Tue 18 Mar 2008
SEO Manchester - Total Ripoff SEO*
Posted by Shaun AndersonI pity the good folks in Manchester (home of my lifelong favourite band the Stone Roses) looking for a seo company. Manchester based Web Propeller (or Webpropeller or www.webpropeller.co.uk) seems to think “ethical seo” is to rip off Kalina’s and Marty’s excellent sites and pass their articles off as their own. Not content with that, they picked the Hobo site to rip off for their home page text too. SERP Assassination imminent!
They probably targeted the Hobo site because we rank so well for “SEO Scotland” and thought - that might well help us rank for “SEO Manchester” if we just steal their content! It’s laughable but it’s theft. Schoolboy SEO at best. A SEO Company in Manchester with no brains at all - no wonder us seo companies in Scotland get so much work from down south!
Actually, that’s probably a bit unfair, I know of one or two people down that way that are actually quite respectable including Tim and James and there’s probably a few more I’ve yet to meet.
SEO Manchester indeed! Stay clear of www.webpropeller.co.uk - they obviously don’t have a clue about SEO and are currently the joke of the online marketing community.
*Edit - In the end Karma was restored and apology accepted. Got to give the guy some credit for some initiative but surely there’s better ways of using those obvious brains and when you do scrape sites don’t put a link back to your employer - that was about to get nasty! Hmmmm… wonder what I’ll do from all those seo leads from Manchester? ![]()
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Have you checked it out since the post Shaun - its seemingly just a scam and the author is issuing an apology on the site.
“I’m gonna be in big trouble when my boss finds out, this was a side project thats just massively backfired.”
Oh dear …
Comment by Paul — March 18, 2008 @ 2:54 pm
That really sucks. I experienced the same thing on one of my affiliate sites, and to add insult to injury they added some negative backlinks to my site. I donned a blackhat and within 72 hours they were crying uncle. Turns out it was an seo company and the business owner had no idea. Go figure.
Comment by Affiliate Marketing Basics — March 18, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
hahaha…
I like this one very much.
Keep up the good work guys.
Klout
Comment by Klout — March 18, 2008 @ 10:44 pm
HAHAH thats pretty funny, just checked out the site… and saw the apology shame poor guy.
Looks like it was after all just an experiment.
Good work mate
All the best
JeanMatt
Comment by JeanMatt — March 18, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
[...] recent article about an “experiment” in Manchester got me thinking I see a lot of SEO advertising their services as “SEO Glasgow” or [...]
Pingback by SEO Nottinghamshire — March 24, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Ah just saw this one. Sounds like the exact problem we had with another manchester based company offering web design and SEO services, I only noticed as they had ripped off the stats code on our site.
Oh well imitation is the highest form of flattery
Comment by James - Dolphin — March 25, 2008 @ 4:35 pm