TRUST US on this issue… even if you don’t choose to engage in SEO with our company. When selecting an SEO company, BE SURE TO ASK TO SEE SAMPLE LINKS.
This is crucially important. Why? Because if you select a company that builds crappy links then will literally trash your website and make it practically unusable from an SEO perspective. We literally turn down about a third of our potential SEO clients because some other SEO company trashed their website and the website got penalized by Google.
We choose not to work with these clients (unless they decide to start from scratch with completely new website on a new domain name). Why? Because we genuinely care about our clients’ success. We are not just here to take money from anyone who will give it to us. We know that all of those spammy links will greatly hinder our ability to attain high rankings.
It’s definitely not impossible to overcome a poor link profile. There are some things that one can do. For example, there is a “disavow” tool that basically tells Google not to take certain links into consideration when assessing your site. However, that’s basically an admission of guilt and it’s tough to completely overcome; it’s almost like your site is “marked.” 95% of the time we feel like it’s a lot easier to just start from scratch. The only time when you wouldn’t would be if you have a truly premium domain name that you don’t want to get away from.
So ask to see samples of the links that the company has built. If the links look anything at all like the links on any of these pages:
http://www.whelphelper.com/links.php
http://www.store.asomerset.com/linking/browse.php?id=1
http://www.zillow.com/profile/koriak91/
http://blog.zaq.ne.jp/jcomjwk/article/46/
http://www.maxximatrigmats.com
Or if you hear the SEO company mention anything along the lines of “blast your site with thousands of links” or “automated software” or “30 dofollow pagerank 5 links”…
RUN FOR THE HILLS! SERIOUSLY… WORKING WITH A COMPANY THAT BUILDS LINKS LIKE THAT IS LIKE WEBSITE SUICIDE… AND IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Those tactics (sometimes) work in the short term but they almost always get you penalized in the long run.
