Ask HN: Anyone ever use Fiverr for SEO?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412281

by kevbam • 14 years ago

10 16 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi, I am considering using some of the fiverr jobs on offer to give my website a bit of a traffic boost. Anyone have any experience doing this? Any particular jobs better than others?

duiker101• 14 years ago

I do not really see how you would do this... care to explain a bit further?

kevbam5• 14 years ago

Thank you for getting back to me. Fiverr offers a lot of link building jobs that promise a massive boost in traffic for your site. See links below for examples: http://bit.ly/O0hSTe http://bit.ly/O0i3Ot

I realize a lot of these are just going to automatically build links on low PR sites. However, I was wondering if there are any legit SEO services on fiverr? Has anyone ever seen a positive result from any of the link building services on offer on fiverr?

benhebert• 14 years ago

I bought a few packages from fiverr for a site that I built 3-4 years ago with a minor benefit.

My recommendation would be to build your own 2.0 sites like squidoo / hubpages link back to your main site and then blast those squidoo / hubpages with fiverr.

PaulHoule2• 14 years ago

There's a saying that the farmer's footsteps are the best fertilizer.

I've never seen a third party linkbuilding service, based on humans, that was worth 1/3 of what they charged for it.

I'm not against semi-automated services that can get you into 200 directories for $5; even the best sites have large numbers of trashy links.

If you want a real traffic boost you need to build top quality links. This is tough.

Let's say you've got 1000 visitors a day. A site like that can make enough money on AdSense that you get a monthly check, enough to pay the server bills, but it won't cover your car payment. You want more.

According to quantcast, that puts you at roughly the top 100,000 of all web sites. If we guess there are 20 million web sites, that puts you in an elite club of the top 0.5%

Let's imagine that Google is still using PageRank. If you look at the theory behind it, PageRank simulates a web surfer making a random walk. So the PageRank of a site ought to be proportional to the traffic it gets.

If you're at the 1-in-100,000 level, you get very little PageRank from sites that are at the 1-in-1,000,000 level. To really move up, you need to get links from sites that are bigger than you -- but these are just 0.5% of the sites! It doesnt hurt to get links from small-fry sites, but the bulk of your effort needs to go to recruiting powerful allies.

For every site I've successfully SEOed, I've

(1) written at least one really good sales letter to persuade people to make links to this site

(2) worked harder at promoting the site than I worked at making it (and I'm a VERY technical guy)

(3) had keywords in the domain name

At this point I wouldn't even start a project without (3). Some sites suck so much that you just can't do (1). Most people won't work hard enough to do (2) and that's why it's possible to win.

kevbam5• 14 years ago

Paul,thank you very much for getting back to me with the above.Some very good advice which has got the creative juices flowing.

I thought google had down graded the importance of keywords in the domain name? This was meant to combat people registering exact match domains to rank for specific terms.

PaulHoule2• 14 years ago

All I can say is do a few queries and look at the SERPS and come to your own conclusion about the keywords.

Bing and Google will nuke a content-free site with good keywords, but if you make a good site with clear quality indicators the keywords definitely give you a tail wind.

bvlaar• 14 years ago

Just a quick insight. I work with someone who runs a small online business selling health products over the web. He swears by ffiver for SEO in addition to more well known techniques. One way he found to legitimize his business was to buy Facebook likes, Youtube subscribers, and Twitter followers. I consider this modern/social SEO. Having a social following as a business can legitimize it in other people's eyes. His business has about a 100:1 follower to following ratio, and ever since he purchases followers, hes had a large increase in real followers. This follows the herd mentality. People are more likely to follow your business and interact, if there is proof others have done so. Hope this helps

kevbam5• 14 years ago

Thanks. Buying facebook and twitter followers is something I considered as well. Will keep this in mind!

helen8420002• 14 years ago

Don't do it. It wrecks your site. Those link building packages just cause your site to become awash with spam. To the point I've had to turn comments off on the one affiliate site I tried it with.

700+ junk comments every DAY and no discernable difference in search engine results. Lingering somewhere on page 3. Plenty of traffic, several thousand per day, none of it genuine users though.

I built another site that I've carefully optimised myself, I'm constantly in the top 5 results for my phrase on Google, 300+ uniques per day which has lead to a genuine community and just 1 spam comment in 6 months which was actually an advert for a link building service!

kevbam5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the warning. I was considering only taking jobs which offered less than 100 links and/or manually link building. Do you think this makes a difference or will they just tell you they did it manually?

mapster• 14 years ago

I think what he is saying is to be very prudent with the sorts of links you create. In fact, get referrals and vet them out, to qualify a link building person's skills. And of course, as you know, you get what you pay for, even on Fivrr.

helen8420002• 14 years ago

I think they'll still add you to places/directories you don't want your site to be in.

Building good links yourself can take time but it's really worth it. Aim for 5 a day for a few weeks.

You care the most about the success of your site. No SEO service will take the time & trouble to do it properly.

If you'd like help specific to your website, my email is in my profile.

AlphaDex• 14 years ago

You can't really generalize, there are some good gigs, some bad gigs. Most of the "most popular" work either temporarily or superficially. I would not recommend using fiverr unless you have a solid understanding of SEO (you can HARM your rankings if you are not careful). Also, the good gigs I mentioned are good, not great. In other words, they are worth $5, but probably not $6. Good luck!

jvvlimme• 14 years ago

Traffic is worth sh*t.

You need targeted traffic which converst (buys your product, clicks the ads, whatever your conversion is) and that's something these guys can never give you.

If you want to spend money on traffic, you're better off learning how to do PPC advertising. At least that way you get traffic from people who have some interest in your site. You can easily find a voucher from Google for 50$ free PPC advertising to get you started.

fiverjob• 14 years ago

I don't use fiverr, but now i use some of the services on fiverjobsite.com instead. They are fantastic!!

Give them a try.

Ask HN: Anyone ever use Fiverr for SEO?

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