Professional SEO – It’s hard to find.
A bit of a rant.
I spent this afternoon putting together an email for a client explaining to them how nofollow links from blog comments is worth next to nothing when it comes to rankings. Their current SEO reported these in their SEO report as the links they built for them. I explained how these comment links, which are nofollow, are useless. This is because someone said it was inaccurate when I said nofollow link building was bad.
This is why SEO gets no respect as a profession. Companies misinform and scam clients because most people do not understand SEO. They get to charge the thousands of dollars for their “link building” services, which consist primarily of article distribution (some of those are nofollowed) and comment links (those are all nofollow).
I’m an upfront guy. I engage in SEO that is less than ideal at times. I do this for research, testing, practice, fun, and … money. I sometimes play around in… well… “interesting” niches because the SEO in those spaces is amazing at times. I understand the difference in tactics though. Tactics I test on affiliate sites or crash and burn domains, are not the tactics I’d use to promote a business. There are tactic I promote via this blog, that I do not recommend for a real business.
When you optimize a site for a business, you run the risk of killing thousands or millions in revenue if you destroy Google’s trust in their domain. You have a responsibility to that business.
The style of their comments*:
(not their comment, but I recreated an example)
*They actually charge for this and report it as link building.
“Hi bob, this is an amazing post on link building. I hear links really help in rankings.
If you like link building, than you should check out SEO Zombie, which provides a lot of valuable resources to help you learn SEO. Justin provides some ugly, but effective, MFA Adsene Ready Themes. If you want to learn more from this SEO Consultant, you should check out his blog”
I didn’t put a nofollow on them here, but this is the type of crap being left on people’s blogs (the links are nofollowed on people’s blogs). This SEO company (who is well known and fairly respected) is calling this “link building”.
So I was told that I was “inaccurate” to say that type of link building is either useless or very low quality, or even borderline spam. I replied that I’m willing to stand behind my statement.
If leaving comments like that is the quality of link building someone should expect for thousands of dollars a month, someone please inform me. I could outsource this crap to someone on Digital Point.
[I’m not naïve enough to believe that nofollow never counts. I don’t believe Google has 100% accuracy and I believe that Google reserves the right to ignore nofollow. I know spam still works, I’ve done it. I simply do not see it as a high level tactic or a respectable tactic that should be sold for thousands of dollars, when it could be outsourced to a button mashing monkey]
End Rant.
Popularity: 16% [?]
I’ve been doing a bit of SEO work for people in the travel niche. Not much but here and there and it’s amazing the amount of people who don’t know anything. This guy just started a travel SEO site (i guess he’s my competitor?) and I went through his stuff and thought wow, if he’s making money of that garbage…
Like you I’m upfront. I don’t do anything for clients, I wouldn’t do on my own money sites. In fact, I’ve never even gone after blog comments. That would never fly as link building with me. That’s more marketing your brand than it is SEO.
Just raise ur prices…maybe then people will believe you more lol
They get away with it because people just don’t know, and for clients since their paying thousands and the SEO firm has a professional looking website, then they must know what they are talking about. It’s all about marketing.
Buyer Beware
Finding honest people on the internet is like finding…well it is not quite like anything else.
The problem is that some of the apparently reputable, professional SEO companies outsource the link building process to some Joe in India/Pakistan/Russia etc etc. Result = poor quality backlinks. I’ve used some of these link building services in the past but simply canned them when I saw the link reports. Now I everything myself.
P.S Love the pdf on building your own link network – exactly what I’d do IF I were building a blogging network ;)
Isn’t it crazy!!!
I have lost count of the amount of comments I have dropped from seo companies using anchors such as “seo services” “seo consultant”, some of them are generic through out my blog. Click through to the site and they are a professional SEO company practicing cutting edge techniques!! What!! It’s laughable and makes our job harder.
You mentioned article directories and even though I do agree a lot are a waste of time, some hold ‘domain trust’ in abundance and I have seen some pretty amazing results through article marketing in competitive niches, so I wouldn’t totally write it off.
I think link building for a client should be done with a solid strategy in mind, discovering which pages of a site is going to attract the links and market it accordingly. I would use article marketing and “relevant”, “trusted” directories to provide some solid anchor text.
It was a bit of a rant Justin, but something every business owner could really do with reading before entering an SEO contract.
Great SEO rant Justin!
I *know a guy* in the real world who works for a large firm and some of the stupid stuff he does is hilarious. What is even worse is the money these Fortune 500 companies pay him (his company) for pretty much nothing! The way they are able to get away with it is in a super good sales pitch. They basically let the customer know “your niche will take years to move up in” and then they are set for the long haul.
good rant, I don’t know any SEO’s but if leaving comments is their primary strategy then they are retarded. btw. I know you know this but there are quite a few blogs that are do follow as well as news sites.
Even so In my limited experience blog, news, reply comments don’t do much. You want some for the diversity but there is so much better juice available with other methods for the $/time.