” links pass, but this should give you some idea of how Google looks at links and determine why one link pointing at a site is more valuable than another.
Now Back to Link Laundering

Imagine if you will, a Pyramid with 3 tiers. The bottom tier has 3 blocks, the middle has 2 blocks and finally at the very top is the King block!

Now also imagine each of those “blocks” as websites.

On the bottom tier, the 3 blocks represent disposable websites. These are your crappy throw away sites. If they get banned or de-indexed, no problem link launderers will get more. Many of these websites are free Blogger or WordPress sites.

The way link laundering works is that the Webmaster will go out and get thousands of crappy, low quality links pointing at these disposable sites. These links may be questionable but certainly nearly all will be low quality. Links from places such as Guestbooks, comments, directories, trackbacks, etc. are all pointing at these sites.

It’s pretty much certain these links will be obtained by spam. Black Hatters use many tools in farming these links. Scripts and programs are designed to search out these places and leave the Mobsters links.

Now the sites at the bottom of the Pyramid have thousands of low quality links pointing to them. This will give these sites some value in Google’s eyes due to the volume of links coming in, provided they’re not de-indexed or banned first!

What the Webmaster will do now in the link laundering process is add some content to these bottom tier websites and place one way, relevant links with anchor text, pointing at a site on the 2nd tier.
The 2nd Tier of the Link Laundering Pyramid

Now the 2nd tier of the Link Laundering Pyramid are sites that have a little more trust. These are sites that generally have a PR2 to PR4. These are your intermediate sites.

They’re the Wiseguys and Lieutenants of the Internet Mobster family.

They have more value than the lowly crappy sites below, but they aren’t near as valuable as the guy above them.

These sites “wash” the links and make them legitimate.

The first tier sites may have general topics. This makes it easier to link out to the 2nd tier blogs or websites.

The 2nd tier will consist of sites that are specific. This will give their outgoing links more link juice to the top tier blog or website.
The Big Kahuna or Numero Uno Mafiaoso

This is the block at the top of the Pyramid. This is where the laundered links end up after they have been filtered through the lower sites or “washed”.

This is the Webmasters money site. It’s the site they want ranked well and it’s why they go to all the trouble to use link laundering and increase their “trust” and rankings.

Wise Webmasters will also be sure to mix the links coming from their network with those from other sources to make it look more legitimate. This makes it harder for search engines like Google to figure out the network.

The Webmaster will also have many low quality links pointing at their Main site as well, but these links will be from legitimate sources and from “white hat” sites with low PR. This is to make the links seem more natural.
Another Twist on Link Laundering

Another technique some Webmasters will use in order to launder links or to boost the rankings of existing low quality links to their site is to send a lot of these easy to get, low quality and questionable links at pages that already link to them. In many instances, they do not own these sites.

By boosting the PR of these pages, the links on them pass more juice (value). Which helps the Webmaster’s Main site.

For example, let’s say that Bob’s Blog linked to you back in 2003 from a page in his blog. You go back to see Bob’s Blog but see that Bob hasn’t posted since 2005. It’s safe to say Bob isn’t blogging any longer and is probably on a Tropical beach somewhere enjoying his Internet loot…or sleeping at the bottom of the Bay with the fishies.

Anyhow, the Webmaster will start sending a lot of low quality links out to the page on Bob’s site that is linking to his site. If something bad happens and Bob’s site gets slapped, nadda problem. The Webmaster just lost a low quality link. However, more times than not, the PR of that page increases and sends more link juice to the Webmasters site.

This 2nd technique can be used in conjunction with traditional link laundering techniques or by itself.
In Summary

The link laundering techniques above are but two examples. There are many variations and I used the Pyramid as a simple example to help you see how it works. Many times a link laundering Pyramid will have a really wide base with dozens of blogs receiving low quality links. Also, in many instances, the blog may have 4 or even 5 tiers to really “wash” the links and turn them into sparkling “White” links.