How to avoid the SEO link building scam
Link building isn’t easy. It takes time and effort to research and create the links that will make a difference to your ranking. And it’s not the number of links that matter, it’s the quality of those links. Much better to have one link from a respected site than 1000 inbounds from spammy free-for-all directories.
There are however any number of companies who do sell link building services. Some are very good but most are a waste of time. What’s worse is the way they market their services, fail to deliver and scam you out of a wodge of cash.
Two that have come to my attention are Linkbuilding.net and It’s Cold Outside (now called addpeople). They have a convincing sales pitch but behind all the fine words are a bunch of serfs churning out some very dodgy links.
So how do they do their link building?
One common method used by link building companies is to set up a whole bunch of microsites and use them as link farms. This can get you penalised by the search engines. Use a link checking site like linkdiagnosis.com to discover what they have done. I did this for one client and discovered a link for jewellery in a blog post on heart disease. The actual post had over 70 links to a bunch of unrelated sites.
Another link building method is to add a so called ‘resource layer’. This is essentially a bunch of links to sites in their portfolio. Often not relevant to your content, these links do nothing for your reputation and are likely ignored by the search engines. So make sure they haven’t slipped in a set of irrelevant links to your site.
A more recent scam is ‘social bookmarking’ and related activities. It’s all a big con that the search engines have got wise to. The idea behind social bookmarking was to make public those sites you recommended. But like all good ideas the SEO scammers now flood the bookmarking sites making all those links just about worthless.
Directory submission is another waste of time and particularly favoured by the SEO companies in India. The search engines have regular purges on directory links, you will know when it happens because everybody relying on these links for their ranking complains that their websites have fallen off the ranking perch.
Forum spam is another game played by the link builders. There are a number of methods employed the most common being the new member asking a question to which another new member replies with a handy link to the site they are promoting. These post invariably get deleted within an hour or two so it’s a pointless exercise.
Blog commenting is another waste of time. Most blogs have no-follow links in their comments so those that do allow the links to be followed are spammed to death.
There are many more ways there scammers will link build for you. Not one of their methods is any good and just about everyone who has been caught out has seen their ranking drop like a stone.
It’s a life sentence you can’t escape
If you do get caught then it’s a real bugger to extract yourself from the mire. There appears to be a minimum 12 month contract that requires all sorts of hoops to jump through in order to cancel. And even those that have been successful in cancelling the contract have still found money being taken from their account.
Those unable to get out have seen their ranking drop because of the link building and it has proved almost impossible to track down which links have been created. One company selling cleaning products discovered a link on an Asian sex-change website!
Best advice if you are caught by the snake oil salesman, contact your local trading standards, they quite like investigating this sort of thing.
Don’t get fooled again
The moral of this story, don’t employ any ‘SEO’ company who promises wondrous results on Google. If they don’t even consider optimising your site then it means they are going to use their automated link building machine. And Google hates this.
So when you get cold called , just ask them where your site is ranking at present. They won’t know the answer because they have just been given a company name and a phone number to call. It’s a scam.
And if you don’t believe me, here are a few forum threads:
Posted in August 2009
just would like to say, its not vital for a link to be thematic. it does help with traffic, but in terms of passing PageRank, a link is a link. Just my two cents.
SEO Copywriting
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Unfortunately Chris, Google doesn’t see it this way. If you carry out untargeted link building it looks unnatural and will raise a few flags. I’d rather have 1 good link from a respected site than 1000 blog comments, directories, social bookmarks and associated detritus.
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Its Cold Outside – Avoid Avoid Avoid this company! They will take your money and give you nothing. They are an utter disgrace. I pity the staff who have to turn up for work at the shambolic and disgusting ‘company’ that is It’s Cold Outside. Thieves!! Give me my money back you daylight robbers!
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Just completed a 12 month subsrription with ‘First Found’ which has turned out to be a complete waste of time and of course, money. Despite stating I will be on page 1 within 2 months of signing up I am still where I was 12 months ago – on page 3.
Not impressed to say the least.
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Here Here! Link building is a scam!
Also It’s Cold Outside are utter scam artists!
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Signed up with its cold outside on Wednesday night tried to cancel Thursday noon still waiting for return call from customercare manager say I cant cancel even though work hasnt commenced avoid these robbers
ps they wont answer any call today Friday 18-06-2010
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Can you tell me where Google outlines what a good link and a bad link are???
I don’t use any seo companies to do mine and i still get companies linking to me from spureous sites i would never link to…how can i be punished by Google for this? I CANT CONTROL IT.
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Ok so we have here a post from Dave who seems to have a legitimate complaint but see the next comment
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What a load of bull! Chris is right, a link is a link!Page rank transferred from one site to another via a one way link/vote is what the search engines want to see. Who wrote this silly article? You dont know what you are talking about.
Dave: you cannot control others linking to you, you cannot be penalised for this reason. Inlinks can only have a positive effect or zero impact – not a negative one.
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This Jason has a email address of dapadave and actually posted the reply 4 minutes after the above comment and before I’d approeved it for publication!
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I actually work for one of the companies mentioned and can say that the approach is nothing like what is depicted above. Ethical SEO with transparent results and workings are esential to building honest relationships. Not many companies will give you the access or knowledge to see what they are doing.
I also cant believe that the majority of these posts are by competitive seo/web site designers resorting to scare tactics. I would advise you rethink and visit the Google technology pages to read their SEO requirements.
Best of business everyone,
Dave
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And Dave is back again (5 minutes later) with a different email address but the same IP as ‘Jason’ now making all sorts of spurious claims.
Dave works for It’s Cold Outsite. Make your own mind up as the their business ethics.
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spurious claims?? try typing in “how do i improve my rankings” into google and follow the ranking-webmaster tools help link. Google’s webmaster tools page describes, in general, what they want to increase natural positions. There is also a link on there to their technology overview discussing the value of PR and their focus on Links. If you really want to understand Google, search for the original thesis written on link integrity whilst they were at Stamford Uni….the birth of the Google search engine.
People making silly uneducated accusations against other companies to gain business for themselves gives the industry a bad name. Rethink your client gaining tactics and survey the facts before you attack other companies’ integrity.
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Google also makes it quite clear that link building to manipulate the search results is unacceptable.
There is sufficlent evidence that the methods employed by ICO go against the google guidelines. The forums links in the post are full of angry people disappointed with the services offered by ICO and others.
Note also that you have even tried to manipulate the comments by pretending to be two different people. The fact that you posted a reply to your own comment before it was even approved indicates a lax approach to ethical business.
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You just have to see how cunning they are on these forums as to what depths they will sink to with you and your company by the way its now 10-07-2010 and still no response from its cold outside steer clear they are not to be trusted
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I have a question. Linkbuilding.net contacted me to place a client’s link on one of my PR sites. They offered me $25. I googled Linkbuilding.net scams and your site came up first. Is Linkbuilding.net legit or not?
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I have also worked along side them with a few placements. It was just a general message I received and they wanted to add a website hosting comparison link to my site, which I run about web design. So I found this useful and fully relevant so I said okay. They sent the details, I added the link, and I got $30 the same day it went active. When you stop and think about it, there’s really nothing to lose, except on their part. The link was relevant, so I knew Google would read the link as a related resource and I wouldn’t get penalized. Google actually says they ‘frown upon’ other sites that do link building because they prefer people use their AdSense services and it’s true, there are some companies out there that do in fact perform Black Hat practices and link with link farms and spammy sites. But as long as people link out considerately and do their research before placing, you’ll have nothing to worry about. But Linkbuilding.net also added these “publisher guidelines” to their last email about how to link out considerately in order to maintain quality. This simply just tells me that they do try to link out with nice quality sites in respect to all the other publishers they have, not just for the benefit of their client.
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I used ICO last year and they added about 1,000 links to my website at a cost of £hundreds. As the links were all crap (on a few “article” websites)it actually hindered the natural development of my website, and I reckon their input held back development by 12 months. It took a lot of complaining to get them to remove their links, and I didn’t even try for my money back. Avoid this company like the plague…
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“so if first found are so reputable why do they not give there clients access the there adwords accounts that they are managing for them, something to hide maybe.”
I imagine they dont want the client messing with things they dont understand or worse, running off with their hard work 2 days after creating the campaign. Just a thought.
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Just a quick query the you mention in this article that forums linking is not beneficial and spammy ive seen it working but tend to agree in the most part, but i did notice in your post on various forums that you are using an anchor text link within the forum on ‘effective web design’ which is the keyword your optimising your homepage for? This post is very negative about link building but it does seem to be something your employing yourself?
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Hi Tobi (who works for AddPeople by the way),
There are millions of links whose only purpose is to market websites. Every banner you see, every advert and a whole set of directory links are only there to promote aebsite. The forum signature links I employ are for this purpose as well in the same way I add the link to no-follow blog comments.
The post here is specifically about about link building activites which are sold as means of artificially boosting the rank of a website. So sorry Tobi, but your attempts to hijack the arguement are as false as those proffered by ‘Dave’ and ‘Jason’ from It’s Cold Outside (who you once were).
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Thanks aerin, please dont misunderstand my comment wasn’t an attempt to hijack the argument, simply to get your views on using links on various sites, I believe the anchor text links your placing on forum are helping to sustain your position on page one of google for the search term ‘effective web design’
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There is a world of difference between placing a signature link on a respected and authoriative forum and proflagration of spammy links on a plethora of low level forums.
No amount of argument will ever convince those with an ounce of intellignence that spamming the forums is ever going to acheive anything useful.
And as I said before, links are placed because they are a marketing tool not a because they may have a ranking influence. Incidentally, I’ve never even seen my forum signature appear in a link checking report so I suspect it’s influence is zero.
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What you can learn from a failed Link Farm | Internet Marketing Belfast - Michael Wall said:
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addpeople - scam - Affiliate Marketing Discussion said:
[...] addpeople – scam addpeople in uk promised me first page organic listings. now i know that no company can assure anyone of that. i looked into this company, and it works out they have changed their name from 'it's cold outside'. let me tell you, if you use their services, it will be more than cold ourtside; it'll be wet and windy too. do not trust them. addpeople are a scam SEO Link building, Internet Marketing, Web Design & PPC management itscoldoutside.com http://aerin.co.uk/how-to-avoid-the-…building-scam/ [...]
Follow googles webmaster guidelines and you cant go wrong.
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I had this bunch of cowboys, who now call themselves Addpeople, tell me they could put my website at a higher ranking and specific items at No.1. After signing up and paying my first payment, all the rules changed. Suddenly it’s only three items they are going to push and now the first payment is now a deposit an 6 payments are due not 5. Within weeks my web site disappeared off Explorer and was only visible with errors on Firefox. Of course they denied having touched it and suggested I looked at who had logged in. With them using my access, of course they could not be blamed. Now I have refused to pay the last payment, my web site has inexplicably disappeared, showing MySQL error. How magically co-incidental, I don’t think. This company is economical with the truth, fantasises it’s capabilities, and tells fairy tales to it’s customers. If you complain to them because they fail to do what you asked, you get a phone call from a Professional Blagger who you can only stop by turning off the phone. Anyone who cold calls is likely to be them but they won’t admit it. I even said to different people from their company that I had already been bitten by It’s Cold Outside and not once did they admit to being that company. DON’T TRUST THEM. DON’T TALK TO THEM. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.
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Sorry to hear about you experience Roger. Do you still have admin access to your site? If so you might be able to fix the DB error and get the site back up and running. With luck all they have done is edited the config files and left the database in place.
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