Black Hat- What do you experts think?

[FunkyBears]

http://www.sigmapens.co.uk/

Please scrool down to very bottom of page and tell me whether the links that lead back to home page would be regarded by google as Black Hat? A well respected SEO guy on these forums says they would be better done by taking these links to other pages yet an SEO company that we have worked with say this is perfectly legitimate and that by linking to others pages it would ship link juice? I'm going with the guy on these forums until someone can prove him wrong
YOUR VALUED FEEDBACK PLEASE

 

[Toni Anicic]

I think the links in the footer of this site are the least of your SEO worries.

This site is simply terrible. Where is the menu? Where do I go? Why can't I click on logo? URLs are terrible, design is terrible and on high resolutions it's even worse.

Although the "forum guy" you're referring to was right. these links in the footer linking to the same page in different anchors make no sense whatsoever.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

It won't be seen by Google as black hat, it will just be seen as crap design layout.

Is this your site?

 

[Kev Jaques]

That page is pretty useless!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

That page is pretty useless!

get off the fence Kev

 

[Kev Jaques]

hahah OWG Yea I could point out why its pretty useless, but I can sleep at night knowing it's not my work and doesn't belong to me

 

[matt.chatterley]

That page is pretty useless!

get off the fence Kev

I would have summed it up in one word. Pants.

 

[Ali-v-8]

Thank you. Thats what i said.
Just incase you guys missed it the links at the bottom go back to the same page.
This is classed as wrong.
Google hate links sending them back to the same page.
Technique is one adopted by first found and itscoldoutside.
I'm wondering which one did it

 

[sjr4x4]

"Design by Webanywhere" - but the link doesn't work - www.webanywhere.co.uk%20target=/ whoops

You have 2 nice looking sites, has your account been hacked??

 

[activew]

Blimey thats all a bit harsh!!

 

[david64]

No. The term crap hat SEO would probably be most fitting, as alluded to in the posts above. This is basically anything that you do for search engines that leaves your site looking like crap, as all that text and unwarranted links preceded by a generous helping of white space do.

Black hat is anything that gets you banned/penalised (or should do), which is creating spam sites (like splogs) and mass automated link spam. If you're not doing one of those you are unlikely to get banned.

 

[FunkyBears]

The site has nothing whatsoever to do with me I was just told by a SEO firm to do similar on a new site I'm developing, The learned Ali put me straight!
thanks
Paul

 

[petera]

It's a similar story on this site, although at least this one isn't too bad design-wise.
http://www.buycosmetics.com/

 

[Spock]

Looks very similar to what ICO did to one of my clients sites under their footer. Nasty.

 

[petera]

Looks very similar to what ICO did to one of my clients sites under their footer. Nasty.

Very clumsy indeed.
I don't know where the line is drawn with blackhat, but adding sections to your website with the sole purpose of manipulating/fooling the search engines must be pretty close to it

 

[Ali-v-8]

so at this point you should be giving us the name of the seo firm that told you to copy it

 

[coreldraw]

Indeed a bad site

 

Get your index page juice from external sites and spread some juice from your index page to other pages on your site.

Earl

 

[crossdaz]

http://www.sigmapens.co.uk/

Please scrool down to very bottom of page and tell me whether the links that lead back to home page would be regarded by google as Black Hat? A well respected SEO guy on these forums says they would be better done by taking these links to other pages yet an SEO company that we have worked with say this is perfectly legitimate and that by linking to others pages it would ship link juice? I'm going with the guy on these forums until someone can prove him wrong
YOUR VALUED FEEDBACK PLEASE

Amazon used to do this which is why a lot of people jumped on it. I don't think they were ever quite so blatant or over the top though?

Basically, it's junk - but I'm sure you know that already?

 

[Ali-v-8]

Amazon used to do this which is why a lot of people jumped on it. I don't think they were ever quite so blatant or over the top though?

Basically, it's junk - but I'm sure you know that already?

I have never in the last seven year seen Amazon do anything remotely as bad as this

 

[crossdaz]

I have never in the last seven year seen Amazon do anything remotely as bad as this

the key sentence is:

I don't think they were ever quite so blatant or over the top though?

They would have one or two links max. Whether it ever did anything is another matter - they do a lot of experimentation after all?