Purchasing Links

[tristam]

I was contacted by a company called It's Cold Out Side. They are offering me 500 text links to be added to their websites over the next 12 weeks. All this for £100 ber month plus a set up fee.

These are supposed to be quality 1 way links and will help my ranking in Google.

Any thoughts on this one?

[leehack]

Read Google guidelines and follow them.

It will be exceedingly bloody cold outside if you do this, rest assured.

[RuralWeb]

Any thoughts on this one?

Common scam - walk away

[RuralWeb]

Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results. Google is now actively penalising sites that pay for links.

[fergusw]

I've always wondered how far these techniques these companies use will go and more particularly when one of these companies will start pushing a
"We will negatively affect your competitors rankings in order to improve yours"

With so many penalised techniques around I would not be surprised if some of this is already going on in the background.
Just wondering when one of these unscrupulous companies turn their marketing technique around.

[RuralWeb]

unnaturally high number in such a short space of time

G has a reference which compares your site with a template of natural linking if you go outside this template you will be penalised.

The company will embed some code in your page and feed other site links into it - if you ever stop paying them they will remotely deactivate the feed and you will loose the links - you will be help to ransom

[RuralWeb]

"We will negatively affect your competitors rankings in order to improve yours"

They are out there

[fergusw]

They are out there

I wondered what had been keeping you so busy recently

[fergusw]

Seriously though, at what point does this become a real problem.
White Hat versus Black Hat

Who legislates against these guys? It's an interesting point this raises and one I'm sure eveyone has an opinion about!

White vs Black
Good vs Evil
Frodo vs Sauron

[tristam]

Thanks for your advice.

This post has certainly raised some interest in a very short space of time.

She said that if I didn't sign up my site could only go down.

I was very sceptical and when I said I wanted to think about it she got very annoying so I hung up.

[RuralWeb]

She said that if I didn't sign up my site could only go down

If you signed up it would go down even further and your wallet would be empty

[RuralWeb]

Who legislates against these guys?

The search engines themselves - thats why Google algoritums change so often. As spamers find a hole Google blocks it and so it goes on.

Spammers make money by getting sites to N01 with SEO tricks and Google changes to stop them - unfortuately innocent sites can get caught it the middle of the fight.

[RuralWeb]

I wondered what had been keeping you so busy recently

Yes I now have an office in India and cold call

[los_design]

Yes I now have an office in India and cold call

So that was you

BOT, these guys seem to be doing the rounds, 2 clients of mine were approached by these recently (this week)

[RuralWeb]

these guys seem to be doing the rounds

They have been around for a while getting site details from the forum - easy way of finding site owners using the same software.

My Indian office is very well equiped