So, I am finally returned to leave a review. Now, I'm pretty new to SEO so I may be entirely in the wrong here, but this is my experience.
- The turn around was quick and communication was professional. I received my links within 4 days complete with report and waited some time for them to be indexed.
- I purchased 3 home page link (the largest package) and I was given two free inner page links as a bonus. Very pleased.
- The inner page links showed up on Ahrefs within a few days. My DR went up from about 3 - 11.
After a week I started to become suspicious as the 3 links I actually purchased are not appearing in GSC or Ahrefs, and my traffic is not moving as I monitor meticulously in Google Analytics, yet, the 2 bonus links appeared no problem.
Also, one of the links was done rather poorly with spelling and grammar errors. (ex. "Incest Poen"). Not that big of a deal.
At this point I reached out and expressed my concerns, which were promptly answered, fixed, and I was assured that, despite the lack of Ahrefs appearance, the real determining factor is google. So I agreed to wait a bit longer.
It has been 12 days as of today since the links were delivered. I have, since, amassed many backlinks that have appeared GSC within 24hours that both affect traffic and have appeared in Ahrefs. Something is weird here. Or at least, I am impatient and dissatisfied.
So I did some deeper research into the links.
- The sites have high DR because they are being manipulated by google maps redirects for Ahrefs ranking.
- The other sites that have the same home page BLs are not appearing in Ahrefs either. (with the exception of 1 site/~5)
- The sites I purchased links on are about 6 months old (though only building serious backlinks for 2 to 3 months)
- Sites have minimal traffic/views.
- Sites have low SE traffic.
- In that 6 months there are maybe 100 videos on each site. They are not updated regularly. I see no reason Google would think to crawl these sites regularly.
As a result of this I requested a refund, citing the above reasons. I know that I was ignorant before my purchase, "buyer beware" and did not do my due-est diligence. I will also admit that when I purchased the links my knowledge of SEO and backlinking was next to nothing.
My main issue is that the advertisement guarantees increased DR and traffic. Yet, the DR is just from manipulation not actual link strength and there has been no resulting increase in traffic from these links.
Sellers Response:
- He refuted most of what I said as google not yet indexing the links. To be patient, etc.
- He admitted Ahrefs is 'surprisingly' not picking up the homepage links.
- Cited the terms and that a refund would "really be a headache."
- Refuted the google maps redirects not being valuable.
- Offered me some links "from other sites [he] can have access to."
- Claimed regardless of link type it can take a while to see a difference in ranking.
- Please be patient.
If I don't get a refund here or the desired result from my purchase, it's water under the fridge. Lesson learned. I harbor no ill feelings to the seller or the transaction.
This was simply my experience from the purchase. I will update when I have more information or to eat my own hat if that ends up being the case.
Edit: some clarification and spelling.