SEO question

[s0luti0n]

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I had been using an SEO company for the last 12 months on our site and ceased using them in January 2008 due to the credit crunch. We paid over £15,000 inc vat for 12 months which as per their contract was supposed to be getting me 780 one way back links (bolt on) and 212 paid directories. They achieved reasonable results and I was not to disgruntled with the work they did.

However I have since checked how many links I have in google and I only have 25. It looks like they have removed all the links from the website now that I am no longer contracted to them, although there is no mention about work being removed if you do not renew your contract.

I was wondering if anybody knew if this was normal? In my mind I have paid for 780 links and would assume that if I stop paying those links would still remain.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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[Stuart]

This does not sound right to me... Some directories/web sites will charge an annual fee for links and therefore they may remove the lnks if these are not renewed, something the SEO company may have been doing for you as part of the fee. Do you have a written contract with them, any mention of paid links and annual fees in the contract?

Is this your site? solution-mortgages.co.uk
Br
Stuart

[s0luti0n]

Originally Posted by Stuart This does not sound right to me... Some directories/web sites will charge an annual fee for links and therefore they may remove the lnks if these are not renewed, something the SEO company may have been doing for you as part of the fee. Do you have a written contract with them, any mention of paid links and annual fees in the contract? Is this your site? solution-mortgages.co.uk Br Stuart

Stuart,

Thanks for the reply. Yes this is our website. No mention of paid links only the 212 paid directories as stated in my e-mail. Also no mention of annual fees.

[Stuart]

I would go back and discuss this with them, ask if the 212 paid directories are on an annual fee, if so why was this not mentioned in the contract...

If they have removed the links from the 212 paid directories due to non payment of annual fees then clearly they have done wrong as this should have bene written into the contract they provided.

Ask them for a list of all the links they obtained and why they have been removed, at least then if you need to get back onto the directories and pay an annual fee you can do this yourself.

Br
Stuart

[Mitchy]

Hi Simon,

They haven't removed the backlinks, Google just doesn't show you a sites full link profile to "protect its algorithm". Use Yahoo! Site Explorer for a closer (but still not entirely full) representation of your backlinks profile.

Cheers

[s0luti0n]

Originally Posted by Stuart I would go back and discuss this with them, ask if the 212 paid directories are on an annual fee, if so why was this not mentioned in the contract... If they have removed the links from the 212 paid directories due to non payment of annual fees then clearly they have done wrong as this should have bene written into the contract they provided. Ask them for a list of all the links they obtained and why they have been removed, at least then if you need to get back onto the directories and pay an annual fee you can do this yourself. Br Stuart

Thanks Stuart. I appreciate your advice. I will also speak to our solicitor's ecommerce department. It has annoyed me. It is like paying a builder to build you an extension. You pay him. Then he knocks it down again!

Thanks again

[s0luti0n]

Mitchy,

Thanks for replying. I have just tried that Yahoo site explorer. Is that not mainly internal links ie most of those showing are from my blog linking back to the relevant web pages?

I am sure they have removed the external links that I have paid for. I have been on the first page of google for bad credit remortgage and poor credit remortgage for months and months and I am now on page 20 and page 8 respectively. Adverse credit remortgage is now starting to drop as well but is still on the first page but we were top until yesterday.

[Mitchy]

Sent you a PM Simon.

[gadget]

I can only see 26 links too.

One other observation, you're site location is coming up as being in Germany. Do you use 1&1 to host?

[DioBach]

Originally Posted by s0luti0n I have been on the first page of google for bad credit remortgage and poor credit remortgage for months and months and I am now on page 20 and page 8 respectively. Adverse credit remortgage is now starting to drop as well but is still on the first page but we were top until yesterday.

To be honest, if you paid an SEO firm £15,000 just to buy you links, your money could have been better spent. There is the chance that this rash of bought links they got you tripped all the naughty link buyer filters at Google and caused your plummet down the SERPs. Also, if you were paying money for directories, most of them have next to no value in SEO as google have stopped most of them passing link juice as they were being used for spam so much.

[tbp]

I completely agree with Diobach. It sounds like the links you were buying weren't worth much in the first place, and it's good that you've decided to stop using them.

Link building has to be very targetted to be effective, just adding links to directories no longer works. It's very easy to get links from directories, especially if you pay for them. Google knows this, and so places little value on them. Originally, the link system was supposed to be on the basis that if someone adds a link to you, then your site must be a valuable resource and so could help other people. However, the system was massively abused, and it meant that having a link to your site couldn't guarantee the sites content at all, especially when it came down to how much you could spend rather than how good your site is.

There are loads of SEO tips on this forum, so read everything you can and put them into action yourself. If you decide in the future to hire someone else to do your SEO, then ask for recommendations here first. Unfortunately it sounds like your SEO company has taken a lot of money for doing very little.