{"id":10181,"date":"2016-03-01T02:44:45","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T10:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=10181"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:06:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:06:58","slug":"black-hat-link-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/black-hat-link-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Hat Link Building Services PART 2: Do They Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first part of this surely did stir up some ****<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There were not-so-pleased comment responses, a follow-up thread on BHW itself \u2026 fun stuff.<\/p>\n

But that first flow of backlash was a bit surprising to me.<\/p>\n

After all, as far as I remember, I wrote hardly anything truly negative about that awesomely named SEO service (\u201cSHERLOCK HACKS GOOGLE\u201d - SHG)<\/em> from the BHW forum. In fact, I kind of admired the seller\u2019s marketing ability and his skill in executing the whole thing.<\/p>\n

I mean come on, earning $250,000+ from a single forum thread?! You have to be really capable to pull that off.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s set all of that aside.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s not about the money.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the question I asked in the first part:<\/p>\n

Do those black hat link building services work?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you believe the seller, they do.<\/p>\n

Literally every page of the main forum thread<\/a> - of which there are 170+ at the time of writing - starts with the seller\u2019s own message sharing the best testimonials.<\/p>\n

Those testimonials praise anything from mild search engine ranking improvements, to huge page 1<\/em> domination for keywords that were nowhere to be found prior to buying the SHG service.<\/p>\n

But as we all know, testimonials can be cherry-picked, so they don\u2019t give us an objective view of the percentage of customers for whom this actually works long term.<\/p>\n

For example, to see some \u201cnay\u201d-stimonials<\/em> all you have to do is go to the comment section of the previous post<\/a>. Here\u2019s a few:<\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

\"negative<\/p>\n

Clearly, those SEO services don\u2019t work out for everyone who buys them.<\/p>\n

Note. Things to consider: Although the quality of the service is of course the most important factor when looking at the results it brings, we also have to keep in mind that other factors are at play too. Chief of which is that keywords are not created equal. For some, just minor SEO manipulation is enough, and you\u2019re on page 1. For others, thousands of dollars a month won\u2019t move the needle even a bit.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, do SEO services like this work?<\/h2>\n

Like I said in the first part, I did actually buy SHG<\/strong> to see how things would play out for me.<\/p>\n

I pointed it to my under-performing site, hooked it up to Ahrefs<\/a>, and waited to see what would happen.<\/p>\n

Since then, a couple of months have passed, so I think the time is perfect to share the results I got.<\/p>\n

The boring details:<\/p>\n