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
-
JavaScript encoded links on an AngularJS framework...bad idea for Google?
Hi Guys, I have a site where we're currently deploying code in AngularJS. As part of this, on the page we sometimes have links to 3rd party websites. We do not want to have followed links on the site to the 3rd party sites as we may be perceived as a link farm since we have more than 1 million pages and a lot of these have external 3rd party links. My question is, if we've got javascript to fire off the link to the 3rd party, is that enough to prevent Google from seeing that link? We do not have a NOFOLLOW on that currently. The link anchor text simply says "Visit website" and the link is fired using JavaScript. Here's a snapshot of the code we're using: Visit website Does anyone have any experience with anything like this on their own site or customer site that we can learn from just to ensure that we avoid any chances of being flagged for being a link farm? Thank you 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Do industry partner links violate Google's policies?
We're in the process of The Great _Inquisition_piecing together a reconsideration request. In doing so, we reached out to an agency to filter and flag our backlinks as safe, should be no-followed, or should be removed. The problem is, they flagged several of our earned, industry partner links (like those pointing to us, HireAHelper, from 1-800-Pack-Rat and PODS for example) as either should be no-followed or should be removed. I have a hard time believing Google would penalize such a natural source of earned links, but then again, this is our second attempt at a Reconsideration Request, and I want to cover all my bases. What say you Moz community? No-follow? Remove? Leave alone?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanielH0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Search Results Showing Additional info/Links
Did I miss something? I was looking at search result listings this morning and noticed that Walmart has additional information at the bottom of their (non-paid (I think)) search results. Please see the attached image and you'll notice links to "Item Description - Product Warranty and Service - Specifications - Gifting Plans" How are they doing this? I just noticed the same on one of our competitors listings so It's not just Walmart and the links are item specific. (I have update the image) Z0yqKtO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BWallacejr1 -
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 -
Why would links that were deleted by me 3 months ago still show up in reports?
I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shags380 -
Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?
I'm seeing lots of "offers" springing up to do negative SEO on your competitors. I know people keep insisting this sort of thing is just a bogeyman, but follow my logic here: We know the Penguin update PENALIZED, and not just devalued "over optimization." Read: exact match keyword links. We know that if your link profile is too "unnaturally" keyword heavy, (it should be majority your brand or your domain or your company name, etc) you get penalized. Again, not devalued, PENALIZED. Ok. So what is to stop a blackhatter from using one of those software bots to just kill a competitor? Knowing the above two points, lets say a website is ranking for "cool widgets". Why not just create a bunch of exact match keyword spam links for "cool widgets" targeting that website. In a while, the Penguin penalty kicks in and bammo. The thing that scares me about the post Penguin landscape is that google has specifically named an activity ("over optimization") that will get you PENALIZED. So, don't do that, right? Except, that means they've explicitly outlined an activity that will be penalized, and is easy for others to do to you, and that you would be powerless to prevent. I await the usual "this is an age old worry that has never come true" replies. But if you reply that way, ask yourself, can you refute the logic of the points above? And also... oh no... It's happening. I'm seeing it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmcc1 -
Strange link backs
Hi all been looking at the keyword research tool , phrase is dog beds site at number 10 is **www.ideas-4-pets.com ** opened site explorer http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.ideas-4-pets.com%2F Took at a look at linking root domains ths guy has some huge linking domains , so thought I would take a look at how they managed to get links from sites like Samsung , the UN , Php.net, Linking Root Domain Domain Authority Linking Root Domains *.parallels.com/ 97 129,927 *.php.net/ 97 201,007 *.dmoz.org/ 94 80,621 *.swsoft.com/ 92 24,586 *.samsung.com/ 89 54,125 *.oreilly.com/ 88 48,350 *.undp.org/ 88 21,578 I cant understand how he has got links off psd files or on page assets like embedded swf files. Anyone know how they are dong this , is this pure Darth Vader black hat >>??? Thanks in advance May the Google be with You
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jbloggs0