(Entry was posted by Jessica Anne on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/19/2021).

How would you address this with them?

Hi, I`ve just started at a new company and I`ve asked our digital agency to provide a list of backlinks they have created over the last 3 months. All they have done is post our blog content on profiles they have created under our brand name on blogger.com, tumblr.com, wordpress.com etc and on what looks like hacked sites. Is this just bad (black hat) SEO and how would you address this with them?

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

George G.: Those are called web20 and are not real links but rather social exposure. Google mostly ignore those. Links on hacked sites are usually out of context and dont live long, so those are not good either.

Also, one dont just build backlinks. The good links come to good resources. Do you have anything worthy linking to on your website?
Jessica Anne: George G. Yes we have good content and suppliers with high ranking sites that would likely work with us but the agency has spent the last 3 months just publishing on those blogs.
Tim Capper: URrrF

What were they asked to do for the site?

If they just built web2.0 i am guessing you picked the cheapest option (I dont mean to be rude there ) but It does not sound like any due diligence was undertaken.
Richard Hearne: It`s really down to what was contracted. If the agency was contracted to build content on third-party platforms which link back to your site then perhaps they have fulfilled their obligations? That said, I would question the efficacy of the tactics. It`s unquestionably very difficult for agencies to generate links, so it would be interesting to hear if the contract related to links? Last thing - you may get better results building content on your own domain than what you`ve described above. Some more details on whether they are posting unique content on third party platforms which link to your site would be useful.
Travis Bailey: It does sound like low value stuff. Then again, they might not be getting paid to do the highest value work. If they promised the moon and you`ve paid thousands, yeah... seek an alternate vendor. If it`s somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 per month, that`s about what one can expect.
Buth Main: It isn`t black hat SEO, but it is bad SEO. Google ignores these links. These links generate no referral traffic. In fact, these links are "dead". What was the purpose of these actions? List creation is not the purpose.
Ammon Johns: It`s craphat. Complete waste of their time and your money. It is not the kind of thing ever done by anyone who knows better, so it isn`t usually something they can or will fix. Fire.
Jessica Anne: Thank you, this has been really helpful!