Just Say No to Verified SEO and TopSEOs

SEO Train Derailed - Sometimes I think the SEO community has become derailed with the constant pursuit of links. I'm not talking about the top tier Internet Marketing firms that work for fortune 500 companies, although the recent JC Penney link Spam has me scratching my head. I am referring to the little guys and some mid market agencies. As I expand my client portfolio I get to see more and more work that was performed by the smaller companies and individuals I follow on Twitter and SEO blogs and some of you are crossing the line.

Trending - I am starting to see SEO firms charging monthly fees to build links regardless of quality. I can't argue that you need links to rank for traffic terms but the missing ingredient here is QUALITY! It finally dawned on me what is going on and why some companies are still building hundreds of low quality links. For the money! That's it. They are just charging monthly fees to build a certain number of links each month. As far as I'm concerned this is a scam. Yes you are doing what you said you were going to do, build links, but you are not helping the client. You are just creating monthly income for yourself. Those of you that *think* you have proof that your 500 article submissions with targeted link text has improved search results for targeted terms need only refer to the J.C. Penney debacle. This is a house of cards and I hear the wind blowing.

SEO community at fault? - Almost every top SEO blog has multiple articles about how important it is to build links to your website. These articles are then used by SEO agencies and individuals to justify their work. Maybe more Top SEOs need to write a post or two about shoddy work. If you have to "out" someone then so be it. People are using top SEO blogs to justify risky and low quality link building. There have been a few like Stop Building S*&t Links over at Hobo-Web but that's dated and apparently an ignored concept.

What needs to stop? - I understand how difficult it can be to acquire quality links for a small business but that does not excuse some of the practices that are going on. It amazes me that some SEOs are still using semi-automated link swaps and mass links pages. Sure, 3 or 4 years ago this boosted rankings but trading links on database driven link pages between a Japanese Restaurant in California and a diesel engine mechanic in Alabama is lazy SEO work. I question your motive. Is it to fill a quota and get paid? The next issue is article submission. I admit I have done article submission but 2 or 3 articles on a few of the top article sites was a great way to introduce a new site to the search engines. Sometimes, if you submit quality articles, they might actually generate traffic and that's really what the motive should be, targeted traffic. Here is the problem, some of you are submitting  a hundred or more low quality articles per month and charging your clients because you reached your monthly link building quota. If that's not the motive then the only answer is that you think you are doing what J.C. Penney was doing and you don't think you will be caught. Neither motive is respectable.

Google's Part - Google appears to be doing its part to some degree. They need to continue discounting mass article submissions and non-relevant links. I don't think they can penalize for it because competitors could use it as a tactic to hurt their competition. I'm not a fan of penalties anyway because some of these business owners (unlike JCPenney?) had no idea what their SEO was doing, other than charging them monthly fees. There is talk that Google is lowering the value of article networks too. When the Farmer Update (Panda) came out it definitely hit top article networks like eZine so there is bound to be a trickle effect.

Summary - Recently I have considered turning down 2 new clients because of their link profile. I am always worried that this thing is ready to implode and it's going to fall on me. In most cases the customer has no idea which SEO they hired in the past performed what work. I have to document the current link profile, explain what it means to the potential client, and then tell them what parts might come crashing down. So here I am holding the bag while the link spammer already got paid and moves to the next victim. I'm ready to see a change but sometimes I think, so what? Let it go, do good work, get more customers. The problem is that it does affect me. Potential customers have been bled dry and their house of cards could fall on me.