Dear dumb-ass link builder:
Please treat our website with respect.
Black-hat link building is just braying at the wind
I screen comments; so sending spammy posts full of links to crazy, unconnected websites just annoys me and gets your comment marked as SPAM.
To anyone who hires a dumb-ass spammy link-builder, I would respectfully suggest that you go look up how search engines work. Here’s a good starting point : https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/ – because you are being very badly served by these charlatans.
Dear genuine link builders
If you genuinely consider that having a link from my website to yours (or your client’s) would be a good idea, then please send us an email with your ideas on why we should and how we could do that. Normally, we’ll ask (sometimes beg) people to write or contribute to our blogs and articles, so we usually view offers of ‘free content’ with deep suspicion, therefore do your best to reassure us of your best intentions. And don’t just promise to send us a PDF of YOUR terms and conditions – we have our own, and frankly IT’S OUR WEBSITE.
Why are we ranting?
We’re fed-up to the eight-teeth (sorry – had to have a dental reference) with seeing spam comment after spam comment. We, like many owners of websites, receive machine-generated emails seeking opportunities to post cheaply written, badly researched, spammy crap on our site, almost always relating to subjects neither related to clients/partners, nor of interest to us or that we have expertise in. Why would we want that on our site?
I spent a year or so working for a very large SEO agency shortly before I moved away from Yorkshire. It may not have been long enough for me to become a genuine SEO expert, but I know enough to understand that content only truly contributes to SEO if it is genuinely useful and original. I think it’s important that anyone who considers investing in SEO to deliver their marketing objectives should take the trouble to understand it, to some extent at least.
It’s hard work, but it’s not ‘Magic’. You don’t need mystic powers – just experience, clear thought processes and consistency. You have to write copy in a structured way, sort out fiddly meta data and do some technical design work. The one thing you don’t need is to have some dumb-ass link builder sticking multiple copies of automated, spammy comments on completely unrelated websites. Believe it or not, both Google and Bing are wise to such dodgy behaviour to the point where they will punish guilty sites.
SEO is not a commodity
So, if you want to improve the number of leads seen on your website, talk to a genuine expert. SEO is not a commodity – it’s a marketing discipline, just like advertising, direct mail or attending trade shows. You wouldn’t look to book adverts just because they media is cheap; you’d surely book something that addresses your target market. The same applies to SEO.
Paul Lymer – Digital Marketer and SEO geek
That is why we work in association with Paul Lymer at Improve Marketing. Paul’s tenure as the CMO at an incredibly successful entertainment / experiential brand is only one part of his career. He’s now applying that career full of learning to the needs of a wide range of clients. Paul devises innovative digital and SEO strategies that are firmly based in reality. His work is imaginative yet closely linked to client business goals and the messaging and stories we help craft.
So if you’re interested in making your website work harder for you, call us and not a dumb-ass.
ps: Since posting this blog I’ve received yet more spammy comments. I’ve marked them as spam, and here’s why;
- I don’t WANT to monetise my site, so don’t try posting spammy, link-filled comments on my site telling me how to do it. Personally, I think it would be unprofessional and rude to monetise a site that is there essentially to help me win business.
- You clearly haven’t read my website or any of my blog posts so how can you add a valid comment anyway? Off-topic = off my site.
- I don’t speak Russian (or any other East European language) and I don’t understand the Cyrillic Alphabet, so WHY would I allow you to post something I can’t read? I have friends who can read Russian, Romanian and Lithuanian and will ask them to help me write material in those languages if I need to because I trust them but I don’t know you from Ivan (or Adam).
