Link Pharming
-
My company has been using an SEO company for a while and have built up our pagerank to a 6. However, we have noticed that they're involved in link pharming - they're buildng extra websites and linking to our site on them. We are not happy with this as we know it will only be a matter of time before Penguin hits us. The contract with the SEO company is coming up for renewal soon and we're thinking of cancelling it. However, we are not sure if the company will delete all our backlinks, which will probably decrease our PageRank too.
Has anyone here ever had a similar experience? What did the SEO company do when you cancelled the contract? Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
-
Yeah--half of all seo firms are below average
-
If I would use the words "most" and "typically" in this context I would be meaning about 50.1%
That would leave about 49.9% "without equity" to word it kindly or "screwed" to word it more accurately....
....but after all they were renting from the start. They just didn't understand.
-
Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
Typically, "honest" firms will leave all links as is (as that is what you paid for).
Many people underestimate the work needed in the formulation of the initial contract. Always put a clause in that sums up that all seo initiatives will remain published for a certain amount of time (ideally indefinitely) and if you need to "get rid of the work" the cost to do so (ideally free). Most seo firms will agree to do this automatically to get the job.
Good luck!
-
If they have access to the domains they will, if they are that kind of company, delete them. If they are on blogs where they have outreached to webmasters etc.. I think they will probably leave them be, as it would be a lot of work to get rid.
Another big problem, which some 'snake oil' SEO's use is to build links to a URL that redirects to your site. That means if you cancel, they just remove the redirect and you lose all your links.
By the sounds of it they have done outreach and i'd be leaning more to say you would probably be safe if you cancelled, but again I wouldn't be 100% certain without being able to have a look.
Have a chat with your SEO consultant and maybe just ask how they build their links.
-
From using webmaster tools, the highest proportion of our links comes from blogspot - rubbish blogs linking to us with relevant anchor text. From what I see there are only a few domains they created with links on them.
Am I correct then in assuming they will delete the links from the domains they set-up but there is nothing they can do about the liks on sites like blogspot?
-
What happens when you cancel?
That depends where the links are coming from.
If they are placing your links on a private network those links will be gone before your SEO goes home from the office and your site will start slipping in the SERPs over the following weeks.
If they have gotten you valid mentions on blogs and other websites the links are more likely to stay.
If you go into a contract with a new SEO or renew with this person. Find out exactly where the links are coming from and what the deal will be when you leave their service.
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
-
Link Building
I have a question as competitor made backlinks on longtail keywords and just for one specific post, If I wanna rank in Google SERP, then should I have to do the same strategy as my competitor did. or can I use just my own keywords to get rank?
Link Building | | aamirmurtaza670 -
Spam Links
Hi everyone, I've just joined the Moz community and after completing our first site crawl I've discovered that we have approximately 200 links with a spam score of over 50%. Should I just disavow all these links or is their a formula to deciding which links to disavow? Thanks in Advance Steve
Link Building | | StevenWalley0 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Indirect Link Earning via dofollow Links In News Articles
Hello, MOZ SEO Gurus. I've been trying to think some deep thoughts on safe, effective link earning for news publishing sites, and wanted to run this up the flagpole and see if you salute. Our site is a biotech news service -- we pump out copious amounts of news content each day, which works well for driving traffic. That being said, we also want to rank some optimized landing pages as well. Take, for example, this page, which we'd like to rank for "secondary progressive MS" and related keywords: http://bionews-tx.com/secondary-progressive-ms/ Now, as far as I'm concerned, shopping this page around to MS influencers isn't easy. I can go to Foundational websites, blogs, etc., and say, "hey, we have this info page on SPMS, and I thought that you might find it helpful/want to link to it." But chances are, the MS influencers already have their own proprietary content on SPMS, and there isn't much value to linking to it. Therefore, I think that we'll get few link earning conversions on the effort. However, what if I take our Secondary Progressive MS landing page, and I link to it in a corresponding article about SPMS research, as I did here: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2014/01/30/secondary-progressive-ms-natalizumab-clinical-trial/ Then, I go to the drug developer who is at the center of this story and say to them, "hey, we recently covered your drug in the news, and I thought you might want to link to it." Then, we get a link from an MS drug developer to the news article, which in turn has a prominent anchor text, dofollow internal link to the landing page for SPMS. If the link from the drug developer is dofollow, then we flow page rank juice from the drug developer page to our news page to our landing page. To me, it's much easier to earn safe links this way than to try and shop the landing page itself. That being said, if we get a dofollow link on the news piece, we only get a diminished portion of page rank going to the landing page. Is this strategy viable? Is the indirect flow of page rank from a linking site to a news article to a landing page even worth it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Link Building | | bionewstx2 -
Should I Disavow a Link Like This?
I just saw this link appear for my website (www.webhostinghero.com) in ahrefs.com this morning: http://freedatingsiteregistry.com/tag/website-template/ (search for text anchor "hosting reseller") Obviously it's a scraper site. Other than that, my link profile is clean. Should I disavow this?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
No inbound links ?
Hello I just got SeoMoz, started the whole thing and compared myself to my competitor. I'm writing for mayor national newspapers in latin america, been featured a few major sites, and got a whole lot of links directing to muy site. I recently moved domains about a month ago from rxmagaizne.mx to rxmagazine.co. Is this the reason i'm not seeing any links ? ibIPY.png
Link Building | | timi-do0 -
Where do you buy your links from
OK which brokers / sites do you use to buy your links or gain links from and why.
Link Building | | therealmarkhall0