I hired an SEO company to help with my blog: Investfourmore.com. Part of their proposal to help my site was getting authority links. They gave me a 6 month proposal with a monthly fee. I actually decided to do the 3 month option and pay more to get things done quickly.
I was super busy the start of the year and did not pay attention as much as I should have. However after the three months were up, they kept charging me. I complained about this and they apologized, but would not refund me. More on that later.
What concerned me the most was they kept saying how important it was to get authority links to my site. After they had done their work, I kept asking for a list of authority links they had gotten me. It took them three weeks to send the report and when I got it, all the links had happened since I asked for the report. That made me a little wary as it looked like they had done nothing until I brought up the subject. When I looked at the links things looked even worse. Here is an example they kept giving me of an authority link.
My site ranks about 200,000 on Alexa. This site ranks 10,000,000. To me this random blog in Australia is not an authority link. 95 percent of the links they provided me would not show up on Alexa at all because their traffic was so low. Another link they kept bragging about was from a site that had been around 16 years and had 21 links into it. They claimed they got me 12 embedded video links. All of those posts were done the same day, with basically the same exact post. Here is one.
https://www.runique.net/why-people-dream-to-be-a-real-estate-professional/
All of the links were done April 2nd. The highest ranking site that had a link to mine was ranked at 200,000 about the same as my site. I found one link like that and all the rest ranked much worse or not at all. They claim these links are worth $10,000.
My question is: What is an authority link and am I being crazy for thinking these are crap links that mean nothing? I am not an SEO expert but my site does very well with SEO getting over 3,000 hits a day from search.
I am thinking about doing a charge back on my credit card for the first time ever. They were charging me $4,200 a month and charged me two months more than they were supposed too. After asking for a refund 5 times, they will not address the question. They even admitted they messed up:
"Hi Mark
I really do apologise for our mishap on the invoicing. It's initially my fault for not scheduling a call with you earlier. Our process is to have a Client Success call scheduled for around the completion of the initial strategy.
On the call we review together what worked with the strategy, what can be improved and discuss a new strategy to move forward. often the client is comfortable with the existing budget so we fit the new strategy to that or they've received quite a dramatic upswing and want to continue rapid expansion with an increased budget.
It's really my fault for not scheduling a call with you and communicating with the team so they guys continued expanding the work.
Since we started work, your site has had a nice upswing in traffic of 27.34%
17,071 in December
21,739 to now
I do hope that you're happy with the work so far and the increased traffic has lead to many more customers.
Matt has already compiling a detailed report of all the work that has been completed, along with what else is being done and a strategy to move forward. Can we have a call to go over it next week?
Sorry again for my mistake. Have a great weekend
"
Yes my site had an increase in traffic over the time they worked on it, which was around the new year. Every new year I get a huge upswing in traffic. Last year, I had an increase of 40 percent in traffic over the same time frame. I point this out and they ignore me. Below you can see SEO hits year over year.
Any SEO experts out there? Am I being crazy for thinking they are ripping me off and scamming me? The company is Ardor SEO with Kris Reid. They had other issues on my site as well, but this was my biggest complaint.
Thanks for listening to my rant! Anyone voting for minnowbooster whitelist out there, I hope you consider me!