Unranked and 0/10 website backlinks

Marketing
1

Hi,

A friend of mine employed a SEO company to help promote his website. The results have been mixed and has he asked me to have a look at what they have or haven’t been doing and to check that their strategy has been both working and non black hat. I’m not a complete expert in this so would be grateful for any advice on the following.

I’ve been studying the Google backlinks on webmaster tools and there are hundreds of links from directory submissions to sites with very low page rank (N/A or 0/10). My question is whether this might be classed as black hat and result in him being sandboxed or is the worst case scenario that these links would just not count for much SEO value even if there are hundreds of them. Most worryingly there are some sites where his site has been submitted to them several hundred times.

Is it only onsite stuff that can get you in trouble?

Many thanks in advance,

2

Sounds like a load of pointless linking to rubbish by someone who is clueless as to what they are doing to me. It is definitely quality and not quantity one should look for in links.

Sounds like automated submissions to, which is also rubbish especially to SE’s

Pointless mass linking is obviously going to get flagged as unnatural so you probably tripped some folder somewhere like someone using watch words does on the telephone or other mediums. (Well you didn’t trip the folder but the naff SEO might have though)

Watch Words - Watch Actions it’s all the same principal…

Just make sure your friend stops paying the numpty to submit auto style to second rate directories.

That’s not my idea of SEO that is risky unnatural linking bound to not look good as it is done so quickly and haphazardly.

3

Appreciate that. I’m still slightly unclear on whether the SEO company have just been doing things that don’t add any value (wasting their time) or whether this mass submission approach would be actually damaging to my mate’s website SERPS position.

If it’s actually damaging his position, what would stop someone mass submitting their competitor’s sites to get their site demoted?

4

It won’t so much damage his site per se. Well that is to say as long as auto submits are stopped.

The SE’s like Google certainly don’t like auto submission to them, well we all know there is no need to submit at all these days and it has been that way for ages.

The most annoying thing down the line will be those naff sub standard directory listings turning up here and there for search terms related to things like the Company name and URL/Domain Name.

A sudden influx of links or whatever to a site is going to get flagged as suspicious at the end of the day though. If the guys site was in the News or there was a good reason for a sudden surge in such things.

It shouldn’t cause too many problems though as long as such practices cease.

At least you can see the second rate submissions made. I would be more concerned about whether auto submission to the SE’s has also been one as if anything that will cause some short term listing problems in regards to ranking IMHO and in my experience.

People sadly don’t listen when the likes of Google ask people not to use auto submitters. However so called SEO’s out there will make money from auto submits to SE’s as well as things like 10,000 backlinks to top notch directories (I am sure you have seen the ds etc?).

So there is a chance if your friends SEO has used something like say WebCEO auto submitter to SE’s it can have some detrimental short term effect on such things as a sites SERPs.

In fact this is a point in case of why people should be more careful when “Building Links”. Every man and his dog has auto submit to this that or the other software with hundreds selling such services, but really there is no benefit that I know of.

I might add I only ever submitted 1 of my sites to the London Business Directory, by hand about 7/8 years ago and that listing still annoys me when it turns up for certain search terms.

IO am sure many will say linking is good the way it sounds like it has been done but I in my experience have to beg to differ.

I had a SEO client whose main problem with his SERPs was masses of submissions in one naff directory (even weirdly p0rn and escort directory links) I emailed the owner of the directory and thankfully the offending listings we’re removed. The clients site was back on page 1 the same week and has been there since. But they had the same problem, in that some idiot who didn’t know what they we’re doing had wangled a SEO job with them and proceeded by doing what it looks/sounds like has been done to your friends site.

It is easy enough to repair any damage though as off site linking can only cause “so much” of a problem and it is not the end of the world. Just stop the willy nilly linking though would be the main thing to do.

If you think any of the links may be causing a problems just try emailing the sites owners.

5

Thanks Mr Flicks,

Once again, very helpful.

6

Can I refer you to this thread - It doesn’t matter how fast you build links, or does it? .

Firstly, the volume, quality of links and and the speed with which you acquire incoming links can’t hurt you or you could hurt competitors simply by spamming backlinks to them from crappy directories, right?

Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with submitting your site to directories, I would do it even if there were no search engines, in fact especially if there were no search engines.

Thirdly, it’s the linking site that’s going to get the penalty since they have the editorial responsibility for those links.

Fourthly… what these guys have done probably isn’t helping your friend rank, but it probably isn’t hurting him either. There’s no such thing as ‘black hat’ SEO, only techniques that don’t work for very long and techniques that do