SEO agency makes "hard to believe" claims
-
Hi
I operate in a highly competitive niche of "sell house fast" in UK.
Sites that are in top 1-3 tend to have thousands of links. Some of these are spammy type links. These sites have Domain Authority too.
My site has good content http://propertysaviour.co.uk and is listed with around 12 well known directories. I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months.
The SEO agency we are looking to work with are claiming they can get my website to first page with above keyword.
How would you go about this strategy? What questions would you ask SEO agency?
What elements can do I myself? By the way, I am good at producing content!
-
There are companies that can get rankings that quickly in competitive verticals. But to do so they'll need to use techniques that are not within Google's guidelines such as using private blog networks or injecting links via hacking other people's sites.
If this is a site that you can walk away from should it get penalized, then hiring them might make sense. I'd want to ask how they are getting links and to make sure that they are not doing anything illegal or anything that involves hacking other websites. Getting links from a private blog network (if that's what they are doing) is not illegal or immoral, but if Google catches on and the site gets penalized then you may never be able to recover it.
If this is a site that you plan to keep for the long run, then it makes more sense to hire an agency that will improve your search presence gradually. Good SEO usually takes a lot of time.
I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months.
Be careful. I'm seeing links that Google will likely see as unnatural such as:
http://www.linkaddurl.com/Arts___Humanities/Performing_Arts/Business/Real_Estate/?p=6
http://cqycxzfwzx.com/sell-my-house-fast-for-cash-your-request-fulfilled/
You're in a competitive space. I am betting that those sites above you with spammy links will drop out of site the next time Penguin hits. If they don't then it's because they're using private blog networks that Google hasn't been able to detect algorithmically and they're prime targets for a manual penalty.
My advice for hiring an SEO company would be to ask them exactly what they will do for your site. Are they going to improve your on page SEO? If so, how? Are they able to get you links? If so, how? If they tell you that the process is proprietary then it's probably not above board. If they give you marketing speak like, "We'll leverage your blah blah blah and produce stellar content marketing blah blah blah" without actually giving you a concrete idea of what they'll do then that's not good. I'd also ask for references. If they hide behind an NDA that's not good. Good SEO companies will have people lined up to give them a reference.
-
It's still as easy as it ever was to build spammy links. But it's just not what you should be doing to build a long-term high traffic site.
-
The SEO agency we are looking to work with are claiming they can get my website to first page with above keyword.
Walk away. No-one can make these claims without doing something a bit dodgy. Generally these sorts of claims turn into results that are short-lived and after a few more months, Google has caught up with what they are doing and you end up with a penalty.
Link building is not as easy as it once was. Now you need to have a reason for someone to want to link to you - if you want good links that is. A good linkable asset can make a real difference, so you need to start thinking outside the box a little bit on what you can do to help make you stand out a little.
-Andy
-
Sam
Thank you. I can do the link building. What I am not so good at is finding good sources of manual link building. Is there any recommendations?
I have used the Web Explorer tool as seen my competitors spammy links being built. I do not want to go down that route.
Would love to get your opinion on this. What tools do you use for finding good links?
-
In all likelihood they're telling the truth.
Shock? Perhaps, but here's another truth in the following 12 months you'll get slapped so hard your site will be in a worse position than today!
Sam
P.S. Talking from experience as I once used one of these agencies!
-
Thank you for your input.
The SEO agency is claiming that in 2-3 months, I should be ranking in top 1-5 positions.
How do I increase domain authority and page rank for my website. The websites I'm up against have tens of thousands of links (mostly spammy)!
I have seen guide to building backlinks.
Help!
-
I dont have a huge amount to add to this, other than in my experiance a lot of agencies tend to be 2 or 3 years behind in general practises, especially the smaller ones.
"The times of looking to rank numero uno for one term are long gone." is completely correct though, so be very careful about messing up other key words etc.
-
The times of looking to rank numero uno for one term are long gone. What sounds like your existing strategy of having good content is the way to go. The risk with an agency that would even focus up on one term and promise number one is that they are going to inadvertently wreck your link profile.
If I were you, I would read the beginner's guide to link building https://mza.bundledseo.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building and continue to make good content. Don't allow an agency to manipulate the hell out of your profile for the sake of one term.
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
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
SEO on Jobs sites: how to deal with expired listings with "Google for Jobs" around
Dear community, When dealing with expired job offers on jobs sites from a SEO perspective, most practitioners recommend to implement 301 redirects to category pages in order to keep the positive ranking signals of incoming links. Is it necessary to rethink this recommendation with "Google for Jobs" is around? Google's recommendations on how to handle expired job postings does not include 301 redirects. "To remove a job posting that is no longer available: Remove the job posting from your sitemap. Do one of the following: Note: Do NOT just add a message to the page indicating that the job has expired without also doing one of the following actions to remove the job posting from your sitemap. Remove the JobPosting markup from the page. Remove the page entirely (so that requesting it returns a 404 status code). Add a noindex meta tag to the page." Will implementing 301 redirects the chances to appear in "Google for Jobs"? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grnjbs07175 -
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Should pages with rel="canonical" be put in a sitemap?
I am working on an ecommerce site and I am going to add different views to the category pages. The views will all have different urls so I would like to add the rel="canonical" tag to them. Should I still add these pages to the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
SEO structure question: Better to add similar (but distinct) content to multiple unique pages or make one unique page?
Not sure which approach would be more SEO ranking friendly? As we are a music store, we do instrument repairs on all instruments. Currently, I don't have much of any content about our repairs on our website... so I'm considering a couple different approaches of adding this content: Let's take Trumpet Repair for example: 1. I can auto write to the HTML body (say, at the end of the body) of our 20 Trumpets (each having their own page) we have for sale on our site, the verbiage of all repairs, services, rates, and other repair related detail. In my mind, the effect of this may be that: This added information does uniquely pertain to Trumpets only (excludes all other instrument repair info), which Google likes... but it would be duplicate Trumpet repair information over 20 pages.... which Google may not like? 2. Or I could auto write the repair details to the Trumpet's Category Page - either in the Body, Header, or Footer. This definitely reduces the redundancy of the repeating Trumpet repair info per Trumpet page, but it also reduces each Trumpet pages content depth... so I'm not sure which out weighs the other? 3. Write it to both category page & individual pages? Possibly valuable because the information is anchoring all around itself and supporting... or is that super duplication? 4. Of course, create a category dedicated to repairs then add a subcategory for each instrument and have the repair info there be completely unique to that page...- then in the body of each 20 Trumpets, tag an internal link to Trumpet Repair? Any suggestions greatly appreciated? Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Penalized for "Unnatural Links" on Webmaster Tools
Has anyone ever logged in to Google Webmaster tools and seen a message about them seeing unnatural links (as a warning) Our homepage lost all its rankings. I will submit a reconsideration request. We don't engage in link buying practices (some directories, thats all.) Any feedback, please? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0 -
How to remove "Results 1 - 20 of 47" from Google SERP Snippet
We are trying to optimise our SERP snippet in Google to increase CTR, but we have this horrid "Results 1 - 20 of 47" in the description. We feel this gets in the way of the message and so wish to remove it, but how?? Any ideas apart from removing the paging from the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | speedyseo0