Our site went live weeks before a PageRank update, which is why I believe we have a 0. Unfortunately, now that Google has announced they no longer plan to update it, we may be stuck on 0 indefinitely, which I believe puts us at a disadvantage since some publishers might be reluctant to link to us (you'd think Google would have thought of that) (here's an example where they linked to our Twitter account, rather than our actual website).
"a) your content is not unique or pages are too similar"
It is a quote website, so the uniqueness of a page has its limits. As mentioned, we did our best to provide value (and did a much better job at that than most other quote sites that are currently ranking).
"b) majority of your links are spammy (and since you have 100k links pointing to your site I would suggest this is the most probable scenario)"
Using OpenSiteExplorer, the tool is showing 2,810 total links to the homepage, but only 129 root domains. Most of the multiple links are coming from things like a) slideshows b) sitewide links coming from the WordPress plugin (which are nofollow... a factor that Google swears will have zero effect on your site).
"Also I find it hard to believe a large, well-known agency would be involved in spammy techniques, any examples please?"
Sure, I'll provide three examples of what I believe to be
Spammy example: This article on B2C has what is obviously a forced backlink to Quotery. In addition, 97thFloor knocked out three different clients in one article (increase their profits, lessen their workload). Their clients are easy to spot. Hint: "Biz Stone said" ""Entrepreneur developer" and "mobile app developers".
Basic example: The first month, they'll simply present a "report" to you. This is essentially a copy/paste report taken directly from Moz.com itself. The only difference is that instead of paying $99 for a Moz subscription, you're paying 97thFloor $5,000 to present the report to you.
Marketing Example: Finally, I'll provide an example of what they do on the viral end. I gave them free reign to do whatever they wanted for a viral video, seen here (I provided the logo animation for the intro). This video went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't shared a single time on our social media accounts, and I even spent some money on YouTube advertising for the video (to no avail). The only viral campaign they worked on that went anywhere was an idea I actually gave to them (this infographic that was shared hundreds of thousands of times). And believe it or not, they recommended dumping the idea and doing something else.
So while 97thFloor might be well-known, and extremely costly, they absolutely do not provide any value that I have witnessed.
