Why Companies Like Scalefluence Are An Issue in the SEO Community
In the early days of SEO, it mattered that you had a background in a technical subject like coding, writing, or even statistics for analyzing big sites. But today, anyone who sells a link on another person’s website or company blog is an “SEO expert.” The problem is that these “experts” are far from being experts, and I have repeatedly seen business owners throw away money for links that do nothing to help with SEO.
Several companies offer link-building services and claim expertise in SEO. In a recent interaction with one such company, I spoke with a salesperson from Scalefluence and later exchanged emails with the founder and CEO, Tony Newton. Here’s how the interaction went.
Cold Calls to Sell Links
Scalefluence’s sales guy, Mike Kapowich, called, and I answered. I rarely answer calls from numbers I don’t know, but I picked up.
He immediately asked if I received his emails and was following up to see how we (my agency) could work with Scalefluence. I had never heard of the company before and like most sales pitch emails for link building, his emails landing right in my junk folder. I listened to his pitch about having a staff of 20 writers and editors and a database of thousands of blogs Scalefluence works with. This means they have a writer who creates content (probably through ChatGPT) and then pays a website to post the article. In SEO, this is known as guest posting. This approach still works in Google as of this writing, but it’s much less impactful than it used to be.
There’s no doubt that links are necessary for successful SEO, but this type of guest posting approach from companies like Scalefluence spreads more useless content throughout the internet and ultimately doesn’t help with rankings. It’s just regurgitated content on a “magazine” type website for the sake of a link and doesn’t benefit the user. Because I’ve dealt with companies like Scalefluence before, I usually ask one or two questions like:
- Let’s see an example of a website you ranked for a competitive keyword.
In most cases, the salesperson cannot provide this information because they are either not influencing rankings or not even checking a site’s rankings. Instead, they take your money, publish an article and that’s it. That’s not what actual industry experts call SEO expertise. This type of company is simply a broker for another person’s website. There’s no real SEO background to it.
2. Let’s see an example of your writing quality and a publisher you work with.
This question is intended to see an example of their writing and see if the caliber of publishers they work with. The content is usually published on low-quality spam sites, but occasionally, someone offers a publication in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, etc. If a company like Scalefluence says it has 20 writers and editors on staff, the quality of the content is great, and you would think they would want to lead with that. Additionally, if they boast a list of thousands of publishers they work with, they would again want to lead with this.
I asked Mike Kapowich this question, but he couldn't provide an answer and instead said he would defer me to the company’s founder, Tony Newton.
So you’re a salesperson for a content marketing agency but you have no examples to show what your company does? That’s a little concerning, but maybe Mike is just in charge of finding businesses to call. After all, that’s what cold outreach is.
In any case, Mike connected me with Tony, to whom I posed the same question, again asking for examples of writing and publishers they work with.
This “CEO” became instantly defensive, saying they wouldn’t share any of their partner agencies’ work. Cool, I wouldn’t do that either, but a sales prospect should be able to ask for a writing sample to see the quality of the work you’re pitching. Not specifics, just an example. Tony continued to be defensive, nearly having a tantrum over email.
The State of Professionalism from Link Building Companies
At this point in the exchange with Scalefluence, I said I was no longer interested. No examples of work and a defensive CEO, something’s off about this company. And to be clear, this has happened with multiple content marketing agencies reaching out by phone, email or spammy LinkedIn messages. There’s always something off-putting and the conversation ends with me saying “goodbye” and blocking their email because they get defensive.
In Tony Newton’s case, he became unprofessional and disrespectful in no time.
From a cold call to this. Is this how Scalefluence handles its sales process? Unfortunately, yes. This is the CEO of this company acting like this. Imagine if someone like this was handling outreach or any communications for your brand. Yikes.
I’ve been in the SEO world for a very long time, and it’s sad to see this is the state of outreach on the link-building side of SEO. It’s not just Tony and Scalefluence. Nearly any company reaching out like this has trouble showing work and loses it when told “no thanks”.
Working with Companies Like Scalefluence
Would you work with a company run by a CEO like Tony Newton? Would you work with a link-building company that told you to “f*** off” when you asked for examples of work? Hopefully, after reading this, you see why it’s not a good idea. Maybe it was just a bad day for this guy, but I would certainly caution working with this company.
Transparency in SEO
One thing my agency and I pride ourselves on is transparency in everything we do. Whether that is technical SEO, content or link development, we’re showing the client everything along the way. This is the way SEO (and any form of digital marketing) should be.