As you know, I’m working on my book and I discovered something interesting yesterday that I just want to share with you. It’s more more of a warning about different ways that people can sell bad SEO.
So I’m working on my book cover (I outsource some of those things). So I’ll go to a site like Fiverr and I’ll look for a graphic designer. And, you know, you want someone who does good work and doesn’t charge a whole lot of money.
When I was done, looking at the cover art, which share with you guys one of these days real soon, I did a search for SEO and, because as you know, I’ve been doing SEO for a very long time, I looked at the highest rated freelancers that were selling SEO and they had some people with great reviews.
They had done hundreds of gigs, 800 to 900 positive reviews, for gigs that they’d done. But something interesting is that they were charging $40 or $50. And what they were promising to give there, there was one guy who said, I’ll build you one link and it’ll cost you $40. And then there was someone else who said, I’m going to build 90 to 130 links for $40. And then somebody next to them was saying, I’ll build you 50 links for $50. And if you do the math, that really comes down to about a dollar a link. And, you know, the only way that they can do that is if they’re running an automated program. I mean, if you think about it, how are they going to build all of those links for that price?
I mean, if it takes 10 to 15 minutes naturally to build a link, they’d be getting $40 for what, for the whole month?
It doesn’t make sense.
So there’s a couple of things to consider:
First is if you have someone creating links for you, you don’t want them all created at once because that’s going to be unnatural and Google’s going to see it and it’s going to be a real issue.
So the other thing is that you don’t want something that’s automated because it means that they’re creating profiles, they’re taking advantage of some kind of a WordPress site that’s no longer being monitored or managed by somebody, or they’re creating fake profiles in a forum and posting links, and they’re probably not really writing anything that’s unique to you.
They’re putting it through engines that spin articles. Article spinning means that you write one article and then it changes out all the verbs and re-orders the sentences to make the article look different and try to trick Google. Right? So the article spinning is usually tied into a program. There was one that I had seen years ago called SEnuke. SEnuke, would create accounts on forums and WordPress sites and it would post a hundred fake profiles and links in an hour. So these were really low quality. The domains themselves might’ve been high value, but the links were low value because they were creating a profile that had no age and no history of contribution and no traffic to their unique page. Right? So they create this and it takes months for Google to find it.
When Google finds it, it just looks like spam basically. And it was interesting because all of the people who are using these services sold on Fiverr, they were all listing great reviews. Oh, this person, this person did a great job and you know, I highly recommend them. And they had over 800 people who had commented on her service, that way. And I’m thinking, well, okay… But there were six people who said it was horrible, you know, gave her one star. She’s getting five star reviews from all sorts of small business owners and people who really don’t know what she’s doing and not enough time has actually passed for them to give her a real five star review. And you know, maybe these sites aren’t really the best place to be shopping for this kind of service.
So I’ll bet you that in six months their sites are not going to be ranking and they’re going to be struggling to do anything to get their sites to show up because Google is going to catch on and then penalize them. And these business owners aren’t ready for that and I don’t think they know enough about Fiverr maybe, but I imagine you can’t go back four months later and change your review of something. So, you know, just a word of caution and some advice for people who are looking at outsourcing SEO and this is something to really consider.
In my review of looking at the people who were there, I’d be more interested in the guy who says that he’ll create one link for $40, because that seems like someone who probably understands what it takes and you should always contact these people if you’re going to be hiring them to do this work and you should ask them a few questions.
You should ask:
1) Do you do all the work in one session or is it distributed over a whole month?
2) Do the linking website owners know that these links are being created?
3) How long will it take for Google to follow the link?
4) Is the site going to tell Google to follow the link or is it a “no follow” link?
I wanted to make you aware of this, so you really understand what healthy links are and what to look for and what questions to ask as you’re coming across outsourcing offers.