Modern Day Black Hat SEO: Are You Buying Links or Guest Posts?

The purpose of this post is to call out an emerging phenomenon in SEO, where guest posting services are straight up selling links but masking it by framing their offering as "content marketing" and/or "blogger outreach."

Well, that's bullshit and I'm here to explain why.

White Hat vs Black Hat SEO

By now in 2017, most digital marketers know about SEO and why it's important.

In an over-simplified statement, I'll break down SEO into two buckets for the sake of this conversation: White Hat vs Black Hat.

First of all, what is Black Hat SEO?

There ya have it. Here's the main question that determines if something is White Hat or Black Hat:

Will it benefit humans, or just manipulate search engines?

If there's anything we can learn from the history of search marketing, it's that humans have always tried to game the system.

That's why SEO has evolved so much over the years. Search engine algorithms have (mostly) been one step ahead of the curve; as spammers and ranking manipulators have gotten more sophisticated with their self-serving techniques, the algorithms have countered them with machine learning.

As a result, Google's algorithm updates that have traditionally been rolled out in bulk phases, like Panda & Penguin, are now "built-in" to the core algorithm. They've done this to improve the user experience, and dilute the impact of negative SEO.

Traditional Black Hat SEO

When most SEO practitioners think of Black Hat techniques, there's a laundry list of known "go-to" tactics:

• Keyword Stuffing
• Link Networking
• Hidden Links / Text
• Referral Spam
• Comment Spam
• Bait & Switch Redirects

But there's one tactic I want to mention that is becoming harder to detect... paid link schemes.

Are You Paying For Links or "Guest Posts"?

Even Matt Cutts admits there's some gray area here.

Google defines it by looking at the transfer / exchange of money, goods or services, relevance of the link, and if it would be a "surprise" to the user.

Why is this messy? Because it's really hard to prove.

How do you distinguish between a writer genuinely linking to your content, versus you influencing them to do it?

Let's dive into Matt's explanation a bit more and uncover why it's relevant to most working SEOs right now.

Typical SEO "Lingo"

There's a new glitch in the SEO services world (maybe not THAT new) where "content marketing companies" are positioning themselves as an all-in-one link building + content strategy provider.

I get at least 3-5 email pitches from these kinds of companies every month.

Here's a recent one.

Notice the typical SEO lingo, "we managed to get links from DA 81 sites" blah, blah, blah.

Not saying this is a black hat company, but their sales approach of "Hey, I'm outranking you" is pretty cheesy.

I guarantee you I can find any website's content, pin-point something that isn't ranking well and call it out. I've never heard of a site that ranks #1 for every keyword they're targeting. I'll bet you haven't either.

Now don't get me wrong, some of these services are legit. In fact, I've worked with Grizzle.io before, a company that focuses on helping you build relationships while crafting the right content that will drive business results for your brand.

Unfortunately, most services don't take this approach. They straight up offer a price for links.

Name Your Requirement: Dollar Amount vs. Domain Authority

I refuse to call out the companies that do this, but here's an actual screenshot from their pricing page.

There are so many problems with this picture, that I don't even know where to begin.

Here are the questions that you should ask a company who offers this to you:

1. What sites are the links coming from?
2. What types of links are they?
3. Can I be introduced to your contact at that publication so that I can own the relationship?
4. Why do you consider DA 30 to be a "High Tier" website?
5. What's the strategy behind these links? Where are the links being built to?
6. Is there any chance of these links contributing to a business metric? Will my site earn any qualified referral traffic as a result of this link?

Sadly, obtaining truthful answers to these questions will be much like trying to extract teeth from a baby. Oh yeah, babies don't have teeth yet.

Even if you do decide to build links from this type of "package" there are so many things that could (and probably will) go wrong.

• Your results will likely be short term, at best.
• You're not investing in relationships.
• You're not going to get repeat links (unless you keep paying for them).
• It's not a sustainable tactic; it will get expensive very quickly.
• The guest posts are likely to be very low quality, spin off content.
• These services depend on blogger networks, which is not a reliable source of credible, high quality content.
• You could get in a lot of trouble if you're busted; that means de-indexed, penalized, and possibly even fined by the FTC.

The Cost of Buying Links

One of my favorite tools & resources for doing White Hat SEO is Ahrefs.

They recently did a study of how many sites are selling links today, and what is the average cost of a link?

Spoiler Alert:

Stop Being Lazy! Get Off Your Ass & Build White Hat Links

Here's a list of resources I'd recommend for learning the best ways to build white hat links:

• Backlinko - The Definitive Guide to Link Building
• QuickSprout - The Advanced Guide to Link Building
• Ahrefs - Noob Friendly Guide to Link Building

Well, that's all I got! I hope you learned something. Hit me up if you want to talk about White Hat link building, or any other SEO geekery.

To get in touch - follow me on Twitter via @gaetano_nyc