Page 3 - Textlinkbrokers.com & text-link-ads.com

Yes, we do our best to inform everyone of our clients of the risks associated with each service we provide. It is also in everyone of our terms of service which they have to sign and initial on every section, including the section that states the risks.

In addition a large majority of our business comes from companies that are well aware of the risks. Most of them do not agree with fear mongering that gets perpetuated throughout the forums. If everything was true that was said on the forums Google would have penalized everyone already, including those participating in even the most benign link building services.

No most SEO's are not liars, but many of them who build their reputation on public forums are scared to death of Google which leads them to take a very negative position with anything regarding paid link building.

As for me participating in this discussion, yes I am biased, but I think I have also been forthright. I have never once said that all of our services are Google Compliant, and I never plan to say that until it is 100% true.

So the answer is "use at your own risk"... correct?



That isn't really what occurs... we try to educate here... informed decision-making and that previous quote fits here as well: "use at your own risk"... correct?



So scare to death that they are forced to lie to protect themselves? ...Oh sorry they aren't liars... they just can't disclose the truth.

In fact, the real problem is "risk management"... when you deploy risky tactics - they are risky right? That means you can lose everything and be out your money as well... or do you refund all the fees in this event?

If they publicly acknowledge they use your services... people can "backtrack"... locate, report, and Google can do what it does... correct?

...and that's their "exclusive risk" - right?

Your disclaimer protects you right and you are not at fault.



I still like to hear what your policy is on the "Google killed my links" or "I've been filtered" or "I've been penalized"... "I've been blacklisted".

This is great language:

http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/documents/download/Inventory%20Partner



That's for the people they pay to house your inbound links... got to wonder their stance on damage to your website for paying for their services?

I thought linking was a good thing?

Yes, educating our customers is the first step. The more they understand risk the better they do at making the right, long term, decisions.

The next step is to not propose strategies that are overly risky in the first place. In most cases there is no need for unnecessary risk.

If however a client comes in saying I want to rank #1 for an extremely competitive keyword and I want to do it in 6 months, our first answer is "thats an unrealistic goal, its not only risky its going to be very expensive". If they then say, I dont care about the risk, being #1 for even a few months can make me millions, we say "Yes sir, your the boss, but please thoroughly read our terms of service before you sign".

As for a guarantee that they will never loose rankings we have never had a need to do that. I can count on one hand the number of clients, out of thousands, that have been penalized due to linking, and in each and every case we have been able to restructure their linking program and/or their site in order to build trust again and get them back to where they were. Most of the penalization's customers receive are from duplicate content or for trying to do way to much in too short of a time period which we never recommend.

What happens if Google blocks a couple of their links from passing juice to them? Well thats why we do comprehensive link building from a large variety of sources. Most of our clients buy permanent links and get new ones every month, a few lost links is going to nothing to them.

Do we offer rank guarantees when customers or resellers ask for them, yes we have done that. If we are doing the full SEO and have full control over what links are built we have made guarantees in the past.

What would we do if the sky was to fall and Google decided to penalize anyone who has ever built a single link, well I don't know the answer to that, and I don't believe it will ever happen. However, the clients that are extremely smart are well diversified, so even in the worst case scenario they will do better than the next guy.

What would happen if a client was to reveal that they have purchased links and Google was to go hand job them, well that has happened in the past which is why every client now signs a non-disclosure agreement, for their protection and for ours. Our clients are very aware that if they announce they are buying links to the world they can expect the consequences. That has not been an issue for us in a long time. The one client that comes to mind that did that in the past was what spurred us to be so aggressive on our education, TOS's, and our non disclosures. That client eventually rebounded once they came clean and got Google to reevaluate them.

Yes, we educate our partners as well.. I'm not going to apologize for covering our butts, I suggest every business have limits of liability clauses in their contracts, you cant predict every event that can happen.

Everyone of our inventory partners is educated on the risks associated with selling links and are asked to sign and initial every section of our TOS dealing with those risks. Do inventory partners receive a lowered toolbar pagerank if they sell too many links or if Google decides to hand job them, yep, it happens. Most partners don't care about loosing their toolbar pagerank, the ones that do are extremely selective on the types of links they will accept. Again, it is a risk versus reward scenario.

Google has done a good job of destabilizing the pagerank toolbar, it makes it tough to sell links based on pagerank. It's actually been a blessing in disguise, it has forced us to diversify our product offerings over the years and has also forced us to create our own metrics systems so that when we do sell old school rented links we can focus on relevancy and other metrics besides just pagerank.

Well at last we agree... I won't apologize for covering the butts of the average poster here that isn't your targeted customer.

Agreed, I'm glad someone is covering your posters butts, there are a lot of companies out there who do not educate their customers on the potential risks like we do, and that do not provide google-compliant services as an even an option.

Jarrod u seem pretty convincing here. I sent a mail to Brigette (ur account manager) last month and asked some few simple questions regarding the services. Not a single answer was convincing enough to buy your services and that's when i decided not to purchase links through u. Here are the excerpts:



But you don't place text links permanently. Even your permanent package gives only 6 months guarantee.



Do you call this a convincing reply?



Your so called forbidden inventory is just one report away from Google web spam team. Once identified, everyone associated with it will bust like a bubble. IMO that's the risk rand was talking about.

Himanshu160, I only wish that I could replicate myself, wouldn't that be great.

I would be happy to discuss other options with you outside of the forums or get you to one of our senior account reps. I do not handle very many sales and this isn't the place for it.

As for our perm links, most of those are placed on sites that we do not control thus it becomes too costly to guarantee them forever. We have found that if they have stayed up for 6 months the churn rate is fairly low after that.. The 3 month guarantee is being offered at a cheaper rate and usually only used in our bundles. Again if it has stayed live for 3 months the churn rate isn't going to be very high after that.

There are advantages to being on our controlled inventory but also some disadvantages. With our controlled inventory we can make sure every link we place stays up, those tend to be the links we charge monthly, although we have done some custom perm links on controlled inventory. The disadvantage is that if someone reports one of our controlled sites to Google it can loose value, of course some sites are at more risk than others because they sell a lot of links or they sell homepage links in the sidebar etc..

We do have inventory that is cleaner than others and we can even do exclusive deals so that you are the only one on the site. It all depends on your budget.

For most low competition keywords one of our cheap link bundles is all that is needed. Sure some of the links will go down over time, and yes Google may devalue some. However there are always new links being built to replace the few that go down so the results are a nice increase in rankings over time.

The risk part is buried quite deep in the site. Maybe it should be on the front page.

Hello SeoGoat,

While I believe our account managers do a great job at educating our customers and building strategies that are very low risk, I agree that our site needs to be updated. It has been malnourished for way to long. Its only been the last few months that we have started updating it with all of the products we have developed over the past few years. We do have plans to develop content on our site that speaks about google compliancy and risks associated with certain products and strategies.

Regards,

You can't get away from the fact that your site hides the risk. If you were as keen to be as transparent as you say then why wouldn't this information be easier to find?

The truth is most of your link building activities carry risk, those that don't carry risk would appear to be relatively low value or offer more value to the site containing the link.

I am not against buying or selling links. Come to think of it I am not against anything that will give me or my clients a competitive edge, but, I am against any activity that offsets that risk to individuals or companies that are unaware of them.

IMHO all of your information concerning rented or purchased links should be clearly labeled with a warning so that your potential clients can make an informed decision. Without that (again IMO)you are letting your customers and your business down. Perhaps if that was the case you wouldn't have the negative image that you currently have.

I got directed here from SeoMoz and have read the whole thread.

So as a newcomer who has read the entirety of this thread, I'd like to add:

1) Good on you jman, you're running a legitimate business brokering links. If people want to buy from you, cool. If they don't, they can shut up and jog on. Because being rude to you isn't going to change the fact that you can sell a site links and get them ranking in google.

2) Google is not Omniscient. Google is an algorithm, a robot, not a thinking person. It's given a mathematical formula and told to 'go and do'.

Matt Cutts is probably correct when he says that footer links will be devalued. That's a rule that can be written into google.
But "ignore any links that look a bit dodgy" isn't something that can be told to a computer program. That takes a human.

So until Google starts employing people to do 'manual reviews', paid links will not make the sky fall.

3) It's all good in the mix of things. But content (with links) will always be king...so long as you have someone to write it and a good place to put it.

Pretend you go to see a heart specialist, that does only one particular kind of surgery.

He tells you about this procedure which is sure to add 20 years to your life. Throws out a bunch of testimonials about how great it is, and what benefits people have received. He presents it to you as the best thing that has ever introduced to the health community, in fact. He tells you there are other ways to prolong your life, but this one is much, much easier, after all, he is a specialist. That's all he does.

But what he neglects to tell you (until you pick and pry at him), is that there's a 25% chance you will die. Isn't that a risk he should mention upfront?

Is this still a "legitimate" doctor?

I have no problem with someone wanting to buy links. Go ahead. If it's part of your strategy, that's perfectly fine. Because of that, I also have no problem with a company that specializes in brokering links. But they should mention any risk upfront, or at least make it easily accessible.

Tell me you have nothing to do with them?

If you don't then I would recommend reading the thread and actually getting an understanding of the subject before just offering your opinion, which IMO isn't worth much!