Blackhat SEO firm had more success than whitehat me

[davidtube]

I’ve been link building for a small online store. Before I took over their SEO, they hired a company who got them lots of spammy links over a 12 month contract. The spammy links didn't seem to improve or hurt rankings on their main keywords but general search traffic has almost doubled.

Now I’m doing whitehat SEO for them and getting links through emailing bloggers and giving them reasons to link to us. Over 2 months (amongst over things) I’ve obtained links from around 35 websites, mostly PR 3 – 4 with a few up to PR 7.

On my own website, a couple of links like this would produce a noticeable effect in the rankings, but I can’t seem to budge the ranks for this website.

I’m concerned that they might just want to go back to their old SEO firm for more spam links.

Am I doing the right thing? Am I getting links quick enough and how can I argue the case for whitehat if they’re getting more noticeable results from blackhat?

[KeriMorgret]

It's a small online store -- how are conversions and sales doing? Traffic and rankings are great, but if I (with an online store that sells items related to RC warships and scale boats) somehow rank for rabbit cages and get a lot of traffic from it, I've got rankings and traffic, but it hasn't done me a bit of good for the bottom line. If you then come along and get me three link related to DKM Bismarck plans that have 1/10 the traffic I got from the rabbit cages traffic, but that traffic converts and gets me sales, I'm going to be happy.

tl;dr Are you and the customer focusing on measuring the right results?

[Wayne76]

Hi David,

Taking a shot in the dark here, especially without seeing your backlinks, etc., but is it possible that some of the previor link building tactics have been dragging down the rankings/traffic that you are trying o supplement with by using honest, more effective white-hat tactics?

Best,

W

[johnshearer]

"Now I’m doing whitehat SEO for them and getting links through emailing bloggers and giving them reasons to link to us. Over 2 months (amongst over things) I’ve obtained links from around 35 websites, mostly PR 3 – 4 with a few up to PR 7."

This is quite an accomplishment...35 organic links. Give it some time. Every SEO has their own opinion on what is black hat and what is white hat. Are you using adwords? are you using google analytics to track traffic and conversion?

[MandLoys]

Always communicate with your client. If they want to go back to the blackhat firm, explain that the effects of blackhat techniques may very well be temporal and after the next Panda, BlackBear, Gorilla or whatever update they can be easily thrown back to the end of search results. And this "update" can happen anytime, maybe tomorrow maybe only in a year. If they're in for the long term, they have to plan for more than a year... Solid results take time, but they also stand the test of time!

[davidtube]

Very true. I can see that that our search traffic has a close correlation with the number of conversions. The search traffic they are getting is for high value keywords in their niche, but they aren't getting much traffic from search really. So in this case, higher ranks equal more revenue.

[davidtube]

I've wondered that a lot myself. Is it possible to test it?

[davidtube]

Thanks. If you want to outsource some work....

In this case I'm defining black hat as placing links on websites, that SEO company presumably own, which are covered by links to unfamiliar online stores using high value keywords.

We're not using Adwords but are using Google Analytics.

[davidtube]

That's a good idea, to remind them that the naughty links could have their value wiped in one go at any time.