Link Pharming
-
My company has been using an SEO company for a while and have built up our pagerank to a 6. However, we have noticed that they're involved in link pharming - they're buildng extra websites and linking to our site on them. We are not happy with this as we know it will only be a matter of time before Penguin hits us. The contract with the SEO company is coming up for renewal soon and we're thinking of cancelling it. However, we are not sure if the company will delete all our backlinks, which will probably decrease our PageRank too.
Has anyone here ever had a similar experience? What did the SEO company do when you cancelled the contract? Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
-
Yeah--half of all seo firms are below average
-
If I would use the words "most" and "typically" in this context I would be meaning about 50.1%
That would leave about 49.9% "without equity" to word it kindly or "screwed" to word it more accurately....
....but after all they were renting from the start. They just didn't understand.
-
Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
Typically, "honest" firms will leave all links as is (as that is what you paid for).
Many people underestimate the work needed in the formulation of the initial contract. Always put a clause in that sums up that all seo initiatives will remain published for a certain amount of time (ideally indefinitely) and if you need to "get rid of the work" the cost to do so (ideally free). Most seo firms will agree to do this automatically to get the job.
Good luck!
-
If they have access to the domains they will, if they are that kind of company, delete them. If they are on blogs where they have outreached to webmasters etc.. I think they will probably leave them be, as it would be a lot of work to get rid.
Another big problem, which some 'snake oil' SEO's use is to build links to a URL that redirects to your site. That means if you cancel, they just remove the redirect and you lose all your links.
By the sounds of it they have done outreach and i'd be leaning more to say you would probably be safe if you cancelled, but again I wouldn't be 100% certain without being able to have a look.
Have a chat with your SEO consultant and maybe just ask how they build their links.
-
From using webmaster tools, the highest proportion of our links comes from blogspot - rubbish blogs linking to us with relevant anchor text. From what I see there are only a few domains they created with links on them.
Am I correct then in assuming they will delete the links from the domains they set-up but there is nothing they can do about the liks on sites like blogspot?
-
What happens when you cancel?
That depends where the links are coming from.
If they are placing your links on a private network those links will be gone before your SEO goes home from the office and your site will start slipping in the SERPs over the following weeks.
If they have gotten you valid mentions on blogs and other websites the links are more likely to stay.
If you go into a contract with a new SEO or renew with this person. Find out exactly where the links are coming from and what the deal will be when you leave their service.
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
-
Question about Link Juice
Hi Everyone, I have a couple of articles on which I have some internal links towards other articles. My questions are the following:
Link Building | | anwarjutt90
Are the links in the header menu or the footer of the page take away from the juice of the article by spreading it?
Do the outbound links coming out of my article, do they have any impact on spreading the link juice of my internal links? Thank you in advance for your valuable inputs.0 -
Link Building
I have a question as competitor made backlinks on longtail keywords and just for one specific post, If I wanna rank in Google SERP, then should I have to do the same strategy as my competitor did. or can I use just my own keywords to get rank?
Link Building | | aamirmurtaza670 -
Self linking
There are 10 links on page that point to this page where they exist (link to the page itself). Does it influence on ranking?
Link Building | | templatemonster0 -
What is classed as a reciprocal link?
We have a link on a website linking to our homepage and we also are linking to this website from a internal page but not to the same page that is linking to us ( if that makes sense) is this classed as reciprocal?
Link Building | | webguru20140 -
When buying used domains, how do i see the links pointing to that domain? OSE not showing links
when buying used domains, how do i see the links pointing to that domain? Sometimes the open site explorer doesn't show any links to the domain, especially if the domain is parked. Obviously a domain for sale with 1000 domains linking to it has lots of SEO Value right? Thanks mozzers!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
Do No follow links from social media platforms transfer authority or value when they link to third party websites?
With social media playing a bigger role in SEO (since the Panda, Penguin updates etc) and how search engines rank sites now, does anybody know why Twitter for instance has 'no follow' when I check my client's websites under 'inbound links' on Open Site Explorer?
Link Building | | caroline19770 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0