There’s a seo company out there that I and a few other colleagues in the UK SEO scene, have some very great concerns about. I’m not going to publicly out this company, but with this post, I’m going to *hopefully* feature at the top of Google (in time) when searchers are investigating the possibility of hiring this seo firm.

***** Edit 28 / 9 / 07 *****

This experiment was never completed, so the results were never achieved. Pending legal advice, the test might never be complete, and this article may be removed from this site.

***** Edit 28 / 9 / 07 *****

My advice to you is do not hire this seo company!

I thought I’d be a little creative and see what I can get away with - I’ll use Google to out them, use Google to warn potential clients about them, and of course, use Google to lead them here onto this seo blog. All without actually naming the company on this page.

The company is based in England. It’s been around for years, but has a very low Google Page Rank . To compare, we have a Page Rank 7 site after less than a years work. This company, even though it has been about for many years, has a Page Rank 2 (depending on the url you visit) site. Page Rank is not the only factor to measure a site by, but if a seo company is a couple of years old and they have such a low page rank, that’s all the indication I need to determine how passionate they are about seo, and in turn, how good they are at it. But perhaps they are just too busy making money to care about such a little thing as Google PR.

Confused? Yes, so was my MD.

Basically, in a couple of days or weeks, if you put in the companies name into Google, and ask, for example:

  • “is ******** an ethical seo company”
  • “******** - ethical seo”
  • “is ******** a good seo company?”
  • “is ******** an unethical seo company?”

This page will hopefully be at the top of Google search engine results pages. If I don’t hit it first time out, I’ll keep modifying this page until it does. This page should act as a warning to potential clients thinking of using this seo agency.

Try it in a couple of days if you think you know the company. And remember this is a sort of test. I am honestly not sure if Google will swallow it properly.

How This SEO Company Will Take Your hard Earned Money.

Have you ever been mugged? Led to the bank or cash machine and forced to part with your hard earned cash. Effectively, this is what this seo company is doing to unwary customers, in my personal opinion.

At first, I thought they were just incompetent. The first client we took from them was nowhere in Google for any decent term after a years work by this “ethical” seo company. After 8 weeks work we had them at the top of Google for their primary term.

Another client we lead away had exactly the same seo campaign running for them. Their site hadn’t been touched for months (I knew this because of the date modification files on the site and cache’s of Google which I monitored) and again appeared nowhere in Google for any terms.

Both campaigns comprised of, wait for it, setting up 100 crap domains all with 95% duplicate content on “keyword rich” domains pointing to the main client site. Then, they take these domains, and create a directory of these fake domains to generate a trickle of traffic via Yahoo and MSN. Ahem, this would have worked in the early part of this decade, but it’s light years behind seo thinking today, and it patently will not work in Google.

In fact, it could devalue your site in Google organic or natural search results and might even see you banned from Google.

Understandably both clients are bemused, confused and very, very mad. Neither can withdraw from the binding contract. Both want to rip up the contracts and both have hired Hobo.

Thousands of Number 1 Positions In Google, and all Crap

Then they had the cheek to tell the clients every week they had so many no1 keyword positions in Google. The fact was these terms are SO OBSCURE to be worthless to your business. No one is typing these terms into Google! There is no competition for these keyword terms, so it’s easy to rank at number 1.

They claimed this was one of their “wizard” techniques to beat Google’s algorithm.

FACT - Nobody in the world knows how to beat the Big G - not even Hobo. And if they did know how to beat Google EVERY TIME, they would be too busy making money for themselves to bother helping you.

Their techniques are in my opinion highly questionable, and patently incompetent. But from what I hear, they have a stellar sales team, with impressive presenters, all geared up to take your money.

That Binding Contract

But not only will they take your money. They’ll try and sucker you into a very long term contract, asking you to settle the invoice in full via a finance company you’ll pay back over the next 3 years!

Yes! That means they get your money immediately, you’re in a contract you cannot get out of, and they don’t have to lift much of a finger after initial set-up work that convinces you they have delivered a wondrous system that will result in increased leads, leading to increased sales to keep you and your bank manager smiling. Of course better rankings are probably “just around the corner”.

Let me tell you the only bank manager smiling will be theirs.

Perhaps this is a good time to mention we don’t have a sales team. We get 100% of our leads from a bank of current clients referring us, and the rest our website generates for us. Basically, it’s all hands to the pump here. Everybody on the team at Hobo are working for current clients on web design and seo jobs, and those new clients lucky enough to appoint us after a quick chat and investigation of their requirements. The only promotion we do is through our website blogs and on free social networking sites /blogs like Sphinn and SEOMoz.

Take this to the bank. Do not hire this seo company. If it’s not unethical, its certainly incompetent. You might want to take a look at the list of top seo companies in Scotland, and indeed the UK, compiled by Paul at NSM, or cut right to the chase and contact us!

Shaun

PS - If you are the seo company I’m outing don’t bother contacting me. I’ve collected a lot of data on this over the last 6 months. Any approach will result in me immediately sending this data to Google, Yahoo and MSN spambusters. Actually, I think I’m supposed to do this anyways according to Google guidelines for seo companies - and I follow those. :)
Why don’t you take a read? Your frankly taking clients for a ride and giving other seo companies a bad name and i for one am surprised you’re getting away with it.

Rant……over.

Clients with problems with any seo company, or who think a seo company may be using unethical techniques or terms of business, please use this official spam complaint form from Google to lodge your complaint about the seo concerned. Send them the contract you’ve got and see what Google thinks of them, but if your business site is part of this mess, I suggest you clean it up first.

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