I was on a SEO forum today and read a post there that has me concerned for everyone and it also gives SEO companies bad names.
Here is the basics of what he is doing to blackmail/extort fees from his potential clients.
A little knowledge first, a 301 redirect is a permanent way to tell the search engines that a page has moved to a new url. For instance, if you have a html site you will have pages like http://mydomain.com/roofcleaning.html and if you switch over to Wordpress or any other CMS that uses php language, your page will look like http://mydomain.com/roof_cleaning/
Well you use the 301 to tell the search engines and any links that you have out there where the new page is automatically redirecting the user and bots to the new page.
I don't know if you have heard about negative SEO but that is basically doing things in the link building process that will intentionally hurt the rankings of a site. It is there and it does work but is highly unethical and I would do more than sue someone that I caught doing that to my sites.
Well because this guy is apparently not very good at SEO, he creates a 301 redirect from one of his sites and spams the hell out of it, redirecting those links to your site causing it to drop in the rankings.
Then after a period of time he contacts the company asking if they need his seo services. Where he then removes the 301 redirect and as time goes by your site climbs again.
Just a fair warning, if your sites drop and then you are contacted by a SEO company, beware. I will attempt to help anyone that finds themselves in a situation like this to see if a 301 redirect is involved.
Here is the basics of what he is doing to blackmail/extort fees from his potential clients.
A little knowledge first, a 301 redirect is a permanent way to tell the search engines that a page has moved to a new url. For instance, if you have a html site you will have pages like http://mydomain.com/roofcleaning.html and if you switch over to Wordpress or any other CMS that uses php language, your page will look like http://mydomain.com/roof_cleaning/
Well you use the 301 to tell the search engines and any links that you have out there where the new page is automatically redirecting the user and bots to the new page.
I don't know if you have heard about negative SEO but that is basically doing things in the link building process that will intentionally hurt the rankings of a site. It is there and it does work but is highly unethical and I would do more than sue someone that I caught doing that to my sites.
Well because this guy is apparently not very good at SEO, he creates a 301 redirect from one of his sites and spams the hell out of it, redirecting those links to your site causing it to drop in the rankings.
Then after a period of time he contacts the company asking if they need his seo services. Where he then removes the 301 redirect and as time goes by your site climbs again.
Just a fair warning, if your sites drop and then you are contacted by a SEO company, beware. I will attempt to help anyone that finds themselves in a situation like this to see if a 301 redirect is involved.