Black Hat :(

[mike_sif]

Hello folks!

Name is Mike, i'd like to ask some of you your opinion on this matter.

My company hired an SEO company (reputable company in LA) to get our rankings where we want them to be.  They've been somewhat successful, we were actually quite happy with their performance.  I do mostly print marketing and graphic design for my company, I do manage our website and online store.  As a cost saving measure we've decided to cut their service (expensive) and the SEO is now brought in-house - that means its my responsibility now.  By no means am I a complete newbie, I pretty much know what I need to do in order to maintain our rankings and improve as well.  And with the knowledgebase here at SEOMOZ i should be fine (i hope).

Thing is that I have asked our previous SEO company to supply a list of all inbound links they created.  They've been silent, no response.  Am I asking for too much??  I ran some of my links through OpenSite Explorer (great tool by the way) and found tons of incoming links using black hat tactics.  I don't see how anybody could benefit making these links but the SEO company who we recently got rid of.  I am quite certain they are responsible for these links.  Black hat tactics such as keyword stuffing and anchor links (with very small font) on the footer of some random website.  Kinda upsets me that we paid so much money for this type of crap.  They never offered any advise with respect to on-site SEO which I am now finding out I have a lot of on-site optimizing thank to SEOMOZ.

I don't know if its such a big deal or if am simply overreacting.  I am concerned of my company's site getting penalized by the search engines and making my job as in-house SEO much more dificult.

Is this a big deal? Should I ignore it and begin building my own quality links and content?

Thanks

[DarinPirkey]

Have you taken a look at your links provided by Google WMT (Webmaster Tools).  They will give you a robust list of links coming into your site.

As far as "blackhat" and what not.  I wouldn't jump into worrying too much about that (of course be worried but don't go crazy over it)  I would definitely start a positive link building campaign.  If you dive into the links that Google will provide you on WMT then you'll be able to see the quality of the sites that the links are coming from.  The SEO Toolbar we have here is great for determining if the site is worthy of your time or not.  Also check out Link Finder on here.  It's a great tool and I don't see many people talking about it very often.  It's a great place to start.

I would spend about an 80% - 20% time ratio of getting good quality new links vs working to get rid of old links that are "truly" bad for your site.

[josh-riley]

Mike, it's a tough situation. It's so important that you are informed about your site and holding an agency (or any partner) accountable is critical. It's tougher once the relationship is over and it is a big deal if you find out you got hosed. It's unfortunate that this wasn't caught earlier.

At the very least, they should be able to give you some sort of overview. I spent most of my career on the agency side and you paid for their services and asking for information on your account isn't out of line, IMHO.

If you can get the data, great, however you know enough to not let it stop you. I mean, if you can hold them accountable, OK, but that won't change your predicament, right?

It sounds like there's plenty of black hat stuff you need to clean up and are smart enough to know to make it a priority before it really hits your site negatively.

And you know for next time -if there is a next time - who not to go to or what to make sure no outside partner does

Good luck!

[mike_sif]

Thank you for your kind replies vzPRO and Andrea!

I actually just received a reply from the "SEO" company.  They're denying that they created those links.  I don't believe them.  Besides them, there's no reason why anybody else would make those links.

I guess I have my hands full.

Thanks again.

[danatanseo]

Hi Mike,

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I can relate. Not the company where I'm at, but the company before that chose to go black hat and continues to do so. Just glad I'm not there for the inevitable fall.

Question, have you monitored the source code of all of your pages? I encourage you to audit the source code of every page on your site, just to make sure you haven't been hacked. Look for long lists of links that have been commented out.

One of the sites I did SEO for many years ago was hacked and then the hackers (most likely black hat SEOs) then built link campaigns into our site. It took years to get rid of those irrelevant links. It's a really old tactic but I'm sure there could still be people engaging in this kind of thing. This might not be it at all, just thought I'd suggest you check out your pages.

Good luck!

Dana

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Sorry to hear Mike, but glad you're learning SEO on your own so you take take your site in a better direction.

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of these situations over the past couple of years. Agencies used these methods because they worked for a time, then Google cracked down and 1000s of businesses were left victims of shady SEO.

In most cases, there's not much you can do except move on. You might want to take preemptive measures to try and get those links removed, check Google Webmaster Tools for any penalty messages, and continue building solid, white hat, future proof links.

Best of luck with your SEO.

[josh-riley]

At least you are going into this with your eyes wide open. Good luck!