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I have come across a couple of websites today that claim to boost your website index in a matter of days. There are 1000s of reviews and all of them seem quite positive showing off results and stuff.

I understand that these may be search engine bots and useless links that will never get you any genuine traffic which makes it useless for established websites, but what about new websites?

It takes so much work to get a brand new website up and running, if this can be boosted, even with bogus links it would be well worth the money considering how much time it will save having to do it all manually.

Question: With this in mind, is it a good idea to pay for these SEO boosting services for brand new websites as a way to "build a foundation" ?

Note: A lot of these services claim to be white hat and manual etc.

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    The fact they feel the need to claim they're white hat is a red flag for me.
    – Martijn
    Mar 8, 2016 at 14:15
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    It's the "Honest John's Used Cars" rule. If you have to say it in the business name, there are "issues". Waste your money instead on a good copywriter who knows what you are trying to sell so you have good, unique content. If you don't have that, you don't have an SEO foundation Mar 8, 2016 at 17:11
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    If their claim is "White hat and manual..." then the dot-dot-dot translates to " setup of an automated bot."
    – MonkeyZeus
    Mar 8, 2016 at 17:15

5 Answers 5

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Never pay for SEO services that guarantee results. Especially not quick results. Anything quick is going to be dirty. Such firms are likely going to:

  • Create links to your site from bad places
  • Create doorway pages
  • Spam on your behalf

All of that may work initially, but it will come back in the form of a site penalty eventually.

SEO for a new site can include:

  1. Running a crawler against the site to ensure it is crawlable. Suggesting fixes for any issues found (or actually fixing them.)
  2. Doing keyword research. Making sure the site uses all the appropriate keywords and synonyms in the appropriate places. Suggesting changes and new places to add content (or actually doing so.)
  3. White hat link building. Identifying five to fifty places where it could be possible to ask for a link. Those places have to be relevant and have an editor that can approve or deny the request. The links should focus on the brand name as anchor text to avoid penalties.

You may find an SEO firm that specialized in setting up the content management you use. They may know which settings to enable and which plugins to install that make the site crawlable and use the correct keywords. If you run WordPress, Drupal, or another popular CMS, you might want to find somebody with that knowledge.

Pretty much any other service I can think of is going to be ineffective or likely to get you penalized down the road.

If you have money to spend on the site, spend it in ways that gets people excited about your site. Spend it on user testing. Spend it on new content development. Spend it on advertising. When you get people coming back to the site and recommending it to their friends, rankings will naturally follow.

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    Thsnks for your answer and im not trying to argue your answer as it mskes sense, buy how do these services even exist to begin with if they don't work? Mar 8, 2016 at 14:53
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    Because people can be convinced to pay for them. They sound good. Then when you do get a penalty, you have to pay for more SEO services to reverse the damage. Mar 8, 2016 at 14:58
  • Great advice. As a new site-owner, I was wondering what an effective approach would be to getting my site to show up on search results would be. I'm creating lots of blog posts that I think "i" would genuinely benefit from if I was a user interested in my genre of content. "links should focus on the brand name as anchor text to avoid penalties" Would you mind elaborating, or providing a source where I can learn how to approach getting links? Is it as simple as just asking other high-ranking sources? If so, I feel as though I have nothing to offer them back, as a new site with few regular users
    – HC_
    Mar 8, 2016 at 19:00
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    Google has frowned on link building more and more over the last few years. Their latest official position is that you should not create any links to your site or ask for any. However, asking for a handful of editorial links is not going to get you penalized if the links are not at all spammy. But it is easy to look spammy. There are many guides to link building that can guide you through the process such as this one: hobo-web.co.uk/… Mar 8, 2016 at 19:46
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Any service that claims to boost your site "in a matter of days" should be avoided like the plague.

The reality is, whilst these services can work, they use Black Hat tactics which are against Google's T&Cs, even if they say it's White Hat.

The best case scenario for this would be boosting your site, seeing increase in rankings then, when Google updates is algorithm to identify additional Black Hat tactics, your site's ranking will be negatively affected. This may counteract any natural growth your site has seen in the meantime.

It's a bit like entering a competitive marathon and starting a few seconds before the gun - you might be fine until 25 grueling miles in, when you realise you've been disqualified for the aforementioned 'boost' at the start.

Perhaps you should find out what activities these companies will be undertaking, and deciding for yourself if it's Black Hat.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001181?hl=en

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  • well, maybe yes, maybe no. There's a bunch of marketing agencies that are doing this. And they're doing great job.
    – Josip Ivic
    Mar 8, 2016 at 14:27
  • In my experience (7+ years in online marketing) I have never once come across an SEO service company that promises results "in a matter of days" that I'd trust my company websites to. I have used Black Hat services in the past for personal projects (Scrapebox / automatic comment submissions / cloaking / keyword stuffing / link farms etc.) and whilst some may show quick gains, they all eventually suffer. Mar 8, 2016 at 14:33
  • can you recommend a good service from your experience that is genuine and wont hurt the domain down the line? Mar 8, 2016 at 14:37
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    You are right. In a matter of days is just not possible without feeding bogus traffic to your site to boost their claim. Most all of these SEO companies are total Bull Squirt. It is about rapid results which cannot happen. It is about hundreds of backlinks which is not natural nor can they be thought out. These are guys that traffic in bulk and Google is looking for natural. For them it is about directories, Google has decided that most directory sites are junk. It is about submission to search engines and most have less users than you do. Not worth bothering. Forget links. Market the site.
    – closetnoc
    Mar 8, 2016 at 14:40
  • @DanHastings This is a broad question as there are numerous strategies for SEO, which vary between industry. The strategy we take is content generation - create unique, interesting content that's broadly related to your niche and host it on your site. Then research a list (10-20) of blogs/news outlets that rank well for the keywords you'd like to optimise for, contact them and offer to create more unique content just for them... with a link back. Even this strategy borders on Black Hat depending on how you go about it. SEO is a thriving industry for this very reason, there's no magic answer! Mar 8, 2016 at 14:45
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Without knowing the specifics, we can only guess. However, the red flag in your question is in a matter of days. That is just not possible. For example, search engines are not real-time and will not make rapid changes to a sites search traffic with the exception of trend search and that would only happen if a site already performs well for a particular topic.

SEOs cannot move any needle for a new site if the new site does not have a foundation within the search engine metrics already. This take months. And it is the first few months that are most critical to a site. Low quality scores will doom a site for quite a long time and it will take much much much more work to counter poor SEO work.

How this part of the so-called SEO industry works is trading in bulk work. This is done by reducing labor costs with automation. These sites will bulk submit your site to search engines, directories, and other link friendly based sites. As well, many operate a link authority scheme where a super authority site and several other authority sites intentionally built to manipulate rank and not designed for people. These site will create a link to your site for a price. Anything done by a person is often done by a fairly disreputable person living overseas in India or in Asia. Any link made by a person is barely acceptable if at all and not made with your interest in mind.

Many companies claim white-hat. But white hat in 1995?? 2005?? The fact that they claim white-hat is a huge red flag for me. Why make the claim? Because they operate in a market space where white-hat and black-hat live.

Because of the sheer number of these companies selling bogus claims, directory sites are largely considered junk sites by Google. Link sites too. Smaller search engines cannot return much traffic and are generally useless. The automated links can be easily found by Google as not being natural and will count against your site. The human made links are often predominantly low with a few of moderate quality. The traffic you see is just a splash as a result of the new links and bogus traffic created by the SEO and does not last unless you keep paying them. Keep in mind, that many of these links are often created so that they can be removed.

As far as social media is concerned, it is always temporary. Many of these sites will market your site via social media using boiler plate marketing and automation across a large number of social media sites. This gives a short blast of traffic but does not last.

As far as advertising is concerned, if any of these sites do any advertising, it would be on lower quality sites with lower quality ads.

The name of the game is to not only sell you something, but keep selling you something. Many of these sites trade on ignorance and expect that you will not know quality traffic from junk traffic. They can easily drop your traffic quickly if you chose not to renew and will. Any link they create will be mostly low quality with some more moderate quality links. While this sounds good, in the end it will not really benefit your site. For many of these sites, the name of the game is to automate as much as possible, use low value human capital in poor parts of the world to do any manual work, and to keep you on the hook.

Again, there is no such thing as rapid results in the SEO world. Anyone who promises results is lying. No SEO can really promise results, only improvements that result in traffic later. Certainly, no SEO can promise rapid results without artificial traffic and techniques that are technically white-hat and still considered spam even if it is on the edge.

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If you are willing to pay boosting, sure, why not? There is a bunch of firms and services that are offering this kind of stuff. Search engine optimization is a focus area for their marketing. Marketing is business of selling fog to others, but it's damn good for SEO.

So, from my perspective there's a bunch of good stuff that you are getting from services. Of course, you can all do by yourself, but they have bigger base of users and developed scenarios / strategies. SEO is a crucial part of your marketing mix, and the main reason for paying someone for SEO is to boost everything.

So... good news is that you are getting bunch of great stuff (that you can mainly do by yourself, but for some period of time), bad news is that you need to pay for that.

EDIT:

I learned how to do SEO too with years, but...

My experience with this type of agencies is totally positive, because for most businesses today, SEO is the highest ROI marketing effort, and when I'm done with big webshop or big webproject, I don't do SEO for them, the agency is doing. So, mostly this few services are great services that agencies provide:

  • Web Copywriting
  • Social Media Plans
  • Free SEO advices
  • Marketing campaigns
  • Link building services
  • Keyword Research
  • SEO Strategy

and what I like the most, they are specialized in all kinds / types of CMS, either custom, either open source.

So, my experience tells me different. And if you stumble upon great agency, go with them.

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    The question is should OP invest in SEO service that boost site in a matter of days, not whether or not to invest in SEO in general. The majority of us on here would say investing in SEO is essential, but that's not what OP is asking. Mar 8, 2016 at 14:50
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    I answered the "is it a good idea to pay for these SEO boosting services for brand new websites as a way to "build a foundation"" question. There's no way that it can be done in days, we all know that.
    – Josip Ivic
    Mar 8, 2016 at 14:53
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Do not make the mistake of believing that SEO can be boosted. It can not. And if they do actually manage to help you see a boost, Google will at some point discover it and penalise your website.

Search is meant to work in the following way:

  • User searches for a term
  • The page with the best content, to meet the intent of that query is shown first

If your website can meet the user's intent, better than other websites that currently rank on the first page of Google, it'll show up soon enough. You do need to have some relevant content on that page as well.

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  • There are certainly real ways that you should optimize your for search engines. Not following basic SEO practices is going to result in your site not showing up in search engines. It isn't really correct to say that there is no way to boost rankings. Rankings can't be boosted only if you are already well set up. Mar 8, 2016 at 15:42
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    Trust and reputation are also a big factor of the way that search is meant to work. The page with the combination of the best content, the best query match, and the highest reputation is the one that shows up. Mar 8, 2016 at 15:44

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