Are unusual chinese links likely to be black hat?

[MartinHof]

Hello,

I noticed that this onepage website: http://www.clearpixel.net/ ranks at #11 for web design London so I did some research using SEO Moz Pro. Turns out that alll their links are from Chinese directory style sites. Does this demonstrate black hat SEO? If not, how do I go about getting links on Chinese sites with .gov urls.

Many thanks,

Martin Hofschroer

[RyanKent]

The site you mentioned appears to be a very well designed, high quality site. What I see to make that determination is:

• The domain was purchased in 1999. The domain is paid through 2020.

• The DA is 54. Their parent company is http://www.micrositez.net. The parent company has offices located in several major locations world wide. The parent company's home page has an impressive DA of 83.

• The company advertises as providing SEO services.

• They are registered with their local version of a better business bureau, have been in business since 2004 and advertise a million dollar insurance policy for clients

• The advertise "Strictly White Hat SEO. No black hat tactics guaranteed.

• Their Google results are impressive. They offer a large list of clients who rank in the top 5 for the key words in their industry. I checked one and it seemed quite legitimate.

They offer every impression of a solid company. Past the public appearance, I do have some concerns.

• They repeatedly offer testimonial quotes from "Top SEOs".

• They build links by submitting your site to 1000 free directories with their first package, up to 8000 directories with their last package. They do offer reasonable time frames ranging from 3 months to 1 yr.

• The offer paid directory links. Paid links of course is completely black hat, but directories provide a service. Yahoo directory, for example, is a perfectly legitimate paid link.

• Basically it appears they use what I refer to as a "zerg" method. It can be quite effective. They acquire literally thousands of low quality links. Surely many of the links will get cut off from Google, but many will get through. I would suggest this as "grey hat". It is not against Google's terms, but I would expect a future adjustment from Google specific to this method.

how do I go about getting links on Chinese sites with .gov urls.

If you don't speak Chinese, you would most likely need to hire a company like theirs that specializes or understands how the process works in China.

[MartinHof]

Thanks for your feedback.

Interesting to note also that it is just a flat holding page with a page rank of 0.

[RyanPurkey]

Like anywhere now, there are black hat sites / directories and white hat of the same.  Typically, if the links from China are similar to a linking scheme you'd see anywhere else, it's best to avoid the possible short term benefit you'd get in going after those links.  Although you probably already have, I'd continue to look for link opportunities from the first ten listings instead of this one.