A million backlinks for $1

[SEO Lady]

Hi guys, been away for a couple weeks, now I'm back to the normal bubbling pot of mayhem.

One of my clients keeps getting spam emails from American / Indian companies offering SEO backlinks for pennies and keeps asking me why this isn't good.

Can someone please succintly sum this up in one or 2 sentances as I can't seem to convince him that this is a waste of his pennies and potantially could harm his site.

I have said 'quality over quantity' 'overseas directories' and 'blog comments' are not worthy but he is really sucked in by these emails and I'd like to simply tell him in a way he will believe me once and for all.

Thanks, Nina

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Because the reason that they're low cost is because they have no value.
To you, to them, to google, to anyone.

 

[Olly Culverhouse]

Where do I signup??

Seriously, you need to play the quality over quantity card with your client.
It can affect your client in a negative way which would be very bad news for your client by damaging their reputation just for something that won't bring the results in anyway.

 

[RadiusBPO]

These links work. Take a look at a few of the top sites ranking for 'seo company' and you will see proof.

 

[SEO Lady]

These links work. Take a look at a few of the top sites ranking for 'seo company' and you will see proof.

Are you one of those people emailing my client?

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

They're the equivalent to guzzling a packet of proplus and washing it down with a litre of redbull.

Some short immediate impact, but they end up taking you lower than you originally started when the sugar/caffine wears off.

Not a long term healthy diet.

 

[ecenica]

Avoid. Simple.

Google are well aware of what sites are Links Farms and Google may penalise your client's site if they detect links coming from these sites.

Link Schemes at Google Webmaster Help:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

 

[awebapart.com]

I wonder how much of an SEO consultant's (or web designer's or internet marketeer's) time is spent answering questions that their clients have over claims made, and ideas put forward, by other SEO's cold calling their clients!

I hope you charge for this time, as it is still consultancy.

 

[maxh]

Devil's advocate: Why not just spend $7 on screwing over your top 7 competitors with this link building....if it really is that toxic..

 

[ecenica]

Devil's advocate: Why not just spend $7 on screwing over your top 7 competitors with this link building....if it really is that toxic..

I was thinking the same after I posted our last reply. I can only assume Google has some sort of manual review process - or has 3 strike rule or similar.

^RM.

 

[omnivore]

Hi guys, been away for a couple weeks, now I'm back to the normal bubbling pot of mayhem.

One of my clients keeps getting spam emails from American / Indian companies offering SEO backlinks for pennies and keeps asking me why this isn't good.

Can someone please succintly sum this up in one or 2 sentances as I can't seem to convince him that this is a waste of his pennies and potantially could harm his site.

I have said 'quality over quantity' 'overseas directories' and 'blog comments' are not worthy but he is really sucked in by these emails and I'd like to simply tell him in a way he will believe me once and for all.

Thanks, Nina

tell him

"if something SELLS for 1 dollar its value is probably less than 50% of 1 dollar"

ask him is his time well spent on buying things for c. 50p to `improve` his business?

ask him is he mulling over what his next paper clips deal is going to be?

 

[maxh]

I was thinking the same after I posted our last reply. I can only assume Google has some sort of manual review process - or has 3 strike rule or similar.

^RM.

This great nation wasn't built on assumptions!

I think we should put it to the test. SCIENCE!

I think I have a URL I can demolish...anyone got a link to this super-spam-bot site?

 

[RadiusBPO]

This great nation wasn't built on assumptions!

I think we should put it to the test. SCIENCE!

I think I have a URL I can demolish...anyone got a link to this super-spam-bot site?

Don't bother wasting your time. I have created 1000s of links to sites in a matter of hours and then pinged all the links so they are found quickly and it had no ill effect at all on the sites. The only way I managed to kill a site was using seonuke on a new domain...

I have even pinged a site to 100,000 weird sites. Still nothing bad.

 

[maxh]

Don't bother wasting your time. I have created 1000s of links to sites in a matter of hours and then pinged all the links so they are found quickly and it had no ill effect at all on the sites. The only way I managed to kill a site was using seonuke on a new domain...

I have even pinged a site to 100,000 weird sites. Still nothing bad.

Did you wait 3+ months after spam-linking?

And could you go into more detail with SEnuke?

Thanks fellow scientist of the interwebz

 

[RadiusBPO]

its been 3 months now. the sites are still in googles index. rankings went up and are still up. To be fair I didn't do too much analysis of the rankings cause I was just messing about. The real problem was your site can be marked as spam by askimet.

SEnuke, i just made loads of profiles using it. a few days later the site wasnt in the index and a re incursion request wasn't allowed. I made 400 profiles in 1 hour and pinged them all. also spun some articles.

But seriously. Our SEO strategy is to copy our clients competitors links, we hardly ever come across good links form the top sites in most niches. They are mostly directories, blog comments, link farms, profiles and articles.


I used this technique on an adult site, i spent 1 month making links full time. 8 months later i noticed some traffic and we were 1st page for 'dildo' and 'fleshlight' on yahoo and bing and page1 on google for 'cheap fleshlights'.

These links actually got stronger over time not the opposite of losing their value.

 

[nitro23456]

'blog comments' are not worthy

Nowt wrong with decent blog commenting. In fact, it more than warrants its place.

 

[beadell]

I keep hearing the argument about quality links....but.... really?

I have been watching this lot and for a certain key phrase, until recently they were not on page 1...now they are No1 and the number of links has shot up.

The top two on this result page seem to appear quite a lot and in that order for other related sites Im watching and I cant make head nor tail of them....the second one I cant even open, it gets reported by my anti virus software.

I went through and randomly clicked on others and most of the sites have no PR, no traffic value etc etc...

Are the links just showing up because they are advertising with Google ads ??

What am I missing here ?

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Well, they've also just recently had a massive TV advertising campaign. Maybe the source of the links is a reflection of that.

 

[aidan1980]

i cant quite remember the poster but it was definitly by one of the most respected SEO's on here and they said there are 2 or 3 ways you could damage a site (the actual context of the quote was about damaging a rivals site) by pointing links to it, obviously they didnt say what they were

 

[MASSEY]

I seem to recall a video of matt cuts saying inpointiong links can only do good.

For the exact reason people will purchase spammy links to try and affect competitors.

So personally i think this idea you can buy links and affect other sites is "Bull ****"

 

[Blagger]

If its true that a bombardment of links can damage your site then why isn't everyone just doing it to their competitors?

I can't see it happening, maybe you won't gain anything but I doubt you would lose anything too.

Same with paid links, I could go whack 50 of them on a competitors site, then go report them to Google. Would be one way to rank higher than them.

I think we need to read less into those shouting about penalties by means of incoming links. If it was that bad we could easily corrupt the world wide web.

 

[Blagger]

I wonder how much of an SEO consultant's (or web designer's or internet marketeer's) time is spent answering questions that their clients have over claims made, and ideas put forward, by other SEO's cold calling their clients!

I hope you charge for this time, as it is still consultancy.

Wow, you would really go to that extent just for a bit of consultancy and charge your client who pays £500-£5000 a month. I find that ridiculous. OK I could understand if he was on the phone for half a day but you should be happy to advise your clients for free if they have a question.

I have used a couple of well known SEO'ers on this forum, even though it has been well over a year we have stopped working with each other they are always open for me to drop an email for a bit advice even now and for free. Great people.

 

[dagaul101]

A million backlinks that is utterly useless, first off, you will not be ranked for anything as all the search engines will just label your site as spam

 

[RadiusBPO]

A million backlinks that is utterly useless, first off, you will not be ranked for anything as all the search engines will just label your site as spam

Facebook has milions of links but it's still 1st page on google for facebook... stupid google anti spam measures arent working.

 

[MASSEY]

A million backlinks that is utterly useless, first off, you will not be ranked for anything as all the search engines will just label your site as spam

no they wont. You cant controll who links to you.

 

[beadell]

That was my point with my example...any link seems to be a good link, the more the better, paid or not

 

[MASSEY]

That was my point with my example...any link seems to be a good link, the more the better, paid or not

This is where you have to define good. The spam links wont be good for you but they will do no harm either they are just words that appear in your backlink profile. Il try find the vid where cutts talks about it and post it later.