How to avoid the SEO link building scam
August 23, 2009
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.
Three that have come to my attention are FirstFound, Linkbuilding.net and It’s Cold Outside. 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 FirstFound or It’s cold Outside ring you up, 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:
Chris said:
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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Graham Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
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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KingKev7 said:
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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Nigel Haggerty said:
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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david said:
Here Here! Link building is a scam!
Also It’s Cold Outside are utter scam artists!
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Alan Hoggin said:
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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Dave said:
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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Graham Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:29 pm
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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Jason said:
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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Graham Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:32 pm
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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David said:
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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Graham Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:37 pm
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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LG Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
I was sold on the sales pitch of FirstFound and because my clients were asking for SEO, which isn’t my forte, I took a gamble and advised them to go with First Found.
Three clients signed up, 6 months later, each were complaining they had no results.
I started to study SEO on and off page optimisation and their relative effect on the site’s ranking on Google, and I realised that FF had done nothing but change a few page titles add, a paragraph of content and some meta tags (why meta tags?)
Looking at backlinks via Yahoo, showed that they hadn’t built a single inbound link for either of the sites.
They absolutely suck and need to be avoided at all costs.
SEO is a costly, time intensive and skilled business. No company offering a low rate fixed fee package can get results on anything but niche, localised websites that have little to no competition.
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Dave said:
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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Graham Reply:
June 24th, 2010 at 9:58 am
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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Alan Hoggin said:
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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chris said:
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. They come up with the usual excuse of having many clients on there “client management software” which in reality is Google My Client Centre which is ver easy to organise to have seperate logins for each client.
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Web Design Scranton said:
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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LG said:
I’ll just add to my previous comment … it was embarrassing trying to deal with my client’s complaints about First Found as I had recommend them in the first place. They are utterly useless and must have shares in Horlicks just to get to sleep at night.
Another red flag is if the company has an aggressive outbound telesales operation, which most of these companies do. They usually have many more sales staff than they do SEO/web guys and so they can afford to not deliver for their clients, because they are generating huge amounts of new business.
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