Off-page SEO and link building

[CaseyDaline]

Hi everyone!

I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods.

He plans to:

• guest blog
• do press release marketing
• comment on blogs

He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked  about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before.

I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude."

Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated!

Thanks,

Casey

[CaseyDaline]

Hey BeardoCo – thanks for the reply! He's planning on guest blogging elsewhere. I suppose all the advice and whatnot I read on the SEOMoz blog is aimed toward SEOs and people who build their own websites, and so I'm wondering if it's normal for a consultant who's not really affiliated with your company to be trying to write content relevant to that industry?

Thanks.

[gfiedel]

Hi Casey,

My feeling is that whenever a vendor is unwilling to be transparent, provide reports or discuss specific strategies they may be someone worth steering clear of. Saying he has never had problems in the past is waffling and not responding to or addressing your actual request. You are entitled to the information and if it's not willingly given that is a red flag. Additionally, this tasks he is performing do beg some qualifiers since they verge on outdated and/or less than completely safe practices. I would investigate further and/or locate an alternative.

Hope this is helpful.

[MoosaHemani]

I mean the offpage strategy does include guest posting service but does not include quality of content where it will get posted and all this seems a little shaky! I am not saying you are in wrong hands but who ever he/she is, should include in the content production process and outreach relevant blogs and resources that includes new papers, journalist and magazines.

If the external consultant is not involve in these process you might not be able to get the better results that you should expect from this service.

Also, you should know the details of the plan like why you are going with guest blogging, what are the benefits of it, why blog commenting and what kind of blogs he is targeting for blog commenting and more questions like that so that you are clear with success and fail of the project and so as the consultant.

Hope this helps...

[BeardoCo]

Here are my comments...

1. Guest Blogging - Is he planning to write blogs for other websites or is he getting people to guest blog for his website?  I don't think its bad for him to guest blog for other websites as long as its not spamish material.  Guest blogging can be an SEO benefit, but more importantly I think it may drive wanted traffic if he is writing awesome material.

2. Press Release Marketing is a tad outdated and if I am not mistaken Google doesn't even look for press releases anymore. I don't think its a bad practice for realistic Press Release items such as new product lines, business mergers or something of that sort.

3)Blog Commenting will have little to no effect on his SERPS.  If he chooses to manually do blog comments that are informative and not anchor text driven then that will be fine.

I always believe that as an SEO consultant you should drive your meetings and the strategies. If a client has a different idea and doesn't budget it might be time to fire them