Prominent SEO Company Outed for Link Buying

[Django]

Hey all, just thought I'd share this link about a prominent US SEO company outed for buying and selling links.

I don't believe in outing is right in this industry, particularly when nothing new or insightful is being uncovered, but I guess its more about the scale of the company and the prominence of some of their members within inbound marketing community that makes this case unique...Anyway, if you've not already come upon this article, it's definitely worth a read!

 

[Django]

Also, some cracking banter in the comments...I don't think the author of the post has won himself many friends!

 

[Ashton]

Heh, I got paid £100 to put a link on a blog of mine to virgin media for a month.

 

[Django]

Meh, I don't think anyone should really be surprised by this (at least not anyone with an interest in SEO or IM) so I don't really see the value in outing in the first place, other than good link bait for the author. It's almost like one body builder outing another body builder for using steroids...

P.s. no offence inteded to any clean body builders who frequent this forum, just a bad generalisation in an already contrived metaphor to show how pointless this kind of 'outing' is.

 

[atlas]

Good post by Aaron Wall about it here:

http://www.seobook.com/educating-market

If your own company doesn't follow your own advice, then what does that say about your value systems? How many people have had their potential held back by listening to your misinformation & making the unfortunate mistake of trusting you? What does that sort of behavior do to the reputation of the industry? Now everyone else is suspect because you pitched bogus pablum at newbies.

 

[vizzo]

The things that suprise me are:
1. A very large number of well known brands buy links and as far as we know don't get punished
2. Despite it's rhetoric Google doesn't do much about it
3. Anyone "outing" a link buying company thinks they're being clever
4. There are so few public outings - (I could mention a number of well known insurance brands, travel brands and others that have approached me directly or indirectly for links and I'm sure that there are 1000's of other people have had such approaches)

 

[Django]

Yup, link buying like this goes on all the time and everyone who works with the internet on a regular basis knows this. That's why this kind of outing is completely redundant. If the White House site was paying a blogger 30k a month for a link, then that would be a story...this article is a just a demonstration of linkbait. Although I wouldn't be surprised if this has now put the blogger in the shop window for a bit of negative SEO...

I also heard a theory this whole thing was engineered by the guys at iAcquire to get some genuine links...I don't really buy this, but if its the case it massively backfired as they got deindexed by Google (although I believe their homepage is back in).

 

[Blossom]

4. There are so few public outings - (I could mention a number of well known insurance brands, travel brands and others that have approached me directly or indirectly for links and I'm sure that there are 1000's of other people have had such approaches)

I've had a broker contact me on behalf of a company that has a rather big search engine

I'm sure that would make pretty big news, especially if Google deindexed them and then got a load of shit from the EU about anti-trust laws and anti-competitive practices.

I'm not about to out anyone for anything though. Bad karma and all that.

 

[rob]

Heh, I got paid £100 to put a link on a blog of mine to virgin media for a month.

Blog about it under 'confessions of a link seller' and get a ton of links, the ultimate link bait.

 

[Pred]

hold the front page

footballer kicks ball
bird lays an egg

 

[marko777]

Macys where outranking the original brands at one point e.g for a samung tv macys would be #1 above samsung.It had hired an seo company who did a bloody good job,someone outed them and they were penalised,of course macys new nothing of these "paid links" (lol)they would have made a fortune while it lasted.Only someone outing you can ruin it but there are ways to totally destroy a site in the serps if you are 100% who did it.Massive brands like ebay,amazon etc are immune to such serps losses they are "shielded".
Most large brands buy links,it's no secret,the secret is not getting caught.