Any successes getting SEO/link vendors clean up Penguin-related problems they helped create?
-
Hi all,
I'm wondering if anyone's been able to get link vendors help clean up Penguin-related problems that they helped create?
I have a client who was sold years and years of AWFUL link building work from a major and prominent SEO vendor, that we are now battling to de-toxify.
There are no legal grounds for us as the ToS was watertight and the client is ultimately responsible (if naive), but has anyone been successful in getting vendors to cooperate with cleanups on ethical grounds? What's the best way to play that with a major vendor, I'm assuming they wouldn't want to be outed.
Cheers all,
Matt
-
Some good responses there, thanks everyone.
-
And now we know that EGOL does not live in NYC, because the major there wouldn't allow you to get serving sizes that big.
Might be time to invest in a slurpee machine!
-
just don't get confused and bring the popcorn bucket in there. I feel like slurpee mixed with popcorn would not taste as good as it sounds.
-
I just want the popcorn. I will donate the slurpee to whoever wants it.
-
You take a bucket into 7-eleven.
I am going to need a $10 slurpee before this discussion is over.
-
Where do you get a $10 slurpee?! That thing must be gigantic.
-
I have experience attempting to do exactly what you are talking about here with very little result. My company used to buy links from "SubmitEdge" and their link building practices are shady at best. Thousands of terribly written articles, directory submissions, message board comments, and other ridiculous penguin-tastic links built through them.
I spent a good month or two working at getting them to help me in the removal of these links. They pretty much did nothing but inform me that their practices are well-established and in-line with Google's policies.. (untrue. incredibly untrue.) So what I started doing was asking for logins and passwords of the accounts created to go onto ridiculous message boards and post terrible links. The beautiful thing is they were able to give me lists of everywhere they built a link. And for the articles, they supplied me with usernames and passwords. This meant several weeks worth of work for me to go through each one and remove the articles and links.
However I was left with all the social links and directory links. Some of the article links also did not allow me to login and upon further review the blog sites owned by Submit Edge were the ones I couldn't log in to. I went back and forth with them and they eventually stopped responding to me and would not help me log in to those. They still exist to this day... I've yet to disavow because I haven't seen results of any penalties but I have this all documented of course.
Anyway I digress... The point is, you can battle all you want and it might get you a little further but ultimately they are going to do very little and claim they have done nothing wrong the entire time. (This is my experience with only one company of course.) It is frustrating to say the least. Especially when I know they could just ask their staff member what "djnaro23" password is so I could go through forumland and remove all the stupid links. But no..
One more note -- I ended up trying to guess a lot of these passwords for the aforementioned social links I was unsuccessful with. I will say that they are incredibly lazy people and several of the logins ended up being simple passwords. I literally copied the username and used it as the password and this worked about 33% of the time.
In summation, good friggin luck getting them to do any work for you; they will most likely refer you to their paid link-removal service which is a huge scam. However you should be able to garner a bit of information and hopefully some logins which will give you the ability to go back and remove them yourself. Or at least, as in my experience, remove SOME of them...
Fun, huh?
-
I made a request for assistance in getting links that I feel weren't procured in our best interest or within Google's current guidelines. Our vendor offered to use the disavow tool on my behalf saying that was the quickest way, but from everything I've read, this was premature and could due potentially do more harm than good. I turned down their offer. I didn't want to perpetuate their lack of good sense and expertise by continuing to depend on them.
-
Depends how "well known" the agency is, I have taken one 2 clients from a local agency which is quite large they have about 40 staff locally. We asked them to remove a large number of links from their link networks and directories they own. They actually removed most of the links in question over a few weeks periods.
The process we used was to have the client contact the agency direct with some wording such as "We realized you have been using link networks to do link building (see attached report of network links) this has resulted in a serious drop in revenue and traffic. We request that you remove the attached links in the report from your network."
This worked with two prior clients, they did clean up most of the damage, but that been said some other SEO companies would not do the same.
-
- goes for popcorn and a $10 slurpie *
This is a really interesting question.
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
-
Can piracy sites linking to you hurt your SEO?
Hello, Our website sells software that we have developed, but there are piracy websites that offer a crack/keygen to our software and are linking to our site. From an SEO perspective, are those sites hurtful to us if their spam score is below 30 and their DA is not 1? We'd like to understand if there is any action we need to take from an SEO point or if our site's SEO is not affected by it. Thank you!
Link Building | | marynau0 -
SEO value of links from international TLDs to local (.be/.nl) TLDs
I'm linkbuilding for a couple of websitew of mine with TLD's of .be and .nl. When i look at my competitors, i see they also have backlinks from .com, .cz,... But do those international backlink account for any value (link juice) being past on?
Link Building | | RoderickG0 -
What's the best seo link building company after May 2013?
Which is the best and most trustworthy seo company if I want to outsource my link building after being severely hit by the google penguin 4 update?
Link Building | | naimelhajj0 -
Paying to be listed on link directories... a little help?
So, I was perusing SEOMoz's suggested link directory list and noticed some sites there require paid links. I have a couple questions regarding this: Is paying for directory listings a good idea? I'm not crazy enough to buy a bunch of links; I want to create a sustainable SEO strategy. But I do know that most everyone does at least a little paid linking. Is there a budget or percentage of ones total links you would recommend for this? Is it REALLY ok to do this at all? Also, assuming I have about $200-$500/month I could spend purchasing links, what sites are best to get links for first? Just a bit of background: we're starting a content marketing strategy for our business and are spending about $2,000 per month "buying" content (design, data, writing, etc.) so purchasing links is definitely NOT our strategy and never will be. Thanks!
Link Building | | Kibin1 -
Will a link from a competitor help me to out rank them?
Greetings mozers, One of my competitors and I both rank on the first page for our main keyword. They have 37k+ links, me only like 300 or so. My company actually has a business location though. This other site is just a listing of locations and they build sites for most of my competitors. If I were able to get listed on their site, would that make me a stronger competitior with them? And we would probably only get a brand term link from them but not a main keyword anchor text. Will it be as effective to get the link from them if it's only for my brand name? Thanks, Cy
Link Building | | Nola5040 -
Do incoming affiliate links help with SEO?
Quick question: If my affiliates promote an ebook via an e-junkie affiliate link that points to a sales page on my domain, will I get any SEO benefit from the links? Will Google see that the e-Junkie affiliate link 'hops' through to my domain name? i.e. Affiliate's website --> eJunkie link --> ebook landing page on my domain Thanks for your advice! Ian
Link Building | | internal-communication0 -
When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
After having employed many different methods for finding good link partners I am now finding it more difficult to reach out and identify good quality links for a niche area such as real estate. Does page rank factor into the search much or is it better to focus on page / domain authority as a major factor?
Link Building | | casper4340 -
Anything to bear in mind when setting up a related 'family' of sites with linking between them?
We've spun out content from a single finance related news/analysis site (running for about 2 years) into several topic-specific sites on individual topics (markets, investment etc etc). They're all on the same server, use the same CMS (using a multisite setup), and share largely the same codebase, though obviously with customisations for the site names, and we've made sure each has a distinct identity. At the bottom of each page, we're linking to 'latest posts on the network', aggregating the 5 most recent posts from all the sites and displaying them in the footer. We've obviously made sure the actual content is completely unique on each site though. Just wondering if anyone has any tips about ensuring we don't dilute our SEO too much. and how to maximise our effectiveness?
Link Building | | topnotch180