Why Bad SEO is Worse Than No SEO

I received an email from a prospective client a few weeks back. I thought I recognize that name, I did from three years ago.

They were emailing as their SEO had stopped working and the ranking of their website was stuck - despite continuing to build links.

The first time they had emailed three years ago they had a worse problem - Google had just given them a manual penalty for over optimized anchor text on hundreds of low-level blogs. Back then I had agreed to look at the site - if they paid for my time.  

That was the last I heard until the recent email.

The domain from three years ago had been abandoned. Apparently, too far gone to recover from the penalty. 

But, now looking at the new site they have the exact same problem all over again. They have lots of low-quality links from spam blogs with highly targeted anchor text.

Google is better now at targeting pages and search terms rather than whole websites and they have a chance to recover - but again, before doing anything I asked for payment. And of course, that was the last I heard.

In some ways, it is a crying shame, as they have a great product.

If you care about your brand, business, income, life, reputation - build decent links.

Leslie Cube SEO