All those businesses out there who’ve gone and looked for a link building company have most likely ended up at the Google search box to start their quest. With so many people having problems due to links these days, I thought we’d take a quick look at what an unsuspecting consumer might end up being provided by both organic and paid search results from Google. I feel bad for a lot of small businesses who don’t know any better and end up getting a boat load of spammy links done in their name. While they’ll most likely enjoy the benefits for a while, they’ll one day get the stinger of Google in their arse and that can be disastrous. While I don’t condone you heavily rely on organic Google traffic, it does make or break a lot of businesses.

So I’ll pick a few random search queries a company might search for and see what results we get in the organic and paid (Adwords) results. I’ve looked at a couple and have been disgusted with what I’ve seen, which is what inspired me to get this post going. It’s also quite obviously a sly tactic to make people aware of our link “attraction” process and why we promote awesome content for links more than any other tactic out there.

Search Query: Link Building Services

So here in red we have the companies that offer services that are against Google’s TOS and good ol’ Vertical Measures holding it down in green at number one. They do a lot of amazing work and even as a competitor, I have no problem promoting them or kissing a little ass. Problem here? Most will go with the others because a link attraction campaign costs quite a bit of money and those cheaper services are just too easy to go with.

Search Query: High Quality Link Building Service

So, BuildMyRank, a very very blackhat link building network that has recently been kicked in the rear from Google is still ranking no1 for this term… strange? You can imagine how this will end up getting a lot of people and their businesses in trouble without them knowing any better. This is another great example of why this post is going up here and why Google may even need to specifically check in on these SERPs.

Search Query: Whitehat Link Building Service

These are looking a lot better as I can see our site in the company of Eric Ward‘s (which should be no1 in my opinion). You can quickly see that a lot of the other results for the “whitehat/white hat” queries bring in a number of services that are in no way approved under Google’s TOS.

Be Careful

As you can see there is a lot of room for people getting stuck with a company that has no idea what’s going to keep you out of trouble while getting them ranked. You’d be shocked at how many firms are using blog networks to pump up client results and they’re not even telling them. I can imagine this will also lead to a lot of lawsuits or threats from companies who wake up one day with their business on the verge of extinction.

We don’t claim to be all super whitehat either, don’t get me wrong. Ranking in some niches sometimes requires sneakyness and we know that techniques that are not squeaky clean often work.  We do, however, have ninja skills when it comes to acquiring links that can only be obtained via some monetary exchange. When it comes to stuff like that, the clients are always made fully aware of the potential risks at hand. I’d just like to drill it into companies’ heads that they need to be aware of what might be a problem for them in the future and not be in the dark. Flying in the face of Google’s TOS is like investing: you have to be willing to lose everything you put in. One day, it might not be worth anything.