All the SEO experts are gone (?)

Thought No.2

If you wanna make real money online, stop everything you're doing. Just open an "SEO Companies Reviews" website. I'll be your first customer.

Good idea. I believe it, I think fiverr, odesk, elance, freelancer is not a good way to earning huge money from SEO. here have many contractor who do SEO work. But they did not worked very good. But i think every work need quality. So i am agreed about it. As soon i will start a SEO company. I hope i will get good result. Thanks

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Adie

10 years ago

Everyone is afraid of claiming to be an SEO expert now. No one can give any guarantee.

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MatthewReece

10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

Just sharing 2 thoughts:

Thought No.1

I was thinking to hire an SEO company / freelancer.

After doing a very deep research, turns out all the candidates are:

1. Using black hat strategies.
or
2. Don't have any portfolio with relevant examples.
or
3. Delegating the work to other "Fiverr's" / 3rd world companies on Elance etc without telling you.
or
4. Promising you 1st page on Google or money back.

Where do you guys find decent SEO experts?

Thought No.2

If you wanna make real money online, stop everything you're doing. Just open an "SEO Companies Reviews" website. I'll be your first customer.

You made a kind of very strange research. It feels like you specifically looked for second-rate company.

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Icematikx

10 years ago

Here's the deal.

There is no such thing as SEO. SEO is a term that has been adopted, and has dozens of meanings. SEO to one person means making a facebook page. SEO to another person means spamming blog comments with Scrapebox. If I could make the world stop using the word "SEO", I would. Tomorrow.

Whatever you do online is classified as Digital Marketing. If you want to create a sustainable business, you need digital marketing (not SEO). If you have a business, then why are you hiring people to build links? Eventually, you'll be penalised. You know it will come down the road. Even the big multi-billion companies can't escape.

And, with that said, if you want a build, sustainable business for years to come, approach it as marketing, not SEO. I only have a handful of clients, because I charge £40 per hour. I don't charge for "Package A" or "Package B". I charge per the hour. A client will come to me and say, "I want to improve my rankings for widescreen TV's."

I'll show the client my previous campaigns and results I've achieved. I'll state my hourly rate is £40 per hour. They will give me a budget and off we go. Everything I do is about building PR and brand recognition/brand awareness. If backlinks come with that - cool! Sometimes, I approach newspapers with a worthy cause and achieve a backlink in the process - from a PR7-PR9 site - but that isn't what I'm trying to achieve.

In the real world, you need to get away from the whole era of "SEO". Real businesses do marketing - nothing else.

And yes, I say real businesses do marketing because building links isn't long-term. Google could decide to drop your URL from the index tomorrow. Then what? Your business is shattered? People just have no idea that building a business is the long-term.

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

I guess you only looked at Fiverr, Freelancer and the advertisement sections on this forum.

I don't see much blackhat being offered though, it's more like grey hat.

You want whitehat? Pull your wallet!

90% of the SEO companies that you find in Google use private blog networks to rank clients (which is grey hat) as well and you would probably classify that as blackhat.

Couple thousand dollars a month is nothing special when you want real whitehat, are you prepared to spend such amounts?

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Icematikx

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

I guess you only looked at Fiverr, Freelancer and the advertisement sections on this forum.

I don't see much blackhat being offered though, it's more like grey hat.

You want whitehat? Pull your wallet!

90% of the SEO companies that you find in Google use private blog networks to rank clients (which is grey hat) as well and you would probably classify that as blackhat.

Couple thousand dollars a month is nothing special when you want real whitehat, are you prepared to spend such amounts?

Indeed. It all boils down to what you need, and what your budget is. For "whitehat" marketing, there is no "Package A" or "Package B". Most agencies will charge you by the hour, and you won't receive many results for a couple of hours work - even though it'll set you back by a few hundred $$.

Like Nik0 said, private blog networks are the "way" to do things for business owners who can't afford to digitally market their business. Will you take a hit in Google down the line? Yes. Will it be tomorrow? No. Will it be in 6-12months? Probably not.

But, smart business owners will use their profits from ranking to invest in digital marketing to future proof their business.

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dadamson

10 years ago

I know of plenty of credible SEO guys here but you just need search a bit harder and look past all the spammy SEO services around here.

I agree with your point 1 through to 3 but I don't understand why you are avoiding people that offer page 1 guarantee or money back, doesn't that suggest their system just works?

I only ask because I offer pg 1 or money back guarantee. Sure, I'd love to not offer it but I find I get much more interest when I do offer it.

That said, in all honesty I do see around 10% of clients not hit the guarantee, which is obviously disapointing for them and a loss for me. But I feel that as long as we end up getting them to pg 1 in the long run OR returning their investment it seems to be a fair trade-off.

Interested in anyone's thoughts about this..

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Icematikx

10 years ago

Originally Posted by dadamson

I know of plenty of credible SEO guys here but you just need search a bit harder and look past all the spammy SEO services around here.

I agree with your point 1 through to 3 but I don't understand why you are avoiding people that offer page 1 guarantee or money back, doesn't that suggest their system just works?

I only ask because I offer pg 1 or money back guarantee. Sure, I'd love to not offer it but I find I get much more interest when I do offer it.

That said, in all honesty I do see around 10% of clients not hit the guarantee, which is obviously disapointing for them and a loss for me. But I feel that as long as we end up getting them to pg 1 in the long run OR returning their investment it seems to be a fair trade-off.

Interested in anyone's thoughts about this..

I'll place an order with you tomorrow. My primary keyword is "facebook". I hope you'll abide by your promise of page 1 or refund.

Thanks
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dadamson 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Icematikx

I'll place an order with you tomorrow. My primary keyword is "facebook". I hope you'll abide by your promise of page 1 or refund.

Denied! lol

Sorry buddy, I only work with keywords that hit 3 targets.

1. Competition is beatable on the plan level selected.
2. Keywords are highly relative to your website.
3. Keywords attract profitable traffic that takes the appropriate action on your website.

"Facebook" is way too broad to hit any of the above targets. You are either Mark Zuckerberg or just delusional
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Mike Anthony 10 years ago

Originally Posted by dadamson

why you are avoiding people that offer page 1 guarantee

Because although its not a scam its terrible misleading. SEO sellers here have redefined what ranking means to satisfy themselves not the person looking for real traffic.

Position 6-10 is not ranking and yet they call it that despite the low traffic at those positions. For a keyword that gets 15,000 search a month they might as well have TRULY ranked (top 1-3) for a serp that got 700 searches (very rough guess) a month.

and lets face it the evidence of rankings usually used by these services are usually some WEEEEEAK keywords so its more like 500 searches a month and less than one visit a day at position 7 or worse. They probably would be better off with adwords for more traffic
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shayatik 10 years ago

Originally Posted by dadamson

I know of plenty of credible SEO guys here

Share your experience with me please.
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Entrecon

10 years ago

What are you defining as White Hat SEO?

A well designed website that has a good balance of content with keywords? Making sure the site is built with a good structure with the appropriate sitemap, meta tags and .htaccess? Appropriate linking from other valuable websites?

SEO, as mentioned above, seems to get thrown around all the time and means different things to different people. Define what you really want and then go find people who do that.

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Mike Anthony

10 years ago

I do Whitehat SEO but in my entire time at WF I have gotten such a client here ONCE. This is NOT the place to either buy or learn whitehat SEO. I don't even try to sell that here

WF is 99.999% grey hat (which as far as anyone outside of WF is concerned is black hat).

Why? Because REAL white hat is going to START at around $1,000/month (theres no pushing buttons and you have to create top notch content and do alot of manual out reach to web masters). Price may come down with a new tool but right now thats where its at. So you either come up with the cash or come back to at least light grey hat

Second problem is this

Originally Posted by shayatik

or
2. Don't have any portfolio with relevant examples.
or

I and a lot of other SEOs will share work with non IM business customers but you have to be an idiot to show people from WF sites you have ranked. Theres no way of doing that without exposing you SEO resources (PBN etc).

So at the price point of WF it really doesn't make sense to be anything but a link seller and thats essentially what everyone here calls SEO

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Icematikx

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I do Whitehat SEO but in my entire time at WF I have gotten such a client here ONCE. This is NOT the place to either buy or learn whitehat SEO. I don't even try to sell that here

WF is 99.999% grey hat (which as far as anyone outside of WF is concerned is black hat).

Why? Because REAL white hat is going to START at around $1,000/month (theres no pushing buttons and you have to create top notch content and do alot of manual out reach to web masters). Price may come down with a new tool but right now thats where its at. So you either come up with the cash or come back to at least light grey hat

Second problem is this

I and a lot of other SEOs will share work with non IM business customers but you have to be an idiot to show people from WF sites you have ranked. Theres no way of doing that without exposing you SEO resources (PBN etc).

So at the price point of WF it really doesn't make sense to be anything but a link seller and thats essentially what everyone here calls SEO

Indeed.

Warrior forum is this:

FOR $200 YOU GET 10 PBN POSTS, 50 WEB 2.0'S, 100 WIKIS BLAHBLAH!!!

Outside of the WF, it doesn't work like that.

If a client came to me, I'd charge them a fee based on their market and/or competition, or an hourly rate. I won't tell them what they'll get. They will get whatever is possible. If I do an awesome campaign and manage to hit the media, and acquire 100-backlinks - then good stuff!

When was the last time your average WF marketer went out and built links through broken link building? Reaching out to webmasters to acquire links from their content that has deadlinks in it?

Or, creating an infographic and trying to get media publicity for it? Trying to outreach to bloggers to acquire natural links? How can I tell you how many backlinks you're going to get? I can't. You pay for my time. What you get from my time is mixed each month. That is the "whitehat" SEO you speak of.

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ppscslv

10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

Just sharing 2 thoughts:

[...] I was thinking to hire an SEO company / freelancer. [...]

Hmm... In nowadays SEO campaigns needs more time (usually 6-9 months) to have a positive effect. Even for White Hat SEO, you need to wait several months. So, everybody needs weekly or at least monthly SEO campaigns (strongly integrated into social media).

What people don't know that in our times:
- to grow your website traffic and PR you need to never stop using SEO campaigns (white hat) - try to think: what would Google believe if your website will no longer receive new backlinks after 7 months for a long period?;
- if your website is moved from Google's 1st page to 5th page for a targeted keyword it doesn't means that you're hit by Panda, Penguin or other Google's animals (it's just "Google Dance" or your competitors did more white hat SEO campaigns)...

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by ppscslv

What people don't know that in our times:
- to grow your website traffic and PR you need to never stop using SEO campaigns (white hat) - try to think: what would Google believe if your website will no longer receive new backlinks after 7 months for a long period?;

I don't agree with that completely, it depends a lot on the type of links, if you only get perm homepage links for example or on any page with PR and low OBL there's no need to keep receiving links forever, that way it's easy to maintain ranks.

There is no filter that punishes you when you quit receiving links, it's just that most links become weaker as they drop further into sites, and thus your rankings decline as well.

Today you can have a great link from a newspaper on the homepage of a PR6 site, next week it's present on a PR2 page, and after 1 month it's on a PR0 page and 3 months later it's so far away from the homepage that the link is hardly worth it.

And that's why private blog networks are so popular, to get and keep the juice, as there is 100% control of it and stable rankings. Too bad Google isn't too crazy about them but they still work like gold, if they work less these days it's not cause they are less effective but cause the competition also found out about PBN's, and thus the competition is much more fierce then say a year ago.

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kid3378

10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

If you wanna make real money online, stop everything you're doing. Just open an "SEO Companies Reviews" website. I'll be your first customer.

No offense meant to you. I thought you have had a very deep research about SEO's and SEO services.. how come you didn't find any SEO's who were offering companies reviews?

How do you define "expert" in the field of SEO? There are many awesome SEO practitioners out there, whatever hats they are using in their strategies... you will need more very deep research though I guess.

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shayatik

10 years ago

And btw, most of them don't have a decent website where you can see some examples, results, clients etc.

How can u choose the right expert? What are your criterias?

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Electrical

10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

And btw, most of them don't have a decent website where you can see some examples, results, clients etc.

How can u choose the right expert? What are your criterias?

I went with an SEO "Pro" who had a great website, had examples, had a good resume on LinkedIn, and seemed to have the respect of online peers.

6 months later my site went from page 1 to page 3 or 4, my 50 solid local visitors per month is now 7, and all I am left with is a couple hundred links to my website on crappy and spammy article websites. The links are in horribly spun articles and the anchor text barely gets any searches nor does it relate well to my website.

When I asked the guy if he would put his name on his work, he refused to answer the question.

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shayatik

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Electrical

I went with an SEO "Pro" who had a great website, had examples, had a good resume on LinkedIn, and seemed to have the respect of online peers.

6 months later my site went from page 1 to page 3 or 4, my 50 solid local visitors per month is now 7, and all I am left with is a couple hundred links to my website on crappy and spammy article websites. The links are in horribly spun articles and the anchor text barely gets any searches nor does it relate well to my website.

When I asked the guy if he would put his name on his work, he refused to answer the question.

Was he WF member?

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Electrical 10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

Was he WF member?

No, another SEO forum moderator.
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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

And btw, most of them don't have a decent website where you can see some examples, results, clients etc.

How can u choose the right expert? What are your criterias?

Ask yourself first what you expect and in what price range.

Then ask those same questions to potential SEO's.

If there's a match, go with them.

If you ask vague questions you will receive vague answers so be specific.

While asking yourself these questions you can also think whether you really need someone to do that for you or that you can do it yourself.

Expectations: Links from sites that relate to my site in my area.

Steps: Reach out to companies in your area, do some (special discount?) actions or sponsor/donate for your cause in a substantial way to get interviewed by the local press etc. Check the backlink profile of your competitors, try to get the same links.

Whitehat SEO isn't that hard, but it does require a certain creativity and reaching out to people and it's less predictable, a link from a newspaper doesn't mean you'll start to rank at #1 for all your keywords.

You do have a point though about results / clients / examples on websites, I don't have it either but I don't need it as I have reviews in my sales thread, that's called social proof but other sources of traffic (non IM forums) would probably be harder to convert.

Now I could obvious setup a smaller dedicated network that I use to get results to share, isolated from my main network but that wouldn't be too fair either as that wouldn't be the links the people would receive when they sign up and I definitely won't expose my network for the whole world to see.

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yukon

Banned 10 years ago

Maybe SEOs are avoiding you because you mention things like fiverr, 3rd world, money back...?

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shayatik

10 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Maybe SEOs are avoiding you because you mention things like fiverr, 3rd world, money back...?

I didn't mention anything. Just noticed what they offered here and there.

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Mike Anthony

10 years ago

Here knock yourself out

Rankings of Best SEO Services, SEO Companies, SEO Consultants and Internet Marketing Agencies

My bet is you won't like or can't afford their their prices

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Slin

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Here knock yourself out

Rankings of Best SEO Services, SEO Companies, SEO Consultants and Internet Marketing Agencies

My bet is you won't like or can't afford their their prices

Haha! I can't believe Boostability is on that list, I work in the same building as them but for a different SEO firm

I don't bring it up here because I don't want to come off as representing the firm at all.

Not a bad list at all, I'd say it misses a few big companies but then again, what "top" whatever list is considered perfect by everyone?

Yeah if anyone wants true white hat SEO they need to be ready to pay big bucks.

To be honest true white hat SEO is just making good content go viral and basic on-page SEO. In my opinion it's easier than running a PBN, but I don't have a lot of training with those. The costs come from creating inter actives and viral videos, if you're decent with one of those two things I know how to skyrocket your website all around the internet.

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Slin

Haha! I can't believe Boostability is on that list, I work in the same building as them but for a different SEO firm

I don't bring it up here because I don't want to come off as representing the firm at all.

Exactly my thoughts, seems boostability builds a lot of crap links as well like low quality web directories, bookmarks, article directories, almost thought it was some Indian company.

Any details how you would make a piece of content (that has potential to go viral), go viral?

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Slin

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

Exactly my thoughts, seems boostability builds a lot of crap links as well like low quality web directories, bookmarks, article directories, almost thought it was some Indian company.

Any details how you would make a piece of content (that has potential to go viral), go viral?

I'm glad somebody else at least thinks Boostability isn't any good

I just didn't want to bash them in public.

Depends on the piece of content, I usually scrape the site for social shares, then I find out where the content tends to go viral. I reach out to the big names in their niche to show off the content and I promote it socially wherever the piece tends to go more viral.

Once you have a good network built up it can become relatively easy to create some viral content quickly. Even at the beginning it's not too difficult either, you just have to do every contact by hand, the individuality is what will set you apart.

I also have some macros that I made to build up Linkedin and Google+ groups, this can help me easily advertise as well, but it's something I'm just testing out with.

I think you gave me your Skype in a PM, I'll add you and if you ever want some more detailed information on what I do just ask.

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Slin

I'm glad somebody else at least thinks Boostability isn't any good

I just didn't want to bash them in public.

Depends on the piece of content, I usually scrape the site for social shares, then I find out where the content tends to go viral. I reach out to the big names in their niche to show off the content and I promote it socially wherever the piece tends to go more viral.

Once you have a good network built up it can become relatively easy to create some viral content quickly. Even at the beginning it's not too difficult either, you just have to do every contact by hand, the individuality is what will set you apart.

I also have some macros that I made to build up Linkedin and Google+ groups, this can help me easily advertise as well, but it's something I'm just testing out with.

I think you gave me your Skype in a PM, I'll add you and if you ever want some more detailed information on what I do just ask.

So basically link outreach, makes sense.

Lot of work...

Sure setting up a network is also a lot of work but once it's setup it's more easy to outsource content and have a VA post it, then to setup campaigns with awesome viral potential content and reaching out to tons of people.

The outreach is a relatively simple task if you have a VA with brains that can write decent English, but yeah, the piece that has to do it, the viral content, will be a lot more time consuming / expensive and requires a good doses of creativity I guess. People want something unique and unique is not up for grabs.

Take the SEO niche for example, hard to write a guide that beats what Backlinko did with his 200 ranking factors thing and x untapped link sources and that kind of stuff. All the authorities know each other in each niche so you can't just copy someone elses work and rewrite it in your own words, it really needs some unique element that isn't easy to come up with.

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Slin

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

So basically link outreach, makes sense.

Lot of work...

Sure setting up a network is also a lot of work but once it's setup it's more easy to outsource content and have a VA post it, then to setup campaigns with awesome viral potential content and reaching out to tons of people.

The outreach is a relatively simple task if you have a VA with brains that can write decent English, but yeah, the piece that has to do it, the viral content, will be a lot more time consuming / expensive and requires a good doses of creativity I guess. People want something unique and unique is not up for grabs.

Take the SEO niche for example, hard to write a guide that beats what Backlinko did with his 200 ranking factors thing and x untapped link sources and that kind of stuff. All the authorities know each other in each niche so you can't just copy someone elses work and rewrite it in your own words, it really needs some unique element that isn't easy to come up with.

Very true, that's why they pay us so much to just think of new ideas. We have found that certain things tend to go more viral lately than others.

PBN's are great, and it's funny because no one at my firm knows anything about them, every once in awhile they'll ask me things about what's going on over on the blackhat side of SEO.

The only problem with PBN's is you risk getting hit, now someone who is very good can always reduce that risk, but it still exists. The last thing you want to do is get one of your $100,000 a month clients hit with a penalty. Plus it's easier to make content go viral when your client is already a pretty big authority in the niche.

The other thing that helps is taking a real data approach to everything. I myself am an economics major, so I love scraping data and calculating which types of content tend to go more viral and what days are better to post on. That's something that not many white hat SEO places tend to do unfortunately, but we've been seeing some even higher levels of success than before thanks to some good data analysis.

It's funny though, all of the whitehat SEO guys seem to think that the grass is greener on the other side

and all of the blackhat SEO guys tend to say the opposite after an update comes out. After being on both sides of the coin, I think I can safely say that they both have their fun points.

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Slin

Very true, that's why they pay us so much to just think of new ideas. We have found that certain things tend to go more viral lately than others.

PBN's are great, and it's funny because no one at my firm knows anything about them, every once in awhile they'll ask me things about what's going on over on the blackhat side of SEO.

The only problem with PBN's is you risk getting hit, now someone who is very good can always reduce that risk, but it still exists. The last thing you want to do is get one of your $100,000 a month clients hit with a penalty. Plus it's easier to make content go viral when your client is already a pretty big authority in the niche.

The other thing that helps is taking a real data approach to everything. I myself am an economics major, so I love scraping data and calculating which types of content tend to go more viral and what days are better to post on. That's something that not many white hat SEO places tend to do unfortunately, but we've been seeing some even higher levels of success than before thanks to some good data analysis.

It's funny though, all of the whitehat SEO guys seem to think that the grass is greener on the other side

and all of the blackhat SEO guys tend to say the opposite after an update comes out. After being on both sides of the coin, I think I can safely say that they both have their fun points.

If you guys deal with such budgets you can buy complete sites in your niche and use them as private network for traffic + rankings. Look what Freelancer.com did, they bought Warrior Forum, and they bought other sites that they simply redirected to Freelancer.com

Smaller scale light hat PBN is also possible, buy aged domains relevant to your niche, setup a decent site on it, and buy expired high PR domains and link from them to your "feeder" site. That way it's a tiered way of link building, which is already more safe, client will definitely not tank cause of that.

The larger budget you have the better you can execute it.

On this forum there are 4 categories of PBN, from worse to better:

Category 1: 100 blog posts for $20,- on public networks like ALN, full of deindexed domains

Category 2: 100 blog posts for $200,- on private networks, surrounded by spun content, high chance of deindexation

Category 3: 100 blog posts for $500,- on private networks, surrounded by written content, no chance of deindexation

Category 4: expired domains that are being sold or rent out

With chance of deindexation I mean done by Google's algorithm in an automatic detected way.

There is another risk of manual deindexation of course when Google specifically attacks (an often very large) PBN or when Google attacks a specific SEO host, which I personally lost a few domains due to, so I avoid that as much as I can now.

I would like to make whitehat SEO a part of my service, like a 50/50 mix, but it's almost impossible price wise, and besides that, no one would ever link to 80%+ of my clients sites, just not interesting enough and for the price I charge it would be impossible to also add content creation to the mix. Lately I bought myself a piece of content, hired a professional copy writer, you know what these costs. That's like 6 months of my monthly service lol, and that kind of quality you probably do need to function as link bait.

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Slin

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

If you guys deal with such budgets you can buy complete sites in your niche and use them as private network for traffic + rankings. Look what Freelancer.com did, they bought Warrior Forum, and they bought other sites that they simply redirected to Freelancer.com

Smaller scale light hat PBN is also possible, buy aged domains relevant to your niche, setup a decent site on it, and buy expired high PR domains and link from them to your "feeder" site. That way it's a tiered way of link building, which is already more safe, client will definitely not tank cause of that.

The larger budget you have the better you can execute it.

On this forum there are 4 categories of PBN, from worse to better:

Category 1: 100 blog posts for $20,- on public networks like ALN, full of deindexed domains

Category 2: 100 blog posts for $200,- on private networks, surrounded by spun content, high chance of deindexation

Category 3: 100 blog posts for $500,- on private networks, surrounded by written content, no chance of deindexation

Category 4: expired domains that are being sold or rent out

With chance of deindexation I mean done by Google's algorithm in an automatic detected way.

There is another risk of manual deindexation of course when Google specifically attacks (an often very large) PBN or when Google attacks a specific SEO host, which I personally lost a few domains due to, so I avoid that as much as I can now.

I would like to make whitehat SEO a part of my service, like a 50/50 mix, but it's almost impossible price wise, and besides that, no one would ever link to 80%+ of my clients sites, just not interesting enough and for the price I charge it would be impossible to also add content creation to the mix. Lately I bought myself a piece of content, hired a professional copy writer, you know what these costs. That's like 6 months of my monthly service lol, and that kind of quality you probably do need to function as link bait.

Yeah with that kind of money you can do some pretty cool things where you buy other sites, we don't do that so much where I work mainly because those guys are afraid to get their hands dirty

but they have a great reputation and what we do works really well.

Yeah the price that you need for real whitehat SEO can get pretty steep. Have you ever considered making your clients provide the content? Articles can still go viral, just require that they are 2,000 or more words.I could even show you some cool ways to get content to go viral pretty quickly

it's actually pretty basic when it comes down to it. The key is just to contact influencers and become a big name in your niche.

The sites that people generally don't link to we call "non-sexy sites". The key for these sites is to find relevant content that people will link to. The traffic at first isn't as targeted, but the links give you more authority, and in the end you can rank for a lot of relevant keywords. I've done SEO work for an insurance company once and that's how we had to do it. It worked really well.

The content generally just needs to be good relevant content. I can give you an example, I just wrote an SEO article for a start up SEO company, I freelance for them to pay for some extra projects I have going on. Anyway they just started everything up yesterday and released my article as a test, in one day it got over 400 views. I think that's pretty good for the first day for a website. The content wasn't anything new, the key is just to try to get your content out there in the relevant circles and niches.

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nik0

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Slin

Yeah the price that you need for real whitehat SEO can get pretty steep. Have you ever considered making your clients provide the content? Articles can still go viral, just require that they are 2,000 or more words.I could even show you some cool ways to get content to go viral pretty quickly

it's actually pretty basic when it comes down to it. The key is just to contact influencers and become a big name in your niche.

The sites that people generally don't link to we call "non-sexy sites". The key for these sites is to find relevant content that people will link to. The traffic at first isn't as targeted, but the links give you more authority, and in the end you can rank for a lot of relevant keywords. I've done SEO work for an insurance company once and that's how we had to do it. It worked really well.

The content generally just needs to be good relevant content. I can give you an example, I just wrote an SEO article for a start up SEO company, I freelance for them to pay for some extra projects I have going on. Anyway they just started everything up yesterday and released my article as a test, in one day it got over 400 views. I think that's pretty good for the first day for a website. The content wasn't anything new, the key is just to try to get your content out there in the relevant circles and niches.

I wrote a long reply but decided to remove it before I clicked "submit reply".

In short, I asked people to provide idea's for paid press releases, didn't get any.

I asked people to add content to their sites. In most cases that never happened, or asked me if I knew someone but most of my writers being $5/500 writers that doesn't lead to great link bait content or money site content, good enough for link building content though.

So asking them to supply link bait content, I just don't think that's gonna work.

Point them at my copy writer that charges $500-$1000 per article, don't think that's gonna work either.

But you think it works with articles in the $20 price range as well (to stick to the 2000 words).

Guess I got to try your gig some day and hit you up for some additional tips in getting it out there!

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Slin

10 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

I wrote a long reply but decided to remove it before I clicked "submit reply".

In short, I asked people to provide idea's for paid press releases, didn't get any.

I asked people to add content to their sites. In most cases that never happened, or asked me if I knew someone but most of my writers being $5/500 writers that doesn't lead to great link bait content or money site content, good enough for link building content though.

So asking them to supply link bait content, I just don't think that's gonna work.

Point them at my copy writer that charges $500-$1000 per article, don't think that's gonna work either.

But you think it works with articles in the $20 price range as well (to stick to the 2000 words).

Guess I got to try your gig some day and hit you up for some additional tips in getting it out there!

Haha I am no longer writing on Fiverr, I've got too much work to do with this SEO firm and then I write for a different great SEO firm, I've been helping them launch, they just put out their first article and got over 400 uniques which isn't bad for the first day.

But sure ask away about different tips, I think someday in the future I'll be charging for consultations but right now I'm willing to talk for free

I think blackhat SEO is fascinating though, and a lot of the guys at the firm talk about how they think that I have a deeper understanding of Google thanks to my blackhat background, I think that's true, I've taught them a few things about the way Google looks at links that they never knew before.

Of course I'm also a data freak, I'm an economics major and they are all marketing majors, so when I went in and scraped data on all of their clients and then analyzed it for them they were all awe struck. It's interesting how much blackhat guys watch their data and how little some Whitehat guys do. I've found that by really understanding the data behind sites you can increase traffic easily.

Honorable argument.

But lets not forget, a boatload of this so call "whitehat" outreach done by agencies is anything but whitehat, It's incentivized with money, gifts, freebies etc. Just because the transaction might be done offline, doesn't make it any whiter then just buying links.

Boatloads of back scratching and boatloads of piggy backing too. All BH in the eyes of Google.

I would agree with this in some ways. It depends on the type of links that you are getting back, and how easily Google can decide if you have blackhat links or not. I mean the point is you don't want your client to end up like Expedia.

At the firm that I'm currently at we don't really do so much guest blogging as we come up with content that we think they will like, or interactive, and then we ask them what they think and if they'd like to write about it. If the content is good enough it'll do well.

It's like Yukon said, you'd be surprised at how well you can do if you just ask.

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Mike Anthony

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Slin

I'm glad somebody else at least thinks Boostability isn't any good

I just didn't want to bash them in public.

.

I gave the Op the link because he was insisting on a review list or way to rate SEOs but to me SEO review sites are as reliable as hosting review sites - which means not at all.

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sudo rank

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I gave the Op the link because he was insisting on a review list or way to rate SEOs but to me SEO review sites are as reliable as hosting review sites - which means not at all.

Ye, trust no one! Well in the internet marketing world anyway!

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ltcpartner

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Here knock yourself out

Rankings of Best SEO Services, SEO Companies, SEO Consultants and Internet Marketing Agencies

My bet is you won't like or can't afford their their prices

I once hired a firm from this marketing list. They did not come close to succeeding for me.

This is what is frustrating for a consumer.

My site used to be on page 1 for long term care insurance. I would like to re-attain my rankings. However, I would like to know that the SEO consultant will eventually succeed for me. Is there someone great that will help me.?

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Mike Anthony

10 years ago

Originally Posted by ltcpartner

My site used to be on page 1 for long term care insurance. I would like to re-attain my rankings. However, I would like to know that the SEO consultant will eventually succeed for me. Is there someone great that will help me.?

Lucrative field For SEO. You are on the right track. I've worked with a few Insurance agencies and they do pretty well.

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ltcpartner 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Lucrative field For SEO. You are on the right track. I've worked with a few Insurance agencies and they do pretty well.

How am I on the right track? I need to hire an SEO consultant that will help me. I do not know where to begin. Mike, can you rank an insurance website?
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timpears

10 years ago

There are lots of very good people that do this type of work. I don't know where you have been searching, but you are looking in the wrong place. I communicate with dozens of such people every day.

What is your budget, and what do you want to accomplish? Real good SEO is not cheap? It takes a lot of time AND money to achieve first page rankings for a few keywords. I know for a fact that I could rank your site for multiple keywords, but depending on the competition of your keywords and how many high 'PR' domains I would need to buy, or pay for the links, would determine the price. It ain't gonna be five hundred or less, I can almost guarantee that.

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Tony4real

10 years ago

Most of SEO expert are very expensive the best thing is to learn and know little about SEO.Thanks

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HuiBang

10 years ago

Hi,

I am not satisfied with your thoughts.You can't judge each SEO company with the same eye.There are still so many companies working hard for their clients and proven their potential.SEO work needs patience which no one has.

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anismizi

10 years ago

You will get both expert and non-expert SEO guy if you look on marketplaces like oDesk, Elance.

You have to find out the right one. Now the question may arise how. Well here are few tips to find out the right one

1.The Genuine SEO guy should have his own website
2. He or she should be able to show their previous good works
3.check their portfolios
4.check their work history and other clients' comments. If he provided good services to previous clients, The clients would give him a good feedback and positive comments

I hope that if you follow these, you should find out the right guy

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Muhammad Umar

10 years ago

I hired some of the profession UK based SEO Company which gives me great results for my website. All of my keyword ranked. PM me for name of company.. I think I can't share name here due to some promotional restrictions on this forum.

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sudo rank

10 years ago

The main problem with hiring SEO's is it's easy for them to earn good money if they are good.

If an SEO is chasing you for work it's because they suck IMHO. In a world where you can rank on Payday Loans and earn $$$'s a day if you're talented enough means no one is gonna get out of bed unless it's good money.

If I were you i'd seek out talent by looking on IM forums and reading the blogs of established members. Most of them will do good work at the right price.

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Aehs01

10 years ago

Interesting insights in this thread. Obviously everyone is doing something different, I am currently running a PBN with a partner of mine and we have cleared almost 20k of revenue in less than 4 months so it's certainly in demand.

I am trying out a couple other services myself to see what kinds of results they provide based on recommendations from friends.

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GGpaul

10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

Just sharing 2 thoughts:

Thought No.1

I was thinking to hire an SEO company / freelancer.

After doing a very deep research, turns out all the candidates are:

1. Using black hat strategies.
or
2. Don't have any portfolio with relevant examples.
or
3. Delegating the work to other "Fiverr's" / 3rd world companies on Elance etc without telling you.
or
4. Promising you 1st page on Google or money back.

Where do you guys find decent SEO experts?

Thought No.2

If you wanna make real money online, stop everything you're doing. Just open an "SEO Companies Reviews" website. I'll be your first customer.

What's your budget ? I have a list of SEO Agencies that can work with you. They provide you samples as well as far as what they aim for. Also, I don't hire any type of SEO company / freelancer at the WF.

FYI - some charge 18k a month. So if you have that type of bread let me know.

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GGpaul

10 years ago

FYI - An agency that I'm planning on working with helped a site rank on the first page for the BROAD KEYWORD "Glasses". Yes that's a super competitive keyword. The site they ranked is warbyparker you'll see it.

They do all their backlinking through e-mail / relationships.

They charge 15k a month. I'm sure you can find for cheaper. So before you say "All the SEO experts are gone?" No. You're just looking at the wrong spot. The more I dig deeper into this industry, the more I notice it's like a cult. A cult in a sense that you can only play with the big boys after showing accomplishments or something.

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Kevin Maguire

10 years ago

Originally Posted by GGpaul

FYI - An agency that I'm planning on working with helped a site rank on the first page for the BROAD KEYWORD "Glasses". Yes that's a super competitive keyword. The site they ranked is warbyparker you'll see it.

They do all their backlinking through e-mail / relationships.

They charge 15k a month. I'm sure you can find for cheaper. So before you say "All the SEO experts are gone?" No. You're just looking at the wrong spot. The more I dig deeper into this industry, the more I notice it's like a cult. A cult in a sense that you can only play with the big boys after showing accomplishments or something.

Honorable argument.

But lets not forget, a boatload of this so call "whitehat" outreach done by agencies is anything but whitehat, It's incentivized with money, gifts, freebies etc. Just because the transaction might be done offline, doesn't make it any whiter then just buying links.

Boatloads of back scratching and boatloads of piggy backing too. All BH in the eyes of Google.

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GGpaul

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire

Honorable argument.

But lets not forget, a boatload of this so call "whitehat" outreach done by agencies is anything but whitehat, It's incentivized with money, gifts, freebies etc. Just because the transaction might be done offline, doesn't make it any whiter then just buying links.

Boatloads of back scratching and boatloads of piggy backing too. All BH in the eyes of Google.

Hola amigo. Just to clarify I never said they do white hat or black hat

. But this guy did ask for an expert so I figured this one will fit his needs

.

I swear, most bloggers will ask for some type of incentive cause they need to benefit as well when they put a link on their site. They'll be stupid if they post a free link. Unless of course, the content is just that damn good that they had to link it on their site; which I guess is where the "natural" link comes on board.

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Mike Anthony 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire

Honorable argument.

But lets not forget, a boatload of this so call "whitehat" outreach done by agencies is anything but whitehat,

If it comes from a legitimate third party web site its white hat. What google cannot detect and comes from a real webmaster is white hat.

The end. We only let Google think they define white hat.
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johnben1444

10 years ago

Come to look at it, is there anything like white hat? Certainly, NO!

In white hat, you don't get to lift a finger to build backlinks, it comes naturally
like Google always emphasize.

I'm afraid it's the grey hat that actually runs into hundreds of dollars.

If you want to be Google's buddy, use paid traffic, social media, forums
and other natural means and forget about pay for SEO or doing it yourself
otherwise you will be breaking their TOS.

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GGpaul

10 years ago

Originally Posted by johnben1444

If you want to be Google's buddy, use paid traffic, social media, forums
and other natural means and forget about pay for SEO or doing it yourself
otherwise you will be breaking their TOS.

That's what I'm doing right now...just for "branding"

Definitely works! Just hope a percentage of that area has a blog and that a percentage off of those bloggers will link back to you naturally

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yukon

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by GGpaul

That's what I'm doing right now...just for "branding"

Definitely works! Just hope a percentage of that area has a blog and that a percentage off of those bloggers will link back to you naturally

Another tip that might help with building links is, If you have an email list, sort the email list by subscribers that use self hosted domain/email addresses. If you have their email address where they've subscribed on their own the work is half way done, your already on their good side & odds are in your favor they'll give you a relevant link just for asking.

I think some people get hung up on white hat vs black hat distractions instead of simply communicating with other webmasters. People can't read minds, If you want a link, ask for it.

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flertooshia

10 years ago

Good SEO became very expensive lately. At least $60 per hour and like 50+ hours per month....

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Seosols

Banned 10 years ago

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RyanLB

10 years ago

Seo experts are definitely out there - you just have to be willing to work hard to find them. Maybe established brands are out of your budget?

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Imfactsandsecrets

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by shayatik

Just sharing 2 thoughts:

Thought No.1

I was thinking to hire an SEO company / freelancer.

After doing a very deep research, turns out all the candidates are:

1. Using black hat strategies.
or
2. Don't have any portfolio with relevant examples.
or
3. Delegating the work to other "Fiverr's" / 3rd world companies on Elance etc without telling you.
or
4. Promising you 1st page on Google or money back.

Where do you guys find decent SEO experts?

Thought No.2

If you wanna make real money online, stop everything you're doing. Just open an "SEO Companies Reviews" website. I'll be your first customer.

You get what you pay for. If you are looking for cheap services, you'll end up getting what you said already. The SEO game has changed completely over the last couple of years and if you need your business to be in good hands, look for companies that have rave reviews. You can also look in the Warriors for hire section.

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