When it comes to SEO link building services, you have a lot of different solutions and web sites fighting for your business. One of these services is “The Hoth”, which specializes in SEO link building strategies through article spinning, using web 2.0 directories and link wheels. I first heard about the company when they were featured on ShoeMoney’s Free Shirt Friday. Since I’m always on the look out for new companies and what’s hot in the world of SEO and link building, I got in touch with TheHoth.com and setup a test campaign to see how they work.
First off, who runs The Hoth and What is it?
Right when you get to The Hoth web site, you will see a video in the top right corner. The two guys in the video are Alex Pyatetsky and Dax Miller, the creators of The Hoth. The video is around 10 minutes long and goes into great detail about how The Hoth runs their seo link building services and creates backlinks for your web sites. Alex and Dax are very proud and confident about their company, which makes them the face of the company, so they created a nice long video that is more personable than a quick cartoon or text based video to make a quick sales pitch.
The three part link building process concept is based on link authority, link volume and rapid indexing. The top level of link building is through the use of top level authority web sites like wordpress.com, blogspot.com and squidoo to create a mixture of original content. The next level of link building is through the use of 2.0 web properties, then profile links and social bookmarks are used in the final stages of the link building process.
The Hoth also has a handful of testimonials on their site from other well known SEO / link building services out there such as BlueHatSEO.com and Drip Feed Blasts.
The Hoth Link Building Reports
After placing an order with The Hoth, they will get to work on using your requested urls and keywords to build a unique link plan for you. Once completed, you will receive a link report like the one below. I have blurred out the exact keywords and urls built for the campaign, but you will get the idea. The report breaks down all keywords, articles, web 2.0 and images used for your cycle of backlinks and bookmarks.
Attached is your HOTH 2.0 report including:
- 1 Blogspot blog with 5 articles
- 1 WordPress blog with 5 articles
- 1 Squidoo Lens
- 35-75+ Web 2.0 Properties
- 100-200+ Social Bookmarks
- 500+ Profile Links
PLEASE NOTE: The Results Package includes 1500 article submission, which are not included in this report.
The Hoth Link Building Packages
There are currently two different link packages avaialble through The Hoth. The first is a trial package for $60, which includes 1 super spun article that is posted to wordpress, blogspot and squidoo, then spread through out their link building process. Their premium package is $200, which is made up of 5 super spun articles. Both packages use up to 3 URLS and 5 keywords per URL.
The Hoth Link Results
In the end, for most of us, the idea of building or managing seo and link building sucks. When companies like The Hoth have small enough packages to test with and see results, it’s always a good thing. Many of the link building services out there require a minimum several hundred dollar package, while you can get started with only a $60 package at The Hoth. The results from my link building package are still jumping all over the place, but I may follow up with another package to see how it can improve on the building and ranking process. I will be sure to keep you updated with future updates and moves in the rankings.
In the meantime, check out The Hoth.
Alex Pyatetsky - CMO @ The HOTH
November 24, 2011 at 4:56 am
Zac,
Thanks for your detailed writeup. Just a few comments I’d like to make for anybody considering working with us.
#1. We don’t do any “link wheels” per se. Often people categorize us as a link wheel service, but if you look at our link structure, there is nothing cyclical about it. Link wheels generally have enormous and obvious foot prints because its not natural for sites to link to each other in a cyclical fashion. Our entire structure is based on modeling the path of viral content, which is completely natural.
Here is what I mean –
If you think about a site like Tech Crunch, when they post an article 2 things happen. First, a bunch of content hungry tech blogs piggy back off of their content and post responses that link back to the original TC article. We emulate this in the Authority Module of our process (bottom part of the link structure infographic). Second, hundreds of other sites syndicate the Tech Crunch content, which we emulate in our Link Volume Module (top part of our link structure infographic), where we slow drip each seed article to 200-300 open submission sites.
Our “Top Level Properties” are basically like mini Tech Crunches that we create in your niche. We use all original content based around your niche & keywords.
This piggy-backing + syndication phenomenon will be around from now until the end of the internet, and this is what Google claims to love. “Create great content and people will love linking back to you” is what Matt Cutts always says (paraphrasing). So instead of praying for the magical linking fairies that Matt Cutts & co. have sold the world on, we take this process into our own hands and manually do it.
2. Zac was very gracious in not posting the ranking results his from his first order. I believe in full transparency, so I’d like to address why that is.
Zac submitted his order in early October. In mid October, Google released their highly downplayed Vince Update. Vince screwed thing up for a lot of people. Even our own site, which had been cemented on page 1 for “SEO Link Building” for months was nowhere to be found for a while. Well, our page bounced back, but not all others did. Although Google has said close to nothing about how Vince changes the way they rank things, it seems that its another usability filter like Panda – which has absolutely nothing to do with links (feel free to contact me for more info on this subject. Its quite UNcontroversial, but there is a lot of misinformation and fear-mongering out there). We identified a number of UX issues with Zac’s site that would likely explain why his site got hit by Vince. As a result, unfortunately, there are no incredible rankings increases to show.
For those of you who are extra paranoid, rest assured that Zac remained planted in the top slots for his keywords on Bing & Yahoo, so its only Google that seemed have jumble his rankings, suggesting quite strongly that this was indeed related to Vince and not a general penalty of any sort.
The moral of the story is Links alone aren’t good enough anymore. You want to pay attention to your site’s UX. Get your bounce rate down, your unique content/page up, and you ad to content ratio down. Think you’re safe because you don’t use Google Analytics? Think again. Google’s Chrome browser collects usability data about websites whether site owners like it or now. There is no hiding anymore, so make sure you cover all your basis if you intend to rank. Its not 2006 anymore, unfortunately.
Zac, was a pleasure working with you man! Look forward to doing another trial run without interruptions this time!
-AP
Black SEO Guy
April 24, 2013 at 8:38 am
i see that you target alot of Blogspot and WordPress hosted websites to get your links, I would really like to review your packages. Is this possible ?