is buying Twitter followers/Facebook fans "blackhat"?

davidle

New member
Aug 30, 2010
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i'm wondering if buying Twitter followers or Facebook fans will get you hurt in SEO rankings in any way, shape, or form.

is it possible that Twitter/Facebook will shut down your page for doing something like this?

i'm trying to create a respectable brand, but i want to encourage followers/fans by showing that others have taken the leap and become fans/followers. is this something you would bother doing if you've put a lot of time and effort into making your brand legit?
 


I don't think its worth it man.

Build quality and the followers will come.

Except if the fans you buy start making tweets about your site, which I doubt, since you will be buying them.
 
buying twitter followers or facebook fans is really not black hat but it may be , if you use it a wrong way.
if you spread a comman article and comman link at all pages , then definetaly it would be bad for you .
use it wisely..
google it for knowing how to use it in a very proper way :)
 
I call it stupid hat.

The only time I would purchase Facebook fans is through Facebook themselves. They tend to be more targeted.
 
I wouldn't discount purchasing them completely, just understand what you are buying. You likely wont get much traffic or click throughs, but alot of people out there equate high numbers of facebook fans / twitter followers with reliability and quality service.

However you dont really need to purchase them, there are websites that let you trade likes and follows based on a credit system. I've built up over 1k fans on a facebook page just using one certain site.

I use one of my twitter accounts (read: not my main account something I use as a throway although it is up over 1k followers already too) and follow a whole bunch of the listed people to gain credits. Then I put up my facebook page for people to like to earn my credits for themselves.

Haven't spent a dime yet.

Edit: Your original post inquired about hurting your SEO rankings. Facebook and Twitter dont affect your serp's, they are more for traffic and spreading your word / brand. However you can get in trouble with both face book and twitter since it is against their ToS.
 
No but I would say pretty close to useless.

I have had bad experiences purchasing both. If you do decide to purchase, request a trial run of 100 to 500 before doing a big order. If the price is too good to be true it probably is, you'll end up with 10,000 - 100,000 foreign accounts with less than 4 profile pictures, and 10-30 friends becoming fans.

Even many sites that promote "All USA fans" do not pan out. If you do decide to purchase fans for face book I would highly recommend using your country filter, make sure you read the fine print on the filter though. FB country filter works by entering the countries you WOULD like to show in your feed, not vice versa.
 
I wouldn't discount purchasing them completely, just understand what you are buying. You likely wont get much traffic or click throughs, but alot of people out there equate high numbers of facebook fans / twitter followers with reliability and quality service.

this is the best point in the thread so far. it makes sense for branding, but that's about it.
 
Purchasing it is not the issue. Look at Bing, they are purchasing most of Yahoo's data. What many say is black hat today it tomorrow's white hat. It's all in how you use it. You want to have the edge on the industry you need to learn what is possible then determine when and how it is best to do. You are on the right track. Give it a test run and see how it goes on a small scale before you open it up wide.
 
If they catch they might close your account (twitter, especially FB), but not sure what buying followers has to do with SEO.
 
You really don't have to buy Twitter and Facebook followers if you have quality content on your website; you'll build a good set of followers.

However, this process will take time and you won't have an amazing twitter profile overnight. So, in case you want a start, you have websites that provide you free twitter followers such as plusfollower.com. You have an option to select the paid or the free plan. You can try this out.

As far as what I have observed is that content that's not available on the internet or not available together on a website works out great in long-term.


Atlantis Group
 
Purchasing Twitter followers or Facebook fans should hurt your SEO efforts one bit. Now, over doing it could get you banned by Twitter or Facebook so you have to be careful.

For example adding 2000 twitter followers in one day could raise a red flag and get your account shut down.
 
i don't think it's black-hat, it's against the TOS, but I've never met anyone that makes their ethical decisions based on facebook's TOS...
 
Go for it, buy some fans. They are cheap. As stated above just don't get 1000 fans in one day. If your Fb account gets banned you can create a new one - they are free.