Originally Posted by Diomed

Never have used any blackhat seo services before,

but always wondered if they did more damage than good.

I know a lot of so called "legit" SEO services do tend to use frowned upon blackhat type of methods to induce faster results.. but I'm wondering are any of these results long lasting? Surely when the sudden influx of backlinks stops SE's will pick up on it right?

Once you build backlinks at a steady rate for a period of time, and then stop, doesn't that usually hurt your rankings?