Comments on: Beware Of SEOs Bearing Gifts

By: charlie

charlie — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:59:42 +0000

Just to let you know this organization seems to be at it again – I received one this morning with exactly the same wording. Thanks to your post I will not be taking it seriously!

By: Frank P

Frank P — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:49:46 +0000

Thanks for clarifying – I just didn’t follow because I would see them as very different in terms of their aims.

I was also curious that the tone seemed to be anti adwords, but is this in terms of adwords as an exclusive measure rather than as part of an online marketing strategy?

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:24:40 +0000

>> I could be wrong though

No. Nail on head Kieran.

Been reading some of your posts recently. You’ve been writing some good stuff. Congrats.

@Frank – these guys are basically offering to sell you links on other sites for a monthly fee. If you stop paying the links stop working. Of course that assumes that these links have any value in the first place, and given that this guy obviously isn’t a pro (he wouldn’t need to spam people if he was) I very much doubt his network has value.

Rgds to both
Richard

By: Kieran

Kieran — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:20:04 +0000

My take on it would be you are dependent on bought traffic that will disappear when switched off i.e. your rank will disappear overnight if links are removed …

I could be wrong though

By: Frank P

Frank P — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:00:17 +0000

Hi Richard – I was a bit confused as to what you meant in the lines “So what’s the difference between this and Adwords? Both are chronic, but you’re a lot less likely to get banned from Adwords.”

Just wondering if you could clarify as I was kind of curious.

Cheers,
Frank

By: Kieran

Kieran — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:46:51 +0000

Ha,

Nice post. The bit i find a little off is the reference to competitors. This is a pretty bad example of aggressive selling.

Although to play devils advocate (its always fun). It does bring up an interesting point on these type of services. Being able to seed optimised articles out good PR sites, where the only link on that page is to your site, does work (although as you say, it can be switched off). Dependent on your market, it may be essential that you engage in some type of aggressive links (I am not discussing the service you mentioned above but similar ones that are deemed aggressive). If a business doesn’t, they could very well go under before Google adjusts the playing field accordingly.

I always think it’s best to make a client aware of what their competitors are doing to achieve top spot and then lay all options out on the table, good and bad points.

Sorry, this comment felt a bit rantish. Funny enough, I have just wrote a post on a great link analysis tool that recommends buying links in their reports …

Nice post Richard …

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:15:33 +0000

Richard,

Good on you for exposing this.

I’m sorry to hear you’ve received legal threats for doing it in the past – but it only makes good, clean SEO a tougher market having **** like this being thrown around at our clients.

I have to let a client of mine know at least 2 or 3 times a month that the latest “guarantee you top-notch position on Google” email he just received is simply a scam.

I’m not as brave as you – but I think I’ll start publishing some of these myself.

Good work.

Ricardo