You probably already know that, generally speaking, the more quality links there are back to your website, the better your Google rankings will be.
First, what do I mean by “quality”?
3 basic attributes of “quality” websites include:
- Have content that is very useful to people
- Well established in a well defined or uncontested niche with lots of web traffic
- Reputable and official in some way like Government extensions like gov or govt (eg if you were an accountant, a link to your website from ird.govt.nz would be awesome)
If your website is good, you’ll probably get lots of links back to your site (“backlinks”) anyway, but it is tempting to accelerate the process.
I get email spam from Indian/Indonesian based firms offering link building services every day (my Gmail spam filter struggles to keep up).
They make big promises “#1 Google ranking guaranteed” and they use industry jargon (llike “whitehat” and “PageRank”) and specific promises to try to impress “20 links on PageRank 3 blogs + 20x PR4 + 10x PR5…”
You must be wondering:
- Can you trust them?
- Do you need them?
- Are their link building techniques legitimate?
No, no and no.
Here are 5 reasons why you should never hire anyone to build links to your website:
- As a rule, never support any offer delivered via SPAM. It just encourages more spam.
- If they are spamming you, they are offering this deal to the whole planet therefore if they get thousands of customers the techniques they use lose effectiveness
- Think ahead: Would thousands of links back to you on random blogs be useful to your potential customers? If not, Google will ignore them eventually if they don’t already
- It could actually damage your Google rankings, if they use “black hat” techniques for you which Google has identifies as attempts to game the system
- Google is trying very hard to deliver increasingly localised search results so a link to your website from a website in Cambodia about chickens is becoming more and more irrelevant
So what can you do?
Do it yourself:
- Write useful articles on your website that people will want to link to and share
- Register your website with New Zealand based online business directories
- Write useful and value-adding comments to blog articles about your industry
Never hire anyone to do it for you, they will just take your money, and any benefits you get from the work they do will last 5 minutes.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Good points Sheldon, I started writing a reply here that was getting a bit long so I turned it into a related post in my own blog. Hope you don’t mind me using a trackback http://kiore.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/bulk-directory-submission-spam.html An abbrievated form follows:
It’s not just the blog comment submitters that people need to be worried about, there are a lot of emails offering directory submission services. There’s nothing wrong with professional link builders submitting to directories as part of a balanced service, I’m talking about the ones who simply offer a “directory submission service”, especially the ones who advertise through spam.
I run reciprocal directories so I get to see the other end of these bulk submitters efforts. I check every submitted site & I assume other serious directory owners do too, I see the same kind of submission over and over again, each of the teams that target my directories has a “signature” to their posts making them stand out to me and I simply delete their submissions on sight. They must have a low success rate.
The message for site owners is using these directory submitter spammers is going to hurt you.
* You won’t get the number of links you think you’ll get
* You’ll get links from low quality directories on the same page as dozens of spammy links.
Bruce
Thanks Bruce! On your article you talk about “reputable link building services”.
Can you tell us more about how to choose a “reputable link building service”. I’m worried even the local ones actually hire the overseas based ones anyway and are just the middle-men!
Hi Sheldon,
That’s a tough one. Because I run directories I see the other side of link builders, not the sales office. I can think off the top of my head of half a dozen New Zealand SEO / link building services who (from my viewpoint) do a good job getting their customers included in directories, but that isn’t to say that there aren’t just as many others I can’t think of. There’s also SEO experts who aren’t interested in link building via directories (at least in my directories). SEO is not an exact science and certain actions that some services regard as a vital part of the processes, other services regard as a bad thing to do.
I don’t want to name names as I don’t have a comprehensive list and I am also a little uncomfortable with the prospect of publicly endorsing a business that may change ownership/management at some future date and change the way they work.
Disclaimers over, all the link builders who I have a good ongoing relationship with are in New Zealand, they all offer full service SEO (on-site as well as off-site), a little over 1/2 of them are primarily website designers with a specialist SEO service sideline, two are web copywriters (on-site SEO)
The bit about them all being in New Zealand is probably a side effect of the fact that my established directories are for New Zealand sites only. I’ve recently started some international niche directories, but they haven’t gained much traction yet. In a year’s time I may well know some good international link builders.
I do suggest using NZ based link builders as you can easily phone them up and discuss your business. Local businesses you can sit down and have a coffee with are even better. There’s also the benefit that you are putting money back into the local economy.
Another thing to look for are testimonials / reference sites. They may not want to list them on their website but they should be able to quote someone.
BTW: From the viewpoint of quality I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a New Zealand service hiring overseas people to do a lot of the “grunt work” as long as they retain control of the quality of that work. Of course, it puts less money back into the local economy but that’s another story.
Bruce
ok, good stuff. Thanks Bruce!
I think outsourcing is a great way to grow a business if you really want to scale, free up time and save money. Most major companies leverage the power of this, take Google for example who operate their customer support and contact center from the Philippines.
The problem isn’t outsourcing but who you choose to use for it. If you think of it like hiring contractors when you are building a house. There will be some that do an incredibly high quality job and make everything easy and others that won’t. It’s simply a matter of finding the right company or person for the job (which no matter what industry ii relates to is not always easy!).
So Nathan, what are the 5 things people should look for when choosing an SEO company?
thanks for advise