Got an SEO package, paid $400+ for it, basically got scammed.
-
Hi guys,
I know this is stupid but I bought an SEO package for around $400. Received the report, and my... it was a complete load of spam.
It was basically a blast to lots of sites with random articles and my anchor texts all over the place. Theres thousands of these links and the articles dont make sense, I'm not sure what i'm going to do! This is my main Ecommerce website and i'm worried, i've complained and I hope to get a refund however i'm worried hes going to just blast my site and get me penalized by Google. It is clearly blackhat.
Is there anything I can do? I'm very worried.
Thanks
-
I thought I would update your answer...
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1
-
Hi Raymond,
Unfortunately, this is all too common. I work with a lot of clients who fall victim to this type of thing. What's even more unfortunate is sometimes, the "SEO" company doesn't realize they're doing anything wrong. Some of these techniques used to work in the very near past, and a few folks still think they're selling legitimate services.
Regardless, Google will most likely discount most, if not all of these links, but in the meantime you want to take steps to make sure these links don't hurt you.
1. Monitor your organic search traffic and keyword rankings. If they start to fall, take action.
2. Watch for messages in Google Webmaster Tools for penalties or warnings of unnatural linking.
3. If you need to, try to get the links removed. Unfortunately, the people in the best position to do this may be the same folks who built the links in the first place. As distasteful as it may be to actually pay more money to get the links removed, this may be your highest ROI option.
4. There are several do-it-yourself link removal resources out there. Here's three:
5. If you've received a message via Webmaster Tools, consider a reconsideration request. Document everything. Be truthful. Tell them everything and your exhaustive efforts to get links removed.
Remember, you only have to do this if your ranking/traffic tank. In the meantime, to guard against these links hurting you down the line, work on building as many quality, high authority links as possible. Here's some ideas to get you started.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Yes, what's done is done. As many of the others have already suggested here, you will be much better off by focusing on getting better quality links rather than trying to clean up the mess that's already created.
-
cut the guy a break......to answer your question it would probably cost way more than $400 or a lot of time to have all those links removed. to be honest if you payed $400 1 time, you prolly just got like 200 directory submissions, 100 social bookmarkings, x amount of forum/blog comments ect. in the scheme of things its honestly probably not gonna matter. you may still even see a boost in rankings. just focus on more long term strategies and dont make the same mistake twice. i wouldnt worry too much.
-
I always tell clients that you get for what you pay for. If SEO and Ranking on Google was as easy as paying $400 one time, we all would be on the 1<sup>st</sup> stop of Google. With that say, if everyone is number 1 then no one is number 1. There is only one spot at the top.
SEO is a fluid process. To achieve results in SEO you have to invest either time or money. Invest time if you want to learn it or invest money if you want someone to do it for you. I recommended you do both. This will allow you to weed out all these charlatans that sell so called SEO packages.
Truth is that most of the SEO information is available either online (in this community) or with books. Invest some time and you will be ahead of the curb and your competitors.
-
What he did was blackhat backlinking, he probably used some stupid software to do it or used software that is legitimate but in the wrong way.
A lot of companies use link building software, it's fantastic if you use it properly and efficently.
Instead of spending $400 on a 1 off SEO package, maybe do it yourself or watch some of the whiteboard fridays.
If not, i'd always be willing to help you sort your SEO out, i wouldn't ask for anything until i can show you some proof. That's how i work with anyone who's a client of mine.
-
Was it $400 monthly or what?
If you've paid a 1 off fee of $400 for "SEO" then you did not receive what most of us on this site would call search engine optimization. In other words rather than being scammed, you just bought into something which was not SEO. You are right though in saying that someone willing to take your $400 for something he calls SEO is probably the kind of person who would ruin your site if you push for a refund (I've seen some dodgy companies do this to their clients in the past)
Just cut your losses, find a better SEO company and let them deal with whatever damage has been caused to your site by this other company.
Be prepared to spend quite a lot more than $400 though, if you're going to insist on cheap don't expect miracles.
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
-
Doing URL change losses SEO ranking or not?
Hi Webmasters, I would like to move shipwaves.me to shipwaves.aeHowever, our website is concentrated on middle east countries and moreover, we have though .me is middle east [United Arab Emirates} and later with SEO advice, we have taken .ae.Besides, our confusion is if the website move from Shipwaves.me to the new domain shipwaves.ae this makes our SEO ranking loss or not?some of our keywords has been started showing on various search pages. So, anyone knows about this concern, please let me know.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LayaPaul0 -
1st Ecommerce site got penalized, can we start a 2nd one?
Hello, A client's first site got penalized by Goolge Penguin. It has recovered through cleaning up backlinks, but not to where it was before. It is 2nd and 3rd for several money keywords, but is far less successful than before penalization. We are starting a second site. Here's the important steps to mention The new site shows up first for it's domain name, and it has 30 pages indexed. It shows up NOWHERE for our leading search term. Out other site has a blog post that is 3rd for that search term. We are using new categories and new organization. We are using a different cart solution We are adding all unique content The home pages and some of the product pages are very thorough. We are adding comprehensive products like nothing else in the industry (10X) We plan on adding a very comprehensive blog, but haven't started yet. We've added the top 100 products so far. Our other store has 500. There's a lot of spam in the industry, so sites are slow to rank. Our category descriptions are 500 words Again, all unique content. No major errors in Moz Campaign tools Just a few categories so far, we're going to add many more. Same Google Analytics account as our other site It looks like we should eventually be on page 3 for our major search term. Again, we're nowhere for anything right now. ... Have you seen that Google will not rank a second site because it's from the same company and Google Analytics account, or does Google let you rank 2 sites in the same industry? We are hoping it's just slow to rank. If you can rank 2 sites, what are your best recommendations to help show up? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Opinion on Gotch SEO methods & services
I would love to get you all's take on Gotch SEO. I am gearing up to link build for a site in the next several months, and have been reading up from sources other than Moz, in preparation. (Need to re-read Moz's guide, too, but I have already read it last year) I'm reading Gotch SEO's main link building method articles right now, and am wondering what you all think. Do you think they have a good approach and are generally reliable? Likewise, has anyone used their service for getting a link? What was your experience? Or if you haven't used the service, any quick takes on it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scienceisrad0 -
Subdomain and root domain effects on SEO
I have a domain lets say it's mydomain.com, which has my web app already hosted on this domain. I wanted to create a sub-product from my company, the concept is a bit different than my original web app that is on mydomain.com and I am planning to host this on mynewapp.mydomain.com. I am having doubts that using a sub-domain will have an impact on my existing or new web app. Can anyone give me any pointers on this? As much as I wanted to use a directory mydomain.com/mynewapp, this is not possible because it will just confuse existing users of the new product/web app. I've heard that subdomains are essentially treated as a new site, is this true? If it is then I am fine with this, but is it also true that subdomains are harder to reach the top rank rather than a root domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | herlamba0 -
Is this a clear sign that one of our competitors is doing some serious black-hat SEO?
One of our competitors just recently increased their total external followed looks pretty drastically. Is it safe to say they are doing some pretty black-hat stuff? What actions exactly could this be attributed to? They've been online and in business for 10+ years and I've seen some pretty nasty drops in traffic on compete.com for them over the years. If this is black-hat work in action, would these two things be most likely related? Wh10b97
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kibin0 -
Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed? Thanks mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
Press Releases and SEO in 2013
Mozers, A few questions for the community: Distributing a press release through a service like 24-7pressrelease.com - is it a serious duplicate content issue when an identical press release is distributed to multiple sites with no canonical markup (as far as I can tell)? All of the backlinks in the press release are either nofollow or redirects. If there IS a duplicate content issue, will the website be affected negatively given the numerous Panda and Penguin refreshes? Why SHOULDN'T a company issue a press release to multiple sites if it actually has something legitimate to announce and the readership of a given site is the target demographic? For example, why shouldn't a company that manufactures nutritional health supplements issue the same press release to Healthy Living, Lifestyle, Health News, etc _with a link to the site?_I understand it's a method that can be exploited for SEO purposes, but can't all SEO methods be taken to an extreme? Seems to me that if this press release scenario triggers the duplicate content and/or link spam penalty(ies), I'd consider it a slight deficiency of Google's search algorithm. Any insight would be much appreciated. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b40040400 -
Influence of users' comments on a page (on-page SEO)
Do you think when Google crawls your page, it "monitors" comments updates to use this as a ranking factor? If Google is looking for social signs, looking for comments updates might be a social sign as well (ok a lot easier to manipulate, but still social). thx
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gt30