BlackCat SEO: How Churn & Burn Websites Work

A “churn and burn” website is one that isn’t supposed to be a long-term venture. The point of a churn and burn website is to make money fast until search engines catch up to the numerous spammy tactics and terms of service violations. Churn and burn sites are often used to learn search engine algorithms to help rank serious sites.

Churn and burn sites don’t last long. The domain will either get a manual penalty or be completely de-indexed by search engines. Financially, it is a race to see if the site owner can recoup their initial investment before it gets banned. Most people using this strategy operate multiple websites and are building them in a low cost country.

And yet – supposedly – these sites are profitable. Here’s how they work….

Create a Basic Website for Cheap

Find a cheap host, but it can’t be a free host. Free hosts limit what you can do on your site, and you need control of your code. GoDaddy has sales where you can buy domains for $.99. Install WordPress and a free theme. If you buy a theme, it’s even better. Free themes usually include hidden links, so you don’t want to get caught from an error such as a known theme with hidden links. With a cheap website up, you’re ready to get started.

Spam Links, Fiverr and XRumer

One major tool for all blackhat SEOs is XRumer. You’ll need spam links to quickly rank your site. Luckily, it takes time before search engines identify spam links, so you can use XRumer for a few months before the site starts to slip due to Penguin.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of buying and learning XRumer, you can hire SEO people at Fiverr for backlink jobs. Be aware that Fiverr links are usually pretty low quality. The best spam blast uses some good and bad sites to increase popularity. The automated spam from Fiverr uses low quality directories that are usually ignored by Google’s algorithm, so it’s best to find site links yourself. If you can automate links on good sites, you can perform a churn and burn much more quickly and efficiently.

Scrapebox and Spinners

You can’t just throw up a site with no content. A decade ago, you could rank a site purely with links, but you need content now. Scrapebox is a tool that lets you harvest links that rank on the first page of Google for certain phrases. It’s assumed that these ranking links have good content, so you want to harvest that content and spin it.

The content will be horrible. The content will eventually get you a manual penalty. You won’t keep any customers with spun content, but the point of the exercise is to rank a site quickly, make some money and then lose it in a couple of months. You can spin thousands of pages quickly with Scrapebox and a spinner.

Buy Social Media Profiles and Likes

Social media is a great way to get quick traffic. You normally want to be tactful about the way you market your site, but churn and burn sites require quicker action. Buy social media profiles on Facebook and Twitter. Buy followers and friends. Ask these followers and friends to like your pages. These pages then have your link, so you can market your site across social media with profiles that don’t affect your real profile.

Buy Aged Domains and 301 Redirect Them

Aged domains usually have tons of backlinks you can leverage. These domains sell quickly, so you must be able to keep track of domain auctions. Auction sites such as GoDaddy let you bid on domains and buy them after the original owner no longer wants them. After you buy the name, redirect the domain to your new churn and burn site. You gain the advantage of redirecting users from the search engines and the link juice benefits.

These are a few tips for a churn and burn site. These sites are extreme blackhat sites, but they can make you a ton of money before they get penalized. At the very least, you can also use them to evaluate search engine algorithms. Not sure how backlinks affect ranking? Use a churn and burn site to experiment.  Churn and burn sites are great ways to learn how search engines work, and you can make money to fund a long-term, more serious venture in the future.