Forum Moderators: martinibuster
1.) No PR constraints, I favour relevancy
2.) The link page has to be indexed and in the cache of Google
3.) Link page is level 3 (two clicks from the homepage) maximum
4.) Maximum 50 links per page
5.) No triangular linking
6.) No blogs, forum links or directories
Now I received quite a hefty bill and a list with 60-odd links, of which more than 50% consisted of www.urlwithindiantermsinit.tld in various versions and php-generated content in exactly the same layout - obviously clones of the same website.
Value of the links: Close to 0, I guess. It was an experiment and my conclusion is that I will not hire link building agencies again. Besides, my contact person was Dutch, whereas all the work was apparently done in India.
2.) The link page has to be indexed and in the cache of Google
Are you aware of the fact that many sites expressly opt-out of the Google cache by using meta tags and that there are many legitimate uses for that?
I need some hag hunters to bake me some monkey-stuffed naan after reading all this.
Please tell me you didn't pay the bill for that curry sandwich.
bcolflesh, what the hell are you on.
If you have nothing suitable to say then DON'T
[edited by: MetaFunk at 12:46 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2007]
I'm sorry to hear you got stung from a shady business in the SEO/Link building business. But do not pass judgement on the Link building niche, when you got bad linking from one business!
<snip>
[edited by: engine at 1:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2007]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
In fact, I had enough respect - and trust - in my subcontractor to point out that I want "ethical" or "white hat" link building, expecting that he or she would be both experienced and honest enough to accept or not.
Regarding the price: It was not the cheapest arrangement, although I disliked that the price was assigned based on PR.
You are right that I should have asked for the person who actually does the work and how - in fact, I did, but I was told that this is the company's secret. Since the job was an experiment, I agreed.
To me, link building = advertising.
Public relations can be useful, too. If you've invented a better mousetrap, let the world (and, more specifically, the press) know about it. A few good links from THE NEW YORK TIMES or ModernWidget.com are likely to be worth more than a bunch of commodity link exchanges.
Btw, link monkey is a common industry term for link hunters, it's not a derogatory phrase.
MB, I view it as a derogatory phrase. I surely wouldn't refer to those professionals that I know who perform these services as Link Monkeys. I think that would be insulting, yes?
I mean, I have this vision of Monkeys playing about in their habitat. Instead of vines, they have links. Its somewhat amusing...
That one dude in the beginning was particulaly convinced that he was right and I was wrong. I can get irrelevant links buy the buckload. In fact into the millions and I can tell you off topic links work just fine. My job has been to play with links all day for years and years.
I can get links English anchor from chinese, russian, arabic sites with correct anchor and it works just fine.
So for the benefit of the people who do not link off topic here is what really counts.
1) Link tld ( .de links will help you in germans serps)
2) IP address of links ( .de IP's will help you in germans serps)
3) page rank of links and how many links point at the page you are getting linked from.
Sorry to dissappoint but relevance may be small part of it butm there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Say I have a blog and I write about stuff, any old stuff what is the theme of my site?
Someone links to me with the anchor " Crush Says" " Look at Crush" "Crush is Relevant" "This guy is a w@anker". All these blogs that are linking to me are all on different subjects so where is the themeing? It is just impossible to theme because it is such a mess of domains that the reults would be garbage.
Do you guys really think that search engines look at all the words on the page,then theme the site to decide if the link is relevant to give me a better serp? Sorry to scoff but absolutely not.
Search engines just look at anchor text.Sad but true only anchor text and the page where that anchor text is coming from. That is it, nothing more at all.
[edited by: Crush at 7:56 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2007]
...there is more than one way to skin a cat
I hire monkeys to do this - I sit and watch while eating naan. This doesn't seem to have any effect on my target SERPs though...
Sorry to dissappoint but relevance may be small part of it butm there is more than one way to skin a cat.
I agree that currently off topic links work. There are sites ranking for really competitve terms with only off topic links. That may not always be the case, though, so personally I think unless you have a throw away domain it is probably safer to have a natural assortment back links from related sites.
Rather, our algorithms are tuned to look for patterns of "egregious" linking behavior... both on individual sites and in the aggregate. - Adam Lasnik - [webmasterworld.com...]and
I have previously reported that we carried out an experiment on a link network which made the error of publishing "non-themed" links onto the test site. [ We intended to make sure that all links were theme related ].
e.g. the site was about Boats and lingerie links were mistakedly published on it.If the link monkey's are placing links from a lingerie directory to an auto site the chances are you're wasting your money, but not likely to be penalised. The referrer will however loose the power of sending link juice by the removal of PR influence .
So a lot depends on what links these folks built for you, and how as to whether you wasted your money.
Lastly, a condition of the ordering from a commercial point of view should have been that the links provided influence. If they didn't, then your agreement should have permitted you not to have paid the link building service. There's plenty of others that will do the job well.
[edited by: Whitey at 5:17 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
Global warming might kill us too. Then again it might not. Absolutely right about the throw away domain though.
It is not about waiting for maybes. You need more than one domain to be safe anyway. I would never rely on one site for anything. You deserved to get burned. If it is a hobby site then OK I feel for you but from a commercial point of view you need some backup.
Maybe I am scarred from many fights with Google but I have been banned a few times and learned my lesson well. Once Google bans you, you can forget about following their guidelines and saying how good you were. It all falls on deaf ears. Sort of like Darth Vader turning to the dark side. I understand they have a terribly tricky job to do and there can be a lot of collateral damage from any algo change but until there is a time when I can appeal a bad decision I am going to make an arsenal of back up for all occassions.
Wow,that was off topic. Where is teh Nann bread?
how would you specify/measure "influence"?
Positive :
- If the links cause you to lift in your rankings .
Negative :
- If the referring page has been stripped of either / or
cache
visible PR / ** remember this takes time to adjust up or down on the toolbar, however it's effect can be sudden
[edited by: Whitey at 11:07 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
Unfortunately, the link information that Google provides for public view is not that reliable, an intentional ploy IMO , so you will need to do a number of checks.
Linking takes more skilled people with indepth understanding of the website's industry, the target audience, target market etc., One should try to get natural link as much as possible such as social listings, media promotion, article writing & promotion, "paid" press release promotions, bookmarking etc.,..
Referring to someone as a * monkey is not really derogatory (unless directed in that way). It has been used in the industry to signify a particular level of coder. A monkey is just a low level coder who is doing the grunt work to learn more. They churn out code without really understanding what they do, the same with cheap hired link developers.
I used to be a web monkey and never had any problems with that term.
For more information see here
[en.wikipedia.org...]
Getting back on topic, paying link monkeys is not a good strategy because they will do things like that. As other people have suggested, you need a link MASTER and these are not cheap or easy to find so you will be better off doing it yourself.
Sometimes things in life are hard and take a long time, there is a reason for this. If everyone could hire a link monkey for $60 and get to the top of google for any terms then we would all be doing it.
I can get links English anchor from chinese, russian, arabic sites with correct anchor and it works just fine.
Yes, right now it does. I would not want to be in the shoes of the guy who never sandbagged his house because 'the river never got this high before'
Keep an eye on the past, a stake in the future and a hand in the pocket
"Search engines just look at anchor text.Sad but true only anchor text and the page where that anchor text is coming from. That is it, nothing more at all."
I often wondered about that. If what Crush says is true, the staff at Google must be reading posts about our paranoia about relevance and laughing. But on the other hand I wonder if Crush is right. Here is why he might be wrong:
Google is nothing more than a database. It probably has one database record for each webpage it decides to put in its index. At any time, it can run a script to determine the theme of each page (record) in its database and store that information in a field in each record for later use. Once stored in the each record, it can at any time run another script to determine the overall average of the "theme" fields of all the records that link to any other page in its database and store that data in the record for that page in a field called "reputation." I do not think this is hard to do.
But as Crush seems to imply in a previous post, a large number of unrelated links would throw it off course. That does not mean the site in particular is unrelated. Therefore it could be that Google is unable to use the simple method I have mentioned here and Crush is right. There are too many exceptions to a rule to "enforce" it as a rule. Perhaps it is us that should be laughing at Google.
I don't think he waits until caught. Probably repeats it all on a weekly/monthly basis so he's always ahead. :)
Of course off topic links are bad for a manual check that is why I suggest using a throw away domain.
Somehow I doubt the original poster was referring to link building for throwaway domains...
Your condition of maximum 50 outbounds per page could have given the hint to the other party that you are not very serious on quality. 50 links? That is too high. Max should have been 20 links. And link pages are a big no no as well. If you are going to be paying for the links, why not go for internal page links than typical link pages that are cluttered with links.
