False Advertising...Not so White Hat

[MuchoMac]

I run a small team of people doing manual outreach for a variety of link types. We do most of our content and link placements ourselves but have recently been testing out other providers to increase capacity and supplement, let's just say it hasn't gone well. We have gone through several providers that claim "White Hat", "Manual Outreach", and "Natural" yet they all come back with very spammy, crappy, not natural links. It is obvious that they aren't doing manual outreach, seems like they have some kind of automated system in place to get these. Some are Backlinks, HOTH, PlacementSEO, RhinoRank/SMR Digital.

Have you experienced the same? What providers have you used that are actually real and affordable?

 

[veboo]

Almost all the links that you purchase are not whitehat.

In my opinion a link would be a whitehat one if you organically receives it. ex: citations

You can try real guest posts - They would be the ones that would get as close as possible to white hat links

 

[TheAlmightyDada]

I haven't yet used his services but @t0mmy has had some rave reviews on his sales thread.

 

[SamLewis]

I run a small team of people doing manual outreach for a variety of link types. We do most of our content and link placements ourselves but have recently been testing out other providers to increase capacity and supplement, let's just say it hasn't gone well. We have gone through several providers that claim "White Hat", "Manual Outreach", and "Natural" yet they all come back with very spammy, crappy, not natural links. It is obvious that they aren't doing manual outreach, seems like they have some kind of automated system in place to get these. Some are Backlinks, HOTH, PlacementSEO, RhinoRank/SMR Digital.

Have you experienced the same? What providers have you used that are actually real and affordable?

Did you buy from BST here? Most of them are going to be like that

 

[ambushiv11]

Almost all the links that you purchase are not whitehat.

In my opinion a link would be a whitehat one if you organically receives it. ex: citations

You can try real guest posts - They would be the ones that would get as close as possible to white hat links

Quick correction: "No link that you purchase is whitehat".

 

[MuchoMac]

Did you buy from BST here? Most of them are going to be like that

No, not sure what BST is. Why have never straight up "bought links" but have paid for services

 

[MisterF]

No, not sure what BST is. Why have never straight up "bought links" but have paid for services

BST is another name for the Marketplace.

Another option is to https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/hire-a-freelancer.76/, specify exactly what you want and go forward from there.

 

[SamLewis]

Quick correction: "No link that you purchase is whitehat".

Semantics...
Buying PR or Advertorials or whatever which have linkback aren't blackhat.

 

[MatthewGraham]

It is obvious that they aren't doing manual outreach, seems like they have some kind of automated system in place to get these.

Most guest posts are paid for. Generally, if a company is offering "manual outreach" type posts, you pay them X dollars, they pay some website an amount less than X dollars, and then pocket the difference. In some cases, the difference is huge (agencies and some sellers in the BHW marketplace have been known to do things like charge $700+ for posts that they paid under $100 for).

Automated system to get backlinks.​

If you know the names of the sites that you got "manual outreach" posts on and what you paid for them, you can visit those sites directly and look up their contact information. Send them a message asking what their guest post rates are and they'll usually tell you directly (although the agency you hired might be getting a lower rate through negotiation and/or bulk orders).

Keep in mind that those links certainly still can be good and safe, even though you paid for them. Really, you have to be willing to take at least a little risk and make a few bribes payments if you want to get anywhere in SEO.

 

[TheAlmightyDada]

Most guest posts are paid for. Generally, if a company is offering "manual outreach" type posts, you pay them X dollars, they pay some website an amount less than X dollars, and then pocket the difference. In some cases, the difference is huge (agencies and some sellers in the BHW marketplace have been known to do things like charge $700+ for posts that they paid under $100 for).

View attachment 100825
Automated system to get backlinks.​

If you know the names of the sites that you got "manual outreach" posts on and what you paid for them, you can visit those sites directly and look up their contact information. Send them a message asking what their guest post rates are and they'll usually tell you directly (although the agency you hired might be getting a lower rate through negotiation and/or bulk orders).

Keep in mind that those links certainly still can be good and safe, even though you paid for them. Really, you have to be willing to take at least a little risk and make a few bribes payments if you want to get anywhere in SEO.

I thought, although I may be incorrect, that @t0mmy 's service included all of the content writing alongside the actual outreach work. You are probably right about the margin, but I wouldn't ever begrudge a man his profit - that's why we're all in business. If he can take the headache away, and I can still walk away with a profit for myself - I'll pay the man.

 

[Owanceaser]

Before placing any outreach order you can get the blog or site from providers and analyze those blogs first if the blog is worth for that price and then you can get backlink from that blog.

 

[b1step-ahead]

I thought, although I may be incorrect, that @t0mmy 's service included all of the content writing alongside the actual outreach work. You are probably right about the margin, but I wouldn't ever begrudge a man his profit - that's why we're all in business. If he can take the headache away, and I can still walk away with a profit for myself - I'll pay the man.

I have to say that I've used tommy's service before and it's great. Once we get over a certain number of clients that we manage, we use tommy's service. Why, time is money. If you can afford to have a staff of outreach specialists, then thats great, but not realistic. If you have them time to do it, well more power to you.

Like the old saying, I can change my own oil for $25 or go to jiffy lube where they will charge you $80. It comes to time vs money.

 

[t0mmy]

No service is going to get it right 100% of the time, but a lot of these companies even the big players are using some really underhanded tactics which there is absolutely no excuse for.

There was an article about this a few months ago, I think it was on marketingprofs or somewhere similar. They ordered a post from all the top outreach providers - the hoth, fatjoe, ourselves (SerpLogic) and a few others. The results were terrible, the biggest in the bunch "The Hoth" came out the worst - they were shown to be flat out using PBNs. That shocked me as I used to admire the guys at the hoth and I originally styled SerpLogic around them, their marketing is on another level.. but their quality is shit from what I've seen, to me that's not sustainable and their customer turnover must be through the roof.

The only real issue they had with us seemed to be our prices, but shit I think anyone with sense would pay extra to us to avoid PBN garbage from the hoth.

 

[rafark]

Quick correction: "No link that you purchase is whitehat".

That's not necessarily true. If you buy posts with the purposes of exposure (like a review, brand mention, etc) it's not "blackhat" in the context of SEO, because even though you get a link, its primary purpose would not be to alter a position in Google.

 

[MuchoMac]

No service is going to get it right 100% of the time, but a lot of these companies even the big players are using some really underhanded tactics which there is absolutely no excuse for.

There was an article about this a few months ago, I think it was on marketingprofs or somewhere similar. They ordered a post from all the top outreach providers - the hoth, fatjoe, ourselves (SerpLogic) and a few others. The results were terrible, the biggest in the bunch "The Hoth" came out the worst - they were shown to be flat out using PBNs. That shocked me as I used to admire the guys at the hoth and I originally styled SerpLogic around them, their marketing is on another level.. but their quality is shit from what I've seen, to me that's not sustainable and their customer turnover must be through the roof.

The only real issue they had with us seemed to be our prices, but shit I think anyone with sense would pay extra to us to avoid PBN garbage from the hoth.

thanks! I found and just read that article it's from ahrefs. I can't post the link, I'm too newb.

 

[theRevolt]

That's not necessarily true. If you buy posts with the purposes of exposure (like a review, brand mention, etc) it's not "blackhat" in the context of SEO, because even though you get a link, its primary purpose would not be to alter a position in Google.

But you are buying the review not the link so you're correct with this one but basically anytime you pay for the link (not exposure referrals Etc) it won't be white hat b defibition

 

[Unreliable Witness]

The article that @t0mmy mentioned is on authorityhacker if anyone is interested. I'm not going to link, but go to the site and search for "outreach hoth" and it comes up.

To summarise the review about SerpLogic, the downside of the service is that it is expensive, but the article finishes by saying that any agency that does this for real is likely to charge a fair premium.

As for other services, I have tried both the Hoth and FatJoe.

Web 2.0s from the Hoth were so bad that I had to disavow them. I wouldn't use them for guest post outreach (especially reading the article).

I've had mixed results from FatJoe. I think the main problem with them is that links from sites with DA10+ are going to do nothing anyway. Especially if their OBL is really high because they're in FatJoe's inventory. You need to be ordering the DA30+ service for any SEO benefit, and even then, you have no say over the reputation of the site that's going to link to you. They aren't going to outreach for you personally, they'll have a team finding inventory, a team writing and a team placing articles on known inventory that accumulates high OBL. Niche relevancy will be stretched. You won't get any traffic from those sites either. So the benefit is link juice only. Despite being low cost, I don't think they offer value for money.

 

[t0mmy]

The article that @t0mmy mentioned is on authorityhacker if anyone is interested. I'm not going to link, but go to the site and search for "outreach hoth" and it comes up.

Nice one, was wrecking my brain trying to find that.

I was pretty shocked at the results from the hoth, had admired them for a long time and didn't think for a second they'd be at that considering the amount of business they claim to do!

 

[Unreliable Witness]

Nice one, was wrecking my brain trying to find that.

I was pretty shocked at the results from the hoth, had admired them for a long time and didn't think for a second they'd be at that considering the amount of business they claim to do!

The work I received from them was really sub-par, especially for the price. Their marketing is top-notch though. They even call me in the UK from the USA about once a quarter to see if I "need any help".

I'm now checking my FatJoe links. Of the ten checked so far, all came from ordering their "DA30+" service. Of the 10 I have checked so far, 2 posts have been removed, 1 site no longer exists and the other 7 posts are still up. Those that are still up seem to be real sites. The order was made 9 months ago, so the drop off rate is high.

I'll update when I have checked all of them.

 

[t0mmy]

The work I received from them was really sub-par, especially for the price. Their marketing is top-notch though. They even call me in the UK from the USA about once a quarter to see if I "need any help".

I'm now checking my FatJoe links. Of the ten checked so far, all came from ordering their "DA30+" service. Of the 10 I have checked so far, 2 posts have been removed, 1 site no longer exists and the other 7 posts are still up. Those that are still up seem to be real sites. The order was made 9 months ago, so the drop off rate is high.

I'll update when I have checked all of them.

Yeah their marketing is on another level, can't knock them for that.. their turnover in clients must be huge though. I guess they can handle that for now with a large marketing budget keeping the churn going!