SEO: How To Cheat JC Penney Style
Everybody wants to be the number 1 when it comes to Google and search. Being the number 1 does bring millions of dollars, especially when you are the number 1 on very common words like “dress”, “skinny jeans”, or “Samsonite carry on luggage”…
JC. Penney was the number 1 on all these common words . JC Penney was even above Samsonite when asking about Samsonite! JC Penney web sales for fiscal 2009 were $1.9 billion. 2010 hasn't been released yet, but JC Penney had a very strong December/Xmas season.
Internet sales through xxxxxx.com posted strong growth in December, with significant increases in traffic and orders for the key holiday shopping periods of the week after Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas.
— Kate Coultas, a JC Penney spokesperson, January 2011
I will not mention their website, it would be an extra link.
How did they do it? They cheated! They bought hundreds of thousands of one way links to their web site. This was discovered by the New York Times. They contacted Google for an interview about JC Penney and the million or so of fake links. Now, JC Penney is being punished by Google. You will not find them in the top 5 pages of anything. Google is taking “corrective action.”
JC Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of these links as it is against our natural search policies.
We are working to have the links taken down.
— Darcy Brossart, a JC Penney spokesperson
If you believe that I've got a bridge to sell.
- It's the third time that JC Penney was “caught” trying to manipulate the Google search results. Do we have a pattern here?
- JC Penney paid $27 million for Google search ads in 2010.
How To Cheat JC Penney Style
First of all, you need to know that Google has 200 different signals.
- The most important signal, as everybody knows, is the number of links to your web site. That's why people that do not know, do not understand, and do not read Matt Cutts are always asking for a “link exchange”. If you only have a few link exchanges, Google and Bing will ignore them. If you have many link exchanges, you will be penalized.
- So how do you get all the links? Either you are really popular, or you can buy the links. Google for Purchase Link Farms. The cost per link goes from a few cents to tens of dollars per link.
- Big companies, including BMW and JC Penney have been caught doing it.
- Smaller web sites have been also caught.
- Google and Bing are getting better at catching the link farms.
- You will either be banned from the web, or you will face Google's “corrective actions” then you will need to use another domain and start from scratch, again!