Are SEO Gigs On Fiverr Safe For My Site?
The short answer is NO. NEVER.
You have just set up a website or a blog and have read lots online about the importance of having backlinks so that search engines trust you.
A quick search on Google, brings you to a platforms like Fiverr, where it looks like you’ve hit the jackpot. People offering hundreds of backlinks for $5! They promise to build these links on high domain authority sites of 50-100. P.s. Amazon.com does not even have a score of 100, so the alarm bells are already ringing!
Fiverr can be great for many general business tasks like research, finding virutal assistants, getting content written… but for SEO, it poses huge risks to your business.
Link building and gaining backlinks is not a straightforward and simple task. Networks need to be created for safe backlinking and this takes years, along with building thousands of websites.
YourVeganMarketer.com recently took on a client website where they had built backlinks via a seller on Fiverr. The results were shocking.
Case Study: Clients Bought SEO on Fiverr
YourVeganMarketer.com is often approached by companies who are looking for good clean SEO. Every client is asked if they have had any SEO work done previously or built any links. The most common answers are no, followed by yes some via personal guestposts and sometimes the dreaded yes lots from Fiverr comes out!
Keep in mind, a genuine clean backlink can cost on average of $100. All of our clients get many of these as part of every SEO plan and they are carefully selected to ensure they are relevant to the niche, with appropriate anchors which signals the strength of our clients site to Google.
The Results Of Buying An SEO Gig On Fiverr
In summary, the analysis of the links showed they were pretty much junk and spam. They had trojan viruses on them which are viruses that Google is aware of for doing damage to users’ computers and browsers. Lots of the sites where links were places were filled with duplicated content which Google hates and plenty with spammed wiki links.
Early on in a genuine SEO strategy, these links are very hard to remove without being flagged to Google. The site owner, unfortunately, has to accept the risk for now, allowing YourVeganMarketer.com time to slowly build cleaner links.
These links from Fiverr were created using mass spam software tools where the anchor texts are not planned and are coming from sites which most probably are known as spam.
I noticed that the backlinks anchor text in a lot of cases were the keywords that may have been given to the Fiverr seller so they used these to create the anchor. Massive NO for Google! Anchoring keywords can over optimise a page and site, showing clear signs to Google that we are trying to cheat the system.
Further digging into the backlinks showed that 30-50% of the links are hitting 404 errors or blocked as they are from known virus/malware sites.
The risk of using such strategies is that Google is now within their right and terms of business to totally remove this site off the search engine.
If you have unknowingly puchased backlinks via any of the online freelancing platforms, get in touch with YourVeganMarketer.com today! Our work for the first 5-7weeks will be to protect your site with the building of cleaner links to show Google we are now doing things properly.
What If The SEO Fiverr Gig Has 5 Star Reviews
Initially, the hundreds of 5 star reviews look great and shows that the seller is doing a great job for buyers.
Often, the titles of the Gig will not match the images, as well as the descriptions. The descriptions will also be filled with errors and promises that are beyond anyone’s scope. For example a promise to get a backlinks from a site with DA100. Google’s DA is 98, so something is not adding up!
How Do They Get Reviews?
- The customers may not be well versed in SEO and trust the seller in what they did. Most buyers are new to SEO, not aware of the areas spoken about earlier in the article, so they see that they have got backlinks and are made to believe their website is on its way to ranking high in Google.
- It is common knowledge that in order to be seen by more users on Fiverr, the seller needs reviews. This has opened up a market of paying other sellers for reviews, or asking friends to buy a gig in order to leave a review.
- Sellers will refund you if you catch them out on their unethical practices. Sellers are fully aware that their links are risky and not good for SEO, but they sell them in the hope you are unaware of this. Most sellers will offer a full refund if you offer to not leave a bad review, or remove an existing bad review. Call them out on their junk backlinks!
If ranking well and buying backlinks was as easy as paying $5. Wouldn’t we all be on Page 1? Search Engines are incredibly smart and completely aware of what is happening around the web.
If you would like to learn more about getting genuine and powerful backlinks to your website from your niche, you should read about my Power Post Links and contact me today.
