Industry News

Here Comes Lending Club

October 17, 2013
Article by:

here comes lending clubAs highlighted in BusinessWeek, Lending Club has finally entered the small business lending market. Some of you might say, “bahh… so what!” but you should be paying attention. Lending Club recently got a valuation of $1.55 billion when Google bought a piece of them back in May. To put that in perspective, that’s about 15x the enterprise valuation that RapidAdvance got in its acquisition by Rockbridge Growth Equity. A monster has entered the ring and it doesn’t matter if it’s peer-to-peer lending, because they’re targeting the same market. What Lending Club does isn’t much different than what the typical merchant cash advance industry does these days anyway. Both thrive on syndication, though one relies on a handful of partners and the other relies on tens of thousands of partners. Both are bank loan alternatives and both can get you funded within days.

Back in 2009, the only short term financing opportunities small businesses had was merchant cash advance. There really wasn’t anything else. There were banks or there was merchant cash advance… and banks weren’t lending. Now there’s a whole spectrum of bank loan alternatives and to say that they operate in markets that don’t compete with each other is crazy.

There was a time when folks said Kabbage was not a competitor in the merchant cash advance space. Now they’re synonymous with merchant cash advance financing, have patents that specifically use the merchant cash advance terminology, and they fund brick and mortar businesses. On Deck Capital supposedly wasn’t a competitor back in 2007 because they did loans with fixed daily ACH. On Deck wanted only the high credit merchants that wouldn’t settle for a cash advance and now they compete head to head with everyone else.

The market is all over the place with pricing and structures. Factors range from 1.09s to 1.50s. Deal terms range from 6 weeks to 24 months. For those already annoyed that there has been downward pressure on rates for high quality clients because of what it has done to margins, you may have more to worry about with Lending Club.

I’ve personally referred consumer loan deals for a commission to Lending Club in the past and they went pretty smoothly. They said if they approve a loan, it will basically fund within days. They don’t have any worry about approved loans not raising enough capital to be funded from syndicates/investors/participants. They said almost every approved loan funds. They also charge between 6.5% and 29.99% APR and make loans with terms of 3-5 years. Try competing against that.

Now I don’t know what repayment time frame will be offered on their business loans, but I do know that they’re used to making loans for very low interest over a much longer term than a merchant cash advance company. Something tells me that they won’t stray too far from that and they’re going to disrupt the market (the premium market anyway) on price and time frame more than a few other companies already have.

Granted, I will admit that Lending Club on the consumer side generally only approved applicants with higher than 680 FICO and a low debt-to-income ratio and I don’t think they’ll change that. That means they won’t be a competitor initially for a large chunk of the market. Lending Club will probably butt heads with On Deck Capital, NewLogic Business Loans, and all the premium 12 month programs floating around out there.

Peer-to-peer lending is part of the broader merchant cash advance industry. Deals fund quickly, the capital is unsecured, there’s little paperwork involved, and the deals are syndicated. Hence, Lending Club is now a competitor.

Being owned by Google also can’t hurt. Lending Club is typically ranked at or near the top of the 1st page for the search query, “unsecured business loans.” Coincidence?

Get ready for Lending Club. They won’t be the last billion dollar plus company to throw their hat in the ring.

—
Note 1: An edit was made to correct Rapid’s valuation as an enterprise valuation, which one insider noted can be substantially different than a raw equity valuation. That makes Lending Club likely a lot more valuable in comparison.

Note 2: I initially reported that Lending Club owned Dealstruck.com. This is not correct. Dealstruck.com has previously been reported to be the Lending Club of the small business space in the characteristic way of how they structure deals, but they are not actually part of Lending Club. Thanks to Darrin Ginsberg of Super G Funding for pointing out my mistake.

More on DailyFunder about this topic: http://dailyfunder.com/showthread.php/451-lending-club

Were You at the WSAA Conference?

October 9, 2013
Article by:

We didn’t make it to the Western State Acquirers Association Conference this year, but Merchant Cash Group did and they were nice enough to send over some photos from the show:

wsaa conference

wsaa conference 2

American Finance Solutions

WSAA Conference

WSAA Conference

Merchant Cash Advance companies are going to a lot more conferences than they used to. At the Money2020 Conference in Vegas right now for example, Kabbage, Strategic Funding Source, On Deck Capital, and Capital Access Network are not only in attendance, they’re sponsors.

Update: Strategic Funding Source let us repost their photos on twitter of Money2020:

money2020

money2020 conference

money 2020

Is a Merchant Cash Advance conference in the cards for the future? I floated this idea before back in April 2012 and I’ve heard other people mention it too.

Is PayPal’s Working Capital Program a Mistake?

October 5, 2013
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PayPal Working CapitalA few weeks ago, PayPal announced the launch of their Working Capital program as a way to help small businesses in need. They classify it as a loan but the explanation for how it works is textbook merchant cash advance. A percentage of each PayPal sale is withheld and applied as a reduction to the merchant’s balance. PayPal joining the booming merchant cash advance/alternative lending market is really no surprise. After all, RapidAdvance just got acquired by the same group that owns Quicken Loans. We’re in a new era of alternative finance.

PayPal is respected as a payments company but are they ready for the high risk world of merchant cash advance financing? Critics are not so sure. Industry insiders have watched dozens of funding providers jump into the market with aggressive rates, attempt to undercut the competition, and acquire a lot of marketshare. The results are usually disastrous.

For years, journalists believed that the high cost of capital provided by non-bank lenders was fueled by the desire for immense profit. They didn’t understand the risks involved or realize that some funding providers weren’t even turning a profit at all. Last year, Opportunity Fund, a non-profit small business lender revealed that to make loans at 12% APR would fail to even cover costs. The for-profit sector of the industry charges factor rates (different than Annual Percentage Rates) between 1.14 and 1.50, not including fees. I explained this variance once before in The Fork in the Merchant Cash Advance Road.

So did PayPal learn anything from an industry that has been in existence for 15 years? It doesn’t look like it:

paypal working capital rates

Doing some simple math (Total to be repaid / Loan Amount), the factor rates range from 1.04 to 1.12, figures that will probably only make sense if their average client has greater than 720 FICO, many years in business, and is virtually perfect on paper and in reality. Perhaps PayPal knows that and will decline 95% of applications or perhaps they believe their clients will buck the trend. I mean, is it possible that a corporate monster like PayPal could make a boneheaded mistake?
paypal
A 1.04 deal? Seriously? This has disaster written all over it. There are some people that believe that the losing proposition is intentional…

You can follow the discussion about this on DailyFunder.

Google Penguin 2.1 Takes Swing at Merchant Cash Advance Industry

October 5, 2013
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google penguin 2.1If you noticed a shuffle in search rankings for industry keywords last night, it’s because Google unleashed Penguin 2.1.

Penguin focuses on spammy or purchased backlinks so if you did one or the other, you probably got harmed. Given the high cost of traditional marketing and Pay-Per-Click Internet Marketing, many funders, ISOs, and lead generators have turned to SEO to boost their visibility in organic search. Whether undertaken by inside employees or outside contractors to do the job, there is no doubt that building links has been part of the strategy. Some have had major success in rising up through Google’s search results but most haven’t. It’s not easy getting to page 1, but if you get there, don’t celebrate. You won’t be there forever.

Less than two weeks ago on DailyFunder, someone took to the board to pat themselves on the back for ranking #2 for the keyword: merchant cash advance. Wikipedia is #1. They admitted it took a lot of hard work over the course of 8 months. Last night they were thrust back to position #65. That’s on page 7 where they will never be found. 8 months of work for 2 weeks of ranking. You might be saying, “Well my SEO guy will just roll with the punches and get us right back.” Unfortunately with Penguin, it doesn’t work that way. Penguin is basically a permanent penalty, an algorithmic barricade to prevent you from ever ranking for your keywords again. According to a poll on Search Engine Roundtable, only 7% of respondents claimed to have made a full recovery after Penguin 2.0. Most SEOs would advise that you torch your domain, buy a new one and start a whole new website. That’s not exactly an easy thing for a big brand or company to do.

There’s a flaw in all the SEO being done in the merchant cash advance industry anyway and that’s the notion of being on page 1 to begin with. If you read David Amerland’s Google Semantic Search, he explains that “there is no longer a first page of Google”. The results you see on the first page of Google depend completely on whether or not you’re using a desktop or mobile device, what zip code you’re accessing the internet from, what you’ve searched for in the past, and whether you’re logged into your gmail account. And if you use Google+, then forget it! The first page results for someone that uses Google+ are ultra personalized. To rank on their first page, they’ll pretty much need to follow you socially first.

So if you’re thinking about ranking higher in search as a means to generate more leads, you sure as heck better understand how the results work these days. What you see on your screen is not what I see on mine. A site that’s #65 for me, may be #4 for you.

The other angle of Google’s foray into Semantic Search is their desire to be an answer engine, not a search engine. Google wants to answer questions for searchers without them having to click a link. Here’s an example of Merchant Processing Resource acting in that role:

voice authorization

What is voice authorization you ask? Boom! Answered! No need to click anything. That’s where search is going. What this means for companies that are trying to get customers is that they either need to become the absolute authority within their industry or they need to throw in the towel and do Pay-Per-Click.

When I search for merchant cash advance from my desktop in NYC, 7 out of the top 10 results are not company pages, which is astounding considering how much effort companies are putting in to rank high for this keyword. I see:

  • 1 Wikipedia
  • 4 News articles
  • 1 Press release
  • 1 Youtube video

Did you get hit by Penguin 2.1? Are you optimized for Semantic Search?

Previous merchant cash advance SEO articles:

Loans for Likes

September 17, 2013
Article by:

How Kabbage is building a social media marketing empire

Take a look at what Kabbage has cooked up:
kabbage bribe for likes

This is figure 2 of patent # US 20130211892 A1. It was filed on February 14, 2013 and published just last month.

Like Kabbage on twitter or Facebook and your approval amount gets extended automatically. This helps Kabbage accomplish two goals:
1. Spread awareness about their brand to the followers of the people Liking and following them.
2. Identify the public social media accounts the business is using so it can monitor what they’re doing.

Kabbage patentYou can learn about how Kabbage feels about businesses that aren’t using social media in the patent’s summary. Under Description, Section 2:

Social networking is growing at an exponential rate and businesses that are not exploiting social networking sites such as FACEBOOK and LINKEDIN are considered falling behind the times.

So why is this a patentable invention? A merchant’s approval amount is increased automatically by an algorithm that checks to see if a merchant performed the action of Liking or Following. So if you think that’s a great idea and want to do something similar, you’re a bit late. Better Call Saul… I mean Kabbage to license the use of such technology. It works as such:

The above aspects can be obtained by a system that includes (a) approving, by a cash provider, a user for a cash line wherein the user is permitted to receive cash up to the cash line; (b) causing an offer to be displayed on an electronic output device associated with a user’s computer, the offer being to increase the cash line when the user takes a particular action comprising associating the user’s social networking account with the cash provider; (c) determining that the user has taken the particular action; and (d) automatically increasing the cash line.

The term merchant cash advance is explicitly used twice in the patent but it also goes to cover any kind credit line or loan being program. This is actually an incredible patent to be in possession of because it’s such a great idea. Imagine telling a merchant approved for 5k, that they will get an extra $200 just for following you on twitter and another $200 just for liking you on facebook. It may not seem like much on a $250,000 deal but Kabbage does a lot of smaller sized advances where the $400 combined approval bump is a sweet incentive for merchants.

Marketing in this industry is expensive and this is one of the more innovative models I’ve seen.

No End in Sight for Alternative Lending

September 17, 2013
Article by:

richest men on earth buy stakes in merchant cash advance companiesWhich one of these three isn’t like the other two?

  • Quicken Loans
  • RapidAdvance
  • Cleveland Cavaliers

It’s a trick question because as of September 16, 2013, All three are owned by Rockbridge Growth Equity, a Detroit-based private equity firm. RapidAdvance announced the acquisition over the news wire, shocking many people around the industry. The move opens RapidAdvance to the connections and prowess of Dan Gilbert, the 126th richest man in the United States. Gilbert is worth approximately $3.9 Billion, is the founder of Quicken Loans, and he owns 4 sports teams, including the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Compare that to On Deck Capital board member Peter Thiel, who is worth $1.9 Billion and is the 309th richest person in the U.S. You may remember Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and first investor in Facebook as participating in a series D round for On Deck Capital along with Google Ventures back in May.

These are truly some historic times. Two of the richest people on all of planet Earth have stock in the merchant cash advance industry. Does that tell you anything about the direction things are moving in? Think about that one again… Two of the richest men in the world have invested in the merchant cash advance industry.

Four years ago, an influential friend advised me that this industry would be eradicated by 2010. As told through The Bubble That Wasn’t, some people left the business prematurely fearing the best days of alternative lending were over. At present, it looks as if those best days are still yet to come.

The Rockbridge Growth Equity move comes less than a year after Steven Mandis bought into RapidAdvance. He will reportedly stay on as a shareholder.

On Deck Capital

In other news, On Deck Capital announced that they’ve raised another $130 million in debt financing, leveraging themselves out even further. ISOs in the industry report that they’re ON FIRE with approvals. Rumors about a possible IPO on the horizon are starting to pick up again but my sources tell me that isn’t likely to happen with On Deck for another 2-3 years.

————-
Discuss the RapidAdvance aquisition on DailyFunder

Split Funding is Here to Stay

August 21, 2013
Article by:

split-fundingI’ll say it for the hundredth¹ time, the advantage of split-funding is the ability to collect payments back from a small business that has traditionally had average, weak, or poor cash flow. Let’s put that into perspective. There is a distinct difference between a working business with poor cash flow and a failing business. A failing business is typically not a candidate for merchant cash advance or similar loan alternatives.

Poor cash flow could be the result of paying cash up front for inventory that will take a while to turn over. A hardware store with a healthy 50% profit margin may be able to turn $10,000 worth of inventory into $15,000 in revenue over the course of the next 90 days. The only problem is that the full $10,000 must be paid in full to the supplier on delivery.

Enter the merchant cash advance provider of old that discovers the hardware store has had a fair share of bounced checks in the past, mainly because of the timing of payments going in and out. Cash on hand is tight, the credit score is average, but the profit margin is there. Most lenders would take a pass on financing a transaction that carries legitimate risk such as this one does, that is until the ability to split-fund a payment stream became possible.

Advocates of the ACH method tout that it’s just so much easier to set up a daily debit and scratch their heads and wonder, “man, why didn’t we think of just doing ACH in the first place?”

The thing is, people did think of it and they concluded that for a large share of the merchants out there that needed capital, it didn’t make financial sense to try and debit out payments every day with the hope that there would always be cash available to cover them. Banks have had a hard enough time collecting just one payment a month, so what makes 22 payments in a month so much more likely to work?

I’m not inferring that there is something wrong with the daily ACH system that has taken the alternative business lending industry by storm. There’s plenty of situations for which that may be the best solution, especially for businesses that take little or no credit card payments. My point is that the split-funding method isn’t going to shrivel up and die. It’s here to stay. So long as businesses have electronic payment streams, they will be able to leverage them to obtain working capital.

When it comes to splitting card payments however, it’s important for a business to have faith in the payment processor. Reputation, compatibility with payment technology, and the assurance that the business will be able to conduct sales just as it always has are important. If you’re a funder, ISO, or account rep, it’s your responsibility to make sure that those three factors are addressed. A lot of processors are willing to split payments but they haven’t all made a name for themselves in the industry. Integrity Payment Systems (IPS) comes to mind as one that almost everyone works with and I’ve been in touch with Matt Pohl, the Director of Merchant Acquisition of IPS for some time. He’s been nice enough to share a little bit about what makes a split partner special, and what has made them particularly stand out in the merchant cash advance industry.

Clearly, the role of the credit card processor has diminished over the last couple years when it comes to merchant funding. ACH/Lockbox models have become more prevalent which created a sales mindset that switching a merchant account was more of a hindrance than a necessity. Some argue the decline in profit margin on residuals, due to price compression, made it no longer worth the time and effort to make an aggressive pitch to switch the merchants processing. ISOs also argue that too often merchants have reservations to switch processors because of previous bad experiences, cancellation fees, or because they simply know its not necessary in order to be funded. This is where it’s important to have the RIGHT split partner, not just any split partner

What makes Integrity Payment Systems a “special” split partner is the fact we control the settlement of the merchants funds, in house. IPS is partnered with First Savings Bank (FSB), which allows us a unique way of moving money. Because of our state-of-the-art settlement system and direct access to FSB’s Federal Reserve window, we eliminate the necessity of having layers of financial institutions behind the scenes that merchants funds typically filter through. This is a HUGE benefit to cash advance companies for several reasons. First, we implement the fixed split % when we receive the request, in real time. This allows the deal to be funded quicker. Secondly, since we handle the settlement process we have access to the raw authorization data which allows us to provide comprehensive reporting on a daily basis from the previous days activity. But also we can do true next day deposits, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday funds available for the merchant on Monday morning. This is especially valuable when selling to restaurants/bars, or any other industry with a lot of weekend volume. Lastly, IPS makes outbound calls to merchants, on behalf of the sales agent and cash company, to download and train the merchant on their terminal. A confirmation email is sent to the agent which includes any batch activity so the deal can fund.

As an added example of this, on the last week of every month, the merchant boarding and sales support team fully understands that our MCA partners have monthly funding goals they need to reach. The IPS team goes above and beyond to ensure merchants get setup properly in time so those accounts can be funded before the month is over. We have a motto at IPS that the sales force are our #1 customers, and nowhere is that more apparent than by the way we take over all the heavy lifting once the agent gets the signatures on our contract. We firmly believe that by helping the agent by taking over the boarding process, that this will allow them to do what they do best, sell more deals!! A lot of competitors expect the agent to be involved in the boarding process, and that’s valuable time that takes them away from selling.

IPS has opened their doors to every MCA company that wishes to have an exceptional split funding partner/processor. We have all the necessary tools to provide this service the right way, and we want the opportunity to earn the business of every working capital provider out there. You don’t have to listen to a sales pitch from me, because I strongly believe that our reputation in the cash advance space speaks for itself. We would love the opportunity to talk to any MCA provider about a few additional services we offer utilizing our settlement system that will allow ISOs to fund more deals.

– Matt Pohl
(847) 720-1129
Integrity Payment Systems

One thing I can personally attest to about Integrity is their human factor. You can actually meet some of their team and see inside their office in the fun youtube video below:


Getting deals done

Ultimately, the financing business is about getting deals done and there are countless small businesses that just won’t ever be a candidate for ACH repayment. Heck, for many years the merchant cash advance industry wasn’t even a financing industry of its own, but rather it was one of many acquisition tools for merchant account reps. (See: Before it Was Mainstream). Technically it still is. You don’t want to sign up a merchant for processing and then have to move the account because the processor doesn’t split or because there is no dedicated customer service. I’ve been in that situation before personally and it’s a nightmare.

There’s a reason this website which is dedicated mainly to merchant cash advance is called the Merchant Processing Resource. You can’t know everything about cash advance without knowing about merchant processing. Get acquainted!

If you’d like to read the lighter side of Merchant Cash Advance History, you just might want to check out MCA History in Honor of Thanksgiving. 😉

¹ I said it for the 99th time on the Electronic Transactions Association’s Blog in Preserving the Marriage Between Merchant Cash Advance and Payment Processing

Your Merchant Cash Advance Press Release May be Hurting You

August 8, 2013
Article by:

Part of keeping up with the merchant cash advance industry means reading up on the press releases published online, but it’s not such an easy job. Legions of funders, ISOs, and lead generators are competing for valuable real-estate in search results and they’ll use every trick in the book to get it. It almost always comes with a price and these tricks don’t always work. By tricks here, I’m referring to using optimized anchor text in press releases as a way to build backlinks.

spamHave you ever seen a press release with thin information but lots of embedded links that say something like “best small business loan companies”? There’s a reason for that. These companies are trying to manipulate PageRank, a Google search ranking factor that calculates the value of the page the link is on, calculates the value of the website it’s on, uses the anchor text as a signal of what the page is about, and then passes that value onto the destination page. PRWeb has a solid PageRank of 7 out of 10 and last I checked, they don’t nofollow the links. That means a webpage can gain some serious ranking points by using optimized anchor text in a press release. But that’s just on PRWeb’s domain. Consider the fact that press releases are usually syndicated to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of other websites, most of which will keep the links intact, and multiplying the value being passed to the destination site.

One press release could result in hundreds of powerful ranking signals for the keyword, “best small business loan companies.” Now if there were on-page signals for that keyword and additional external factors at work, then there’d be no reason for that page not to rank high in search results for best small business loan companies. And so anyone not totally asleep at the wheel has been using that method for months, if not for years.

There’s only one problem. Google’s Director of web spam (yes, this is a real title) had said back in December of 2012 that links in press releases shouldn’t count.

matt cutts spam

The Internet went wild over this statement especially since his choice of words implied that there is a chance they did count, he just wouldn’t expect them too. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) diehards decided this was a battle worth fighting and optimized anchor text in press releases became more used than ever before, that is until Google decided to take action.

Wouldn’t expect was apparently proven to mean definitely does. The fact is that links in press releases were passing PageRank and the sites on the other end of them were getting valuable ranking signals. That’s why to this day we see merchant cash advance releases read like an itemized list of keywords on PRWeb…

The best merchant cash advance company has announced a new program to help provide bad credit business financing to restaurants in need of a fast cash loan.

If you’ve stopped reading the article at this point, you’re in trouble. The gravy train is no longer running express. Less than two weeks ago, Google conceded that optimized anchor text in press releases works and are a form of cheating the system. That means that overuse or quite possibly any usage of a keyword rich anchor in a release means your website is at risk of a rankings penalty. Google advises that in order to be safe, webmasters should nofollow the links. There’s just one problem with that; Credible wire and release services do not under any circumstances allow companies to code in HTML attributes in their releases, rendering this feat impossible.

That means the burden of nofollowing the links is on the release services and syndicating websites, something that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Release services have not been shy about the potential SEO benefits they can provide, with some going so far as to offer paid consulting services to clients on how to optimize their anchor text for search engines. To them, a crackdown on links in releases means a crackdown on a very profitable portion of their business model.

Watch Matt Cutt’s explanation of links in advertorials:

Google offers the following guidance on link schemes:

The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results:

  • Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
  • Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
  • Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
  • Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

Additionally, creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines. Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines:

  • Text advertisements that pass PageRank
  • Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass PageRank
  • Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites. For example:
    There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.
  • Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
  • Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
    Visitors to this page: 1,472
    car insurance
  • Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites
  • Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
    Thanks, that’s great info!
    – Paul
    paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego

Note that PPC (pay-per-click) advertising links that don’t pass PageRank to the buyer of the ad do not violate our guidelines. You can prevent PageRank from passing in several ways, such as:

  • Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the < a > tag
  • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

You can watch John Mueller, one of Google’s lead Webmaster Trends Analyst answer questions to Google’s new link policies in the hangout below:

There are other purposes for publishing thin releases as both Google and Bing can decide to display a snippet of the release on the first page of the results for the keywords used in the announcement. So no, it’s not just about links, at least that isnt’t all of the SEO benefit to be gained.

bing news

These news snippets can last up to a week, helping companies that might not be ranking well jump to the front of the line for exposure.

Link Removal
We’re not going to call anyone out by name but ever since Google Penguin 1.0 was released, many merchant cash advance companies and payment companies have hired link removal experts to identify bad links for them and are paying them to have them taken down. The only way to take down a link is to ask the webmaster hosting the site to take it down. Unfortunately, this has led to some companies finding the cheapest link removal service they can find, resulting in a poorly qualified consultant setting off to remove 100% of a site’s links instead of just the bad ones. We know this firsthand because we have had no shortage of e-mails from people claiming to be the hired link removal representative of a merchant cash advance related company.

The e-mails usually look like this:

Hello sir,
I am contacting you on behalf of Cash Advance Funder ABC and recently we have been instructed by Google to remove all of our links to have a penalty removed. Therefore we are asking that you remove our spam link from your website. We appreciate your immediate assistance in this matter.

Sincerely
sfahfdspfu547@spamlinkremovalservicecompanyseobest.com

A great way to make sure your website never ranks ever again is to remove all your good links too. We can assure you that links on this website are not bad.

So…
In conclusion, if your hired SEO consultant is still banging away on optimized anchor text in press releases, there’s a good chance now that they’ll be causing damage over the long term. Press releases are for the purpose of making important company announcements and Google is on to anyone using them for any other reasons.

Your press releases might be hurting you with Google. Bing on the other hand…

Other SEO related articles on Merchant Processing Resource:

https://debanked.com

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