Is this proposal white hat or likely to harm me in the long run?
-
Hi,
I'm considering outsourcing some SEO to a company I got a first month trial sweetener deal with. I've not done this before and am a little unsure about what they propose doing, not sure if I'm being a bit paranoid or too controlly.
Details of what they propose:
Send them 10 keywords we're interested in ranking for.
Work they will perform:
-Submit site to all major search engines
-Submit 20 social book marks for site
We'll produce 1 article + 19 spun variations of the article submitted to:
-30 directory sites
-10 press release sites and distribution networksBusiness Submitted to 5 business directories
5 social networks createdWork and ranking report highlighting what has been done at the end of the month.
Most of the stuff I've done already or can do myself. The elements that make me a bit suspicious are the:
- 1 article plus 19 spun variations?
- 5 social networks created? What does that even mean?
I did get this for about £20 for the 1st month with no commitment afterwards so I am tempted to let them try. But should I be a bit wary it might do more harm than good in the long run?
Any advice\opinions would be much appreciated.
-
LoL, no that's not real SEO, it's fake SEO and won't do anything for you. It's the kind of stuff that worked years back when no-one else was doing it.
Aside from that, you won't get good SEO for those sorts of low costs anyway... I have a tantrum about it here if you're interested in knowing what to avoid
-
With these tactics you will probably get to page one (position 6-10) for some low competition keywords. But i highly doubt you will even see the return on even this low amount of money.
With long-term employment of this strategy you do run the risk of getting a penalty, but at these volumes (depending on niche and keyword comp) you should not get one, but that does not mean i am advocating it.
I would highly suggest against tactics like this and companies like these as they probably have a huge footprint, that can be seen as "spammy" techniques easily.
19 spun versions of 1 article - This would be the worst of all. They have actually taken an idea, and made it less effective then if they just did the one LOL
I say no go.. do this work yourself and concentrate on what you think the users of your site would want, not what some SEO company thinks they want in a box...
w00t!
-
If you ask the question that it may do more harm than it probably is not worth it. I think if you can do it yourself, I would take your time and do it yourself (not worth the risk).
-
Submit site to all major search engines
That set off my BS meter.
-
There's no real reason to move forward with this. It looks like they're just going to syndicate your article across multiple spammy sites, damaging your link profile and reducing your authenticity at the same time. Take your time, publish your own content and be a genuine part of communities. Being controlling in this situation will benefit you in the long run.
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
-
Is buying traffic from Internet traffic club harmful to rankings
From looking at one of our clients’ GA stats, we’ve discovered that they have signed up with a site called Internet Traffic Club (or they have asked someone to do it on their behalf). Their hits on one day went from a fairly standard low number to a few thousand. The hits came from cities all over the world, yet this client is a local UK solicitor offering a local town service. We feel doing this - if they do it regularly - would be harmful rather than beneficial to their rankings. Has anyone here any experience of using these traffic buying services and how Google views these hits? Of course it is also nonsensical to pay to buy traffic from Nigeria if you’re a local solicitor, but I want to explain to them the evidence behind the harmful effect it could have on their rankings.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mfrgolfgti1 -
Does this graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit?
Hello,Does the attached graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit? Keep in mind that on our eCommerce site most purchases are from return customers. I forgot to add here that we cut a bunch of paid links in May 2013 as well. We quit cutting paid links when our rankings dropped - we thought it was the paid links. We currently have 30% paid links. Penguin 2.0 was on May 22. ga2.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
I would like to know if there is a tool to know what keywords
Hi everyone, I am looking for a keywords searcher or a program that can help me to know which keywords my competitors are using. thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lnietob0 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0 -
Understanding competitors link building tactics (possibly black hat stuff that seems to work)
So checking out the backlinks on a competitor’s page for a term I’m looking to work on, a page they rank pretty well for, I can’t but happen to note the kinds of sites that grant this company – who are well known in their field – its successes. Many of the links to this page I’m interested in appear within short articles on blogs, really bad Wordpress blogs that are certainly just for SEO use. My questions are: Where do people usually source these blogs which typically contain material on a range of different topics? Are these probably paid links? How do they get so much content out there, albeit similar content, to so many of the hastily cobbled efforts? Would that be an agency with connections or a blogging community site? How can any search engine lend credibility to my competitor’s links when the article below has nonsense for penis enlargement stuff. Seriously?!? How are they not being penalised? It’s frustrating because these aren’t the tactics I want to employ but they seems to offer success, but also, if your link is in an article that followed by another on penis pills, how I can take Google seriously in its stated aim of making things this prone to manipulation.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Are unusual chinese links likely to be black hat?
Hello, I noticed that this onepage website: http://www.clearpixel.net/ ranks at #11 for web design London so I did some research using SEO Moz Pro. Turns out that alll their links are from Chinese directory style sites. Does this demonstrate black hat SEO? If not, how do I go about getting links on Chinese sites with .gov urls. Many thanks, Martin Hofschroer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MartinHof0 -
NYT article on JC Penny's black hat campaign
Saw this article on JC Penny receiving a 'manual adjustment' to drop their rankings by 50+ spots: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html Curious what you guys think they did wrong, and whether or not you are aware of their SEO firm SearchDex? I mean, was it a simple case of low-quality spam links or was there more to it? Anyone study them in OpenSiteExplorer?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scanlin0
