How to game a search engine
Our first book ‘How to be evil’ collects the tales of Evil Stick Man, our Machiavellian doodle whose get-rich-quick schemes have featured in Delayed Gratification since our very first issue.
Here’s Evil Stick Man on how to game a search engine. For more of his nefarious how-to guides, pick up a copy of ‘How to be evil’ in the DG shop.
Find a client whose business depends on being high in search engine rankings and for whom each step up in the ranking represents a large increase in potential revenue.
Agree to increase their ranking for a major fee, with special bonuses if you get them in the top three results for key search terms.
Set up a bot to spider through the websites of major news and cultural organisations across the world looking for outward links to sites which are now defunct.
Isolate those sites which have only recently become defunct, so that search engines have not had a chance to assess them as such. Purchase the URLs for these sites.
You now own a set of websites which have a high credibility ranking with search engines thanks to being linked to by major news and cultural organisations. Any links from these sites will also carry additional credibility.
Pay a boiler room of writers in a developing country to start writing dozens of blog entries a day on the subject matter covered by your client’s business. They do not have to be experts on the subject.
Post these blog entries on your websites and include multiple links to your client’s site.
The host of new, regularly posted links from credible sites will make your client’s site rise in the rankings. Collect your payment. Repeat steps 1-8.
You are now extremely wealthy. Pay David Attenborough to follow you around and narrate your every move in an excited whisper.
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