What is your opinion on link farm risks and how do I explain this to a client?
-
Hi All,
I have a new monthly retainer client who still has a $600/month "linkbuilding" contract with a large national advertising/directory organization (I won't name them but I'm sure you can guess).
I just got a "linking" report and it's filled with garbage:
-
Comment spam (on huffington post).
-
Fake G+ Account
-
Links from multiple sites with Domain Authority of 1 (http://encirclehealth.net/, http://livingstreamhealth.co/ , etc). These have no "about" sections, no ads, no products - just blatant link farms.
I've told the client that these links pose a danger in Google, that he should get them to remove them, and that he should request a refund.
Their rep is pushing back hard and saying there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
Am I overestimating how bad/dangerous these are?
How would you explain to the client the risks?
I've already shared a report and my recommendations with the client but am really just looking for some affirmation of my position that these MUST get removed.
Any advice much appreciated!
-
-
Hi Robert,
You're doing the right thing!
- Ask the right questions (you are)
- Ask them in a reputable community (like this)
- Take the combined weight of your own experience and good feedback from the Moz community to your client (your next step)
You should expect to get a blizzard of counter-argument and obfuscation from the link development company. These days, it's very likely that the rep in question spends a lot of time on the phone trying to explain away the fact that his company has a "Kick Me" sign on its back, and that his comany's activities put their clients at risk. He's just trying to stop the bleeding.
Your advice to your company is directed toward making sure that your website is in the best possible position to earn your company money over the long term. The rep is just trying to keep yet another client from cancelling on him - which is a goal not aligned with the long-term health of your website.
-
The other responders here are right - that activity needs to be stopped right away. It's highly unlikely that they'll get away with it for much longer, and when they're hit it won't be pretty.
-
The next Penguin update is just 3-4 weeks away now if consistency is anything to go by.
They may get what is coming to them in a short time frame! This would be very sad indeed and recovery time on large domains can be a long process taking over a year in many cases.
Remember that Google says that buying links is a NO NO, that includes all kinds of buying, such as I will give you a gift in exchange etc.. Those are hard to detect but the others are so obvious that a computer can detect them with a simple algorithm. Those are the ones you will get hit by and it wont be long before someone else in your niche reports them.
Its just a matter of time. Every update scrapes deeper into the barrel until all are affected by it. One thing is for sure they will have suppression from the Penguin Algorithm, those bad links act like minus points, eventually it will out weigh the good ones and they will drop in rankings. Removing bad ones can actually increase rankings!
-
Thanks William, that's a great post.
As much as I feel totally confident in my position, sometimes the confidence of a natural introvert like myself starts to wane in the face of a barrage of a blunt but relentless opposing argument from someone like this rep.
-
Have that client come in here and see how many people are cryin' because their site dropped into oblivion.
Now they are stuck with $4,000,000 of inventory in a $12,000 / month warehouse and a dozen employees to fire.
To pull themselves out they gotta pay big money for a link cleaning job and then they have a site that ranks deeper than is useful.... and $4,000,000 of inventory in a $12,000 / month warehouse and no sales coming in.
-
They absolutely need to removed as quickly as possible. You are in the right and that company is just doing what companies do and protecting themselves. If the articles on MOZ aren't enough to convince your client, here's one from Forbes... maybe he'll listen to that one: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2013/10/09/seo-rankings-tanking-check-for-bad-incoming-links/
A large portion of my job with new clients is now link cleanup and disavows, because they suffered this kind of penalty with who was doing their marketing before us.
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
-
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Do the links from top websites' forums boost in-terms of backlinks?
If we get any backlinks from discussions/forums of top websites like wordpress and joomla forums; do they count as valid and authority improving backlinks? I mean about the dofollow links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Better ranking competitors have paid links from blog pages
I have a trial of all the tools at the moment and it's a lot of fun. I have been delving into site explorer and found that some competitors have links to them from obvious seo promoting paid blog sites. One has no other links except a paid for blog from a site that openly admits it offers paid marketing and they shot up to 4th on page one for a main keyword phrase. The info from moz and matt cuts video's say not to do this, but it's so tempting. The blog is well written, while I sit here and do the right thing, my competitors have page one. If the blog is well written and is meaningful is it OK and if google ever decide it's paid and don't like it, wouldn't it be better to be page one for 6 months and then recover? I'd love to give the link to the seo, blogger thingy but don't want to come across as promoting it in any way. I am sure there are loads of them anyway.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Peter24680 -
Links from same brands?
Hi, We have around 25 sites around the world under different domains and brand names. I was wondering if its safe or not to interconnect (linking) all these sites. Please let me know, Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ferratum0 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods. Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up. There are no messages in Webmaster Tools. I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments? Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th? http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Deny visitors by referrer in .htaccess to clean up spammy links?
I want to lead off by saying that I do not recommend trying this. My gut tells me that this is a bad idea, but I want to start a conversation about why. Since penguin a few weeks ago, one of the most common topics of conversation in almost every SEO/Webmaster forum is "how to remove spammy links". As Ryan Kent pointed out, it is almost impossible to remove all of these links, as these webmasters and previous link builders rarely respond. This is particularly concerning given that he also points out that Google is very adamant that ALL of these links are removed. After a handful of sleepless nights and some research, I found out that you can block traffic from specific referring sites using your.htaccess file. My thinking is that by blocking traffic from the domains with the spammy links, you could prevent Google from crawling from those sites to yours, thus indicating that you do not want to take credit for the link. I think there are two parts to the conversation... Would this work? Google would still see the link on the offending domain, but by blocking that domain are you preventing any strength or penalty associated with that domain from impacting your site? If for whatever reason this would nto work, would a tweak in the algorithm by Google to allow this practice be beneficial to both Google and the SEO community? This would certainly save those of us tasked with cleaning up previous work by shoddy link builders a lot of time and allow us to focus on what Google wants in creating high quality sites. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | highlyrelevant0 -
Should I 301 Redirect a Site with an 'Unnatural Link' Warning?
Hey Fellow Mozzers, I have recently been approached by a new client that has been issued with an 'Unnatural Link' warning and lost almost all of their rankings. Open Site Explorer shows a ton of spammy links all using main keyword anchor text and there are way too many of them to even consider manually getting them removed. There are two glimmers of hope for the client; The first is that the spammy links are dropping off at a rate of about 25 per week; The second is that they own both the .com and the .co.uk domain for their business. I would really appreciate some advice on the best way to handle this, should I :- Wait it out for some of the spammy links to drop off whilst at the same time pushing social media and build some good clean links using the URL and brand as anchor text? Then submit a recosideration request? Switch the website over from the .com domain to the .co.uk domain and carry out a 301 redirect? Switch the website over from the .com to the .co.uk without doing a redirect and start again for the client with a clean slate? I would still register an address change via Webmaster Tools. Add a duplicate site on the .co.uk domain. Leave the .com site in place but rel="canonical" the entire domain over to the .co.uk Any advice would be very much apprecited. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
How Would You Go About Building a Private Link Network?
Assuming you need to build a private link network from scratch, how would you go about doing it? I am not looking for some shady tactic, but rather something that would be white hat, yet will help in our SEO efforts. Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0