You will be able to tell if your SEO company is a good seo company – will record all gained links, and the links should be from similar industries with good traffic and pagerank. If it is non of these, then you are probably weakening the good links you have gained. Links from unrelated industries, with no good quality content and a low pagerank will really hurt your website.
>> there’s no easy, quick fix to a situation like this
That’s true. Because the one thing almost certain not to be involved is the links gained by the third-party SEO company. Why so sure? Because the original comment claimed it happened just one week after agreeing to have some links built.
Most SEO consultants and agencies have seen this many times. A client gets interested in SEO, does a whole load of things that include an outsource, and when something goes wrong, instantly blame the outsource. But the timeline of just one week from AGREEING to have links built (never mind when/if any actually were) is a big clue that this is highly unlikely to be the cause.
Two main places to look are:
First, how stable the lost rankings were. Could these have been recent results still getting a freshness boost that simply ran out of fresh? Had these positions been steady for at least 3 months prior to the drop?
Second, what else was being done on-site in the six months prior to the drop. In particular, was any form of reciprocal linking used?
Great point, I think there is a distinction between black hat and shady SEO companies and clients not understanding the process and building process of SEO and then blaming it on an honest SEO company…Also thanks for the additional tips of where a site could look for additional clues to fix any issues.
How exactly can a whois help identify the web host?
As inbound links are not under a the target domains control it would seem unlikely that bad inlinks can have a negative effect. MOre likely they just have no effect.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
You will be able to tell if your SEO company is a good seo company – will record all gained links, and the links should be from similar industries with good traffic and pagerank. If it is non of these, then you are probably weakening the good links you have gained. Links from unrelated industries, with no good quality content and a low pagerank will really hurt your website.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
>> there’s no easy, quick fix to a situation like this
That’s true. Because the one thing almost certain not to be involved is the links gained by the third-party SEO company. Why so sure? Because the original comment claimed it happened just one week after agreeing to have some links built.
Most SEO consultants and agencies have seen this many times. A client gets interested in SEO, does a whole load of things that include an outsource, and when something goes wrong, instantly blame the outsource. But the timeline of just one week from AGREEING to have links built (never mind when/if any actually were) is a big clue that this is highly unlikely to be the cause.
Two main places to look are:
First, how stable the lost rankings were. Could these have been recent results still getting a freshness boost that simply ran out of fresh? Had these positions been steady for at least 3 months prior to the drop?
Second, what else was being done on-site in the six months prior to the drop. In particular, was any form of reciprocal linking used?
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Great point, I think there is a distinction between black hat and shady SEO companies and clients not understanding the process and building process of SEO and then blaming it on an honest SEO company…Also thanks for the additional tips of where a site could look for additional clues to fix any issues.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
How exactly can a whois help identify the web host?
As inbound links are not under a the target domains control it would seem unlikely that bad inlinks can have a negative effect. MOre likely they just have no effect.