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How do you adjust the SEOmoz crawling speed?

SEOmoz tried to crawl 10,000 pages in 3 hours and crashed our MySQL server.

Thanks for the good points, we are going to trial out building our own in-house SEO team with local staff + outsource staff, but under careful management, I will implement a strong approval, auditing and monitoring process. I think the problems arise when you just let people go free and do anything, by setting them what task to be performed in details, what to do and what not to do with local or outsource staff who are referred, I think that would remove most of the risk of blackhat SEO occurring. - At the same time, I am going to dump our SEO company for someone who is transparent with their work without a commitment. I think your right about contracts, whatever these guys say, you wont know if they are good at their work until you get started. And you need that option to drop (like I am about to with our current SEO). I will check out the companies featured on SEOmoz community and your recommendations, I think a SEO community referral is much more objective than the crap out their on topseos.com and the web in general. If you have anymore recommendations for SEO companies, I would love it.

Good points, we are going to dump our SEO company and choose one without a contract and who will be transparent. Thanks for the good advice.

how long does it take for webmaster tools and seomoz to detect new links?

I am using quantumlinx.com.au --- Interesting info about topseos.com, I did take it with a grain of salt, didn't think it would be that much salt. None the less, I did check out the company based on existing clients, and creditable sources such as business magazines and first hand accounts from clients. they seemed fine. --- though, i found it annoying that quantumlinx.com.au is not disclosing the links created: http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-typical-backlink-disclosure-policies-for-seo-companies --- they have been working on our account for a month, and i understand it takes at least 90days if not 6 - 12 months to get first page ranking. Sudden ranking increase flag something dodgy happening, so far our rankings are improving, but bit by bit, so i dont think i need to be concerned. your opinions? --- no one can understand your business like yourself, thankfully, i know what keywords convert best and gave our seo company the ones to work on. --- i am very cautious about offsite optimisation, which is why i always asked our shortlist of seo companies their link building policies, that blackhat techiques was not to be used, and checked if the company has been reported as using blackhat tehciques via google, forums, and client accounts. though the fact they are not disclosing links, has me concerned. --- because of this, what do you think about odesk contractors via a referral doing offsite work? i feel its more risky than a seo company as if a seo company was busted doing it, the company would not be operating for long. where as contractors are harder to vet. interesting you mentioned your expreience with this, could you expand on what went wrong?