Why NOT to Outsource SEO Link Building
Link building is an important part of the SEO process. However, when you outsource your link building you are putting your online reputation in the hands of others. Your links are an online representation of your business. If you outsource, make sure you trust them or you might end up with links like this one someone tried to post here on Spike Speak.
Why This is a Bad Link:
- It’s generic and clearly template driven. It just looks spammy.
- Fake email address. Only blog admins see your email address on a comment, so why give a fake one?
- It was blocked by Cookies For Comments (CFC) as spam. If it looks spammy to CFC, you can rest assured that it looks spammy to Google and the other search engines.
If you have ever heard someone complaining that they got “Google Slapped” and were knocked out of the search results, odds are good that it is because they were participating in link building such as this.
We deleted this comment right off the bat. And I now assume that this company is probably not legit since they (or their vendor) used spammy SEO practices.
There is more to link building than just links and this type of link building does NOT generate the kind of results that most are looking for, however it is typical of what often happens when you outsource this important element of SEO.
A large part of SEO and Social Media overlap, posting to blogs is one of those areas. Make sure you are actively participating in a positive way with the audience and your link building efforts will be much more effective because of that.
Good social leads to good SEO.
Robert CoatsSenior Search Strategist
Nice article robert, however I must disagree on one point that you made – quote
‘If you have ever heard someone complaining that they got “Google Slapped” and were knocked out of the search results, odds are good that it is because they were participating in link building such as this.’
If someone was to get slapped by google for creating such links then im sure many of us would go around creating such links for our competitors. You will not get penalized for such a link however if you are paying someone to create backlinks for you and they do them in the same form as the example you posted above then yes i agree you need to put a stop to it.
Firstly because the link will more or less have no value.
it will not get approved
looks very unprofessional
Webmasters should concentrate on quality links rather then quantity. Use a company that you can trust and make sure you get given reports with direct urls for the backlink.
Thanks for the response! I couldn’t agree more that “Webmasters should concentrate on quality links rather then quantity” but I think we will have to disagree on if links posted by others can penalize your website or not.
While it is true, that Google does recognize that a website owner can not control who links to them and will not intentionally penalize them for for the actions of others, it is also true that Google does look out for sites that are participating in “link spamming” (like our cited example for this post) and Google DOES penalize sites for a variety of reasons, link spamming being one of them.
As we all know, our actions can be positive, neutral or negative. The same is true with SEO. The practice of SEO can have very positive results when done right. However, it can have very negative consequences when it is done wrong. Back-linking (getting other sites to link to yours) can have positive results when it is done in a manner with the end user in mind. Back-linking poorly can have neutral results as you pointed out. However, when back-linking falls into the realm of “link spamming” it can have a negative impact and push your website from page 2 in the search results to page 950.
So could a competitor “link spam” a website and get them removed from the search results. Yes, it can happen. There is even a name for it, “Google Bowling.” Forbes magazine even ran an article about the practice a couple of years ago called The Saboteurs of Search.
Granted, a couple of years ago is like a decade on the Internet so surely Google has fixed their algorithm to eliminate such nefarious practices, right? Well, at the SMX Advanced here in Seattle just last summer, Matt Cutts (famed Google engineer for those that don’t know) was answering questions about Google Bowling. So it is clearly still an issue. Here’s his answer:
The full article of his quote is on WebProNews – How Google Handles Google Bowling.
As you can see, while Google tries to ensure that they don’t penalize websites for the actions of others, their algorithm does penalize link spamming. So, if a competitor can make it look like you are link spamming, then there is the possibility that your site could drop in the rankings. It doesn’t mean that it will, just that the possibility is there for it to happen.
One of Google’s biggest partners in the fight against link spam is the website owner, ensuring that they keep their websites clean of spammy links. Doing so can make Google Bowling and link spamming mostly ineffective because the links are deleted before they are ever posted. Just like the link that initially prompted this post.
We like to think that we help do our part for a better web.