Is this proposal white hat or likely to harm me in the long run?
-
Hi,
I'm considering outsourcing some SEO to a company I got a first month trial sweetener deal with. I've not done this before and am a little unsure about what they propose doing, not sure if I'm being a bit paranoid or too controlly.
Details of what they propose:
Send them 10 keywords we're interested in ranking for.
Work they will perform:
-Submit site to all major search engines
-Submit 20 social book marks for site
We'll produce 1 article + 19 spun variations of the article submitted to:
-30 directory sites
-10 press release sites and distribution networksBusiness Submitted to 5 business directories
5 social networks createdWork and ranking report highlighting what has been done at the end of the month.
Most of the stuff I've done already or can do myself. The elements that make me a bit suspicious are the:
- 1 article plus 19 spun variations?
- 5 social networks created? What does that even mean?
I did get this for about £20 for the 1st month with no commitment afterwards so I am tempted to let them try. But should I be a bit wary it might do more harm than good in the long run?
Any advice\opinions would be much appreciated.
-
LoL, no that's not real SEO, it's fake SEO and won't do anything for you. It's the kind of stuff that worked years back when no-one else was doing it.
Aside from that, you won't get good SEO for those sorts of low costs anyway... I have a tantrum about it here if you're interested in knowing what to avoid
-
With these tactics you will probably get to page one (position 6-10) for some low competition keywords. But i highly doubt you will even see the return on even this low amount of money.
With long-term employment of this strategy you do run the risk of getting a penalty, but at these volumes (depending on niche and keyword comp) you should not get one, but that does not mean i am advocating it.
I would highly suggest against tactics like this and companies like these as they probably have a huge footprint, that can be seen as "spammy" techniques easily.
19 spun versions of 1 article - This would be the worst of all. They have actually taken an idea, and made it less effective then if they just did the one LOL
I say no go.. do this work yourself and concentrate on what you think the users of your site would want, not what some SEO company thinks they want in a box...
w00t!
-
If you ask the question that it may do more harm than it probably is not worth it. I think if you can do it yourself, I would take your time and do it yourself (not worth the risk).
-
Submit site to all major search engines
That set off my BS meter.
-
There's no real reason to move forward with this. It looks like they're just going to syndicate your article across multiple spammy sites, damaging your link profile and reducing your authenticity at the same time. Take your time, publish your own content and be a genuine part of communities. Being controlling in this situation will benefit you in the long run.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Black Hat Link Building Ethics Question
I have taken on the SEO/Inbound duties for my company and have been monitoring some of our competitors in the market space. In June one of them began a black hat link building campaign that took them from 154 linking root domains to about 7500 today. All of the links target either /header or /permalink/index and all have anchor text along the lines of "Windows 7 activation code." They are using forgotten forums and odd pages, but seem to be finding high DA sources to place the links. This has skyrocketed their DA (40 to 73), and raised their mozRank, mozTrust, and SERP positions. Originally I thought to report it to Google, but I wanted to wait a few weeks and see what the campaign did for them and if Google would catch on. I figured adding 81K links in 2 months would trigger something (honestly, if I was able to find out they were doing it then it's got to be obvious). But they have grown every week and no drop in rankings. So my question is would you report it? Or continue to wait and see? Technically they are not a "competitor" in the strictest sense of the word (we actually do sell some of their products as OEM), but I find the tactic despicable and it makes my efforts to raise our rankings and DA seem ineffective to people not in the know about SEO. Interested to see everyone's responses! Taylor
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anneoaks0 -
Considering which agency to choose for a link building campaign is starting to seem like beating a dead horse.......
So first off, I've got to admit, I really haven't shopped around enough on SEOmoz's Recommended page. I have been doing some shopping, and have considered a few different people. The two main people that we are considering (or should I be saying 'were' right now?) is a company called Mainstreet Host. They have the best price, and when I first came into my partnership with Roseann at Uncommon Thread, she had already paid for some $1,500 trial of sorts. Our problems with these guys? Roseann says the sales guy is extremely pushy They want us to pay them a monthly fee to "optimize 11 pages, create 12 blog posts on wordpress blog, rss on homepage for fresh content, blah blah blah..." I was stuck on the fact that they want a recurring fee for a fairly small job I just looked into their ability to rank for the keyword they are targeting, and they rank #2 for a keyword difficulty score of 83. BUT, I looked into their linkbuilding and it's pretty blackhat. Several blog comments, mostly guest posts on what looked like some sore of article marketing site, and a few missing links according to opensiteexplorer.org did not say anything about link building other than a single Press Release distribution I guess my question is, is the $6,000 they want us to pay for those services actually going to get us to rank for some competitive terms? like keyword difficulty score 30 - 60? The other guys we have been considering is OrangeSoda. Right off the bat, they seem awesome, i mean just take a quick look at their site. but just like with the other company, they have a pretty dark backlink profile too. The only thing that they really have going for them is a few paid links on some sort of what appears to be semi-legitimate advertising partner based network. Google was on their too, near the bottom, which I thought was very strange, because it clearly discloses that its a paid network. They are asking $7,200 for 12 hours per week of work, in which time they will help us go through and fix any technical aspects, create a blog, and create content, as well as build a link building strategy. Should I keep shoppping??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Is this a white hat SEO tactic?
Hi, I just noticed this website http://www.knobsandhardware.com hosts pages like http://www.knobsandhardware.com/local/hardware/California-Cabinet-Hardware.html that are filled with permutations of products + cities. These pages rank for these long tail phrases. Is this considered white hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthematic0 -
Is using twiends.com to get twitter followers considered black hatting?
Hi, I've been struggling to get followers on Google Plus and Twitter, and recently stumbled upon twiends.com. It offers an easy service that allows you to get twitter followers very quickly. Is this considered black hating? Even if Google doesn't consider the followers as valid, am I likely to be punished if using their service? Even if it doesn't help rankings, it is nice to have lots of followers so that they will see my tweets which has the potential to drive more traffic to my site, and give awareness to my business. What are your thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Can I get harmed by an inlink?
Hi! I'll jump right in to my question. There's a webpage with the following stats:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mozalbin
PA 80, mR 4.70, mT 5.00. Pagerank ZERO. Now, these are some beautiful stats for every webpage, except for the pagerank. The reason to why the pagerank is so low is that the inlinks to this site is partial spammy (hidden links and other bad naughty black-hat stuff that I hate). (It's not my webpage, I don't even know whos webpage this is..) I happen to have a backlink from this page. A clean dofollow, in-content link to my site. The total amount of external links on this page is five and there's no spam on the page or hidden anywhere else. My question #1:
Is this particular inlink to my site harmful? Will I get penaltized for getting a backlink from this site? I mean, Google have figured out the spam factor of the links to the page that is linking to me. But I'm innocent, the link to me is just lying there... (Why or why not?) My question #2:
IF (and only IF) the link to my webpage is harmful. Are links from my page harmful? (Why or why not?) Thank you very much for using you awesome knowledge to answer this 🙂0 -
Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0