Moronic SEO messing up my Client. How to Resolve the Situation?

Island

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My friend introduced me to a friend of his and I've started doing digital consulting for him, and helping him get his online marketing strategy together. Getting started on his analytics set up soon.

He already has a SEO company, but what they're doing is incredibly stupid. Literally exact match anchor texts from spammy PBNs with hundreds of posts on them (every single outbound link being an exact match anchor to a local business).

Luckily it seems like his website is still ok and hasn't been penalized.

He just signed a contract with them.

I've talked to him and we're both clear on that this is a major issue and we need to have links removed. So I'm going to ask him to ask his SEO to get those links removed from the PBNs before he gets fucked.

However, I"m not sure how to proceed after that since he's stuck in a contract. I really doubt this company can do any kind of legitimate white hat SEO. I mean for fuck's sake, they can't even build a passable PBN.

For a client like him I'd like to build legit links with content marketing and outreach, as well as building more citations, and getting links from industry resources if possible. But if he's stuck in a contract with an incompetent SEO... I guess we could pressure them to do that instead, but I doubt they have the skillset. Maybe I'll have to train them to do so? We can't just have them doing nothing.

Anyone dealt with a situation like this? What's his and my move here?

Obviously SEO's one part of the equation... I'm going to be helping him out with his paid traffic strategy as well (Adwords and FB ads). But he does get a ton of traffic through organic means and I'd like to keep that going and improving that.
 
The problem is the contract with the so called seo company. unless they have fucked that up also and somehow left a legal loophole for him to get out, the only way I see it is that he can pay the full amount for the duration of the contract and then ask them to do nothing.

there are more and more of theese companies comming it seems normally the ones that I've come across are often smart enough when it comes to the contract part and don't leave a way out unless the client pays the full fee and sometimes even penalty fees.

The worst I have had to deal with in terms of shit poor seo, was when they didn't even build spammy shit content PBN's but just went down the route of totally unrelated blog commenting with 1 kw which was thomas, the company they were trying to "rank" didn't sell any thomas's nor did they employ one.
 
If the client has a choice in what they can have the company do, I'd have them doing manual outreach for guest posts, building profiles and fleshing those out as well as actually using the sites, etc. Something that's nearly impossible to mess up.

If they won't remove the links, and even if they do, it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and disavow them now. But at the same time (playing devil's advocate here) there's a chance you're going to lose some rankings as well.

Another option, if you can't get out of the contract, would be to have them begin working on a less valuable site where their risky methods might make you some quick cash or at least break you even.
 
I've gotten in contact with their SEO company, but their owner is very much stuck in his ways.

Just to give you an idea of how bad this is, one of their PBNs actually has a banner link to their Facebook page (for a SEO company) advertising their SEO services. It;s literally a banner ad for SEO services on a PBN they own. Talk about a footprint.

I'm slowly trying to get him to adjust his strategy and slowly get rid of the spammy links while building up higher quality links. A good start would be to get exact match anchors from 30+ % to something reasonable like 1-2%. It boggles me that they havne't gotten penalized yet.
 
This kind of shit is why I wish 99% of the industry I work in would trip up and break their fucking ankles.

When it comes to the contract did they agree to incompetent black hat SEO. If not then the can almost certainly get out with a good lawyer. I wish them all the luck in the world if it goes to court.
 
@Island I'm curious as to why you don't just not pay them? Do you honestly believe this SEO company is going to take you to court? Seems like a fucking hassle.
 
1. Have them do something else. Outreach. Building web 2.0's.
2. Disavow the links.
3. If they won't change the anchors, you can at least have them add no-follow tags to them.
4. Have them work on an MFA instead.
5. Sue for misleading and incompetency.
6. Don't pay them.

There's countless high quality options just from the posts above. They work for you, not the other way around. Tell them what you want or tell them they aren't getting paid. Unless your contract is for some outrageous retainer, you're wasting everyone's time.

Actually, just get rid of this client. If they're paying someone else to do SEO, while you're consulting and telling them the opposite, and they're not doing anything about that, then fuck them off. What a waste of energy.
726 x 366​
 
CCarter said:
@Island I'm curious as to why you don't just not pay them? Do you honestly believe this SEO company is going to take you to court? Seems like a fucking hassle.
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This. I don't do contracts with companies unless it in the 5 figure per month range. You know how much it cost to sue someone? Then even if you win, you still have to collect. That's almost always the trickiest part. After all is said and done, the only one who wins is the lawyer. That is unless they take them to small claims court, but even that is a pain in the ass.

This would be a great way to do client outreach. Find websites that are actively getting worked on (use link velocity charts in ahrefs), then examine their link profiles. If you discover a PBN, scrape all the links they are linking too. Email business owner - hey, did you know whoever is doing your SEO sucks at it? Offer consulting and/or an SEO package, which includes getting those links removed.
 
Never understood why someone would risk another persons site
 
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