SEO - how not to do it!

This will only rank you for your name if you have a uncommon name, otherwise this will not get you anywhere.

You will need to do a lot more than just these to rank for any real term that has some competition

I had seo done on my site, I ordered whitehat seo, but how do I know that the links I get are whitehat not blackhat or spammy links?

Well you can always ask for a report of what they have done. If they refuse its may be dodgy but their are valid reason why they might not want to share where they got their links from.

If they don't want to give you a report, then there are various tools out there that find all the links pointing to your site and then sends out a report. But this might not be that practical as the best tools cost money and its normally a cost that SEO'ers or SEO companies pay for.

Can I ask what where the terms of your order? You can pm me if you want.

Edit: Just had a quick look using one of my tools: you got 146 links to your site (thats including from your own site as well e.g. internal links) Most of them are directories. So either they did these links very recently and it hasnt updated on my tool or you paid for directories (which isnt really spammy but it isnt worth anything really)

I have all reports with list of 800+ external urls but when I checked on a link checker such as backlinkwatch.com, I can only see 100+ links. I don't quite understand why. My Alexa rank has certainly gone up from 23 million to 800k. What do you mean the directories aren't worth anything, James?

Firstly do some random checks from the reports to see if your links are actually there, do just a few to make sure.

A reason for your links not showing up in some places is because your link has not been indexed by Google or various other tools and search engines yet. This basically mean they don't know about the link yet because they haven't visited the site since its been added.

I personally don't user Alexa rank, I go and see where my site is ranked in the search engines to see my progress

Well to make it as simple as possible, every link that points to your site carries some kind of value or weight to your site. All of these links then adds up and thats how google determines where to rank you (among other factors as well) So if you can get a link from lets say a really high authority site e.g. bbc to your website, that will carry a huge amount of value to your site and google will love and praise your site.

Where as directories (most of them not all) are seen as low quality sites and a link from a directory just won't budge your site enough to make a difference. Don't get me wrong i use directories, after all its links, it adds diversity to your link building strategy.

The few big directories that are definitely worth it, is yahoo directory and dmoz.

Thanks for clarification, James. I did random check as per report, I had 700 links added in October and 100 recently, how long do I have to wait before they are indexed by the search engines or other tools?

My site is registered on Dmoz but not Yahoo. Yahoo charges $299 pa.

What do you wan to know about in particular? However, going for Black Hat Seo Techniques is like putting one's reputation on stake. It is just a matter of time. Sooner or later Google throws the spam off. Besides, those spammy links or purchased links do not actually make any difference.

So Play Safe....

Well it depends really on how often search engines and tools visit the site to determine when it will index thus making it hard to say.

Now because some of these are directories I am thinking most of the links that you got are from directories and some tools just dont list these in a blacklink reports... Don't ask my why they just don't. I have submitted sites to over 2000 directories and it only shows up a few in my tools. Now if these were better links then I would expect them to show up but because they are not I wouldn't be too worried.

Thats great that your on dmoz, and yeah yahoo does charge which why it adds more value because not everyone is going to pay for that.

Let me just say something because people on here can seem to come across as very scared of even a hint of spammy/blackhat type links. It is unlikely that it will hurt you (especially you with only 800 links) google is not going to throw you out of its search engine because of that. now if you got thousands upon thousands in a short space of time then yeah then it will raise a flag.

I just don't want you to lose sleep over it (in your case). Think about it, if I was your competitor and I knew all I had to do was get a few spammy links to your site then google will through you out.. then (depending on the morals of the competitor) I could easily just take you out. Instead google just doesnt value the links. Thats all.

Can see 35 external links to your site on Open Site Explorer

Fantastic on getting on the DMOZ, been trying for years and failed miserably!

Not seeing their link showing yet though in the report, so guess it will show up soon if the DMOZ is pretty recent.

Thanks for looking into it, Steve. What is the advantage for being on the DMOZ? It seems everyone recommends it. I haven't found any advantage yet. My site got listed on it last month, do you mean their link pages to my site should show on the Open Site Explorer's report?