If only there was a magic link or key phrase that would allow you to outrank your competitors. A way to make sure that you always outrank anyone with minimal effort and no budget. Well, today is not your lucky day, ‘cause there ain’t no quick fix when it comes to SEO…

So if you can’t beat them… and you can’t join then; what should you do?

“Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force, are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will... as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.” – Master Yoda; Star Wars

A few weeks ago I came across a post by Dan Thies – Google Proxy Hacking. The article tells the story of a year long struggle to get a site back into the Google index.

It all happened when he started noticing that other sites were not only ranking for his client’s site content, but were duplicating their entire site as well. (We noticed it – read Attack of the scraper bots)
*Scraper bots spider your website and displays your exact site on a different URL using a web proxy.

This is obviously not a great way to try and outrank your competitors, but what happens if this occurs often enough?
Well, Thies suddenly realised that the site had completely dropped off of the Google radar; up to a stage where they didn’t even have one single page left in the index.

Does Google know about this? Yes, they have been notified by numerous webmasters but have not done anything to address the problem.

Ok we’re not ones to promote any negative or black hat optimisation, so why am I telling you about this? For one; don’t fall victim to it. And second; if you do plan on taking out you competitors (which to be fair is what we're all here to do) - don't feel that you need to stoop this low.

I know we'd never do it. We don’t need to and  to tell you the truth – no one should need or want to resort to these kinds of underhanded tactics.

** For more info read Attack of the scraper bots, or mail me directly