SEO and web designers don’t often see eye to eye, but Topseos might give us web designers something to agree on with those scummy seo :)
Shaun has a bee in his bonnet about Topseos – which is naturally ALL OPINION as this article is.
Supposedly, Topseos rank the Best SEO companies in the world – see this list. Now, they call themselves the independent authority on search vendors, and give out awards every month to the ‘winners’ but the SEO community forced an apology from topseos here.
What you are not told clearly, to win these top awards you need to PAY TOPSEOS a lot of money (aparently) TOPSEOS is a lead generation company it appears.
In fact, probably the leading authority on SEO in the UK according to Shaun, Dave Naylor, said in a recent interview Topseos was a sham and another respected UK SEO Patrick Altoft pitched in here detailing how much these things cost.
For a complete picture of this – see this site which lifts the lid on Topseos.
Now Topseos also rank the “best web design companies in the world” and whether or not they actually pay for those awards, how they operate in the SEO industry could well be the shape of things to come.
Effectively once a company pays and is awarded the top awards, these companies then PROMOTE THE HELL out of the fact they have WON these awards, using Twitter spam bots and Press releases – see this Twitter feed!
Now the SEO industry (those that aren’t just spammers! I know I know ;)) is trying to educate consumers to this, but I wondered what the web design industry thought of Topseos rankings for best web design companies.
But in a wider sense, it would be nice to get an idea of what web designers and developers think of these paid for awards and if they serve to serve anything other than getting those who pay for the awards, more unsuspecting clients.
Please leave your comments :)
Get me on Twitter here :) – Jack
(Off topic comments won’t be published on this one) – Shaun
Wow, they claim to have analyzed over 9,000 Firms and that they have a Rigorous Evaluation Process, where have I seen that claim before? Let’s take a look at this from a numbers perspective. How long do you think it would take to analyze 9,000 Web Design Firms? How about the analysis and rigorous review of 4,000 SEO Firms? Or the 10,000 Law Firms and Attorneys listed at BestAttorneysOnline.com? And what about the Retirement Communities listed at BestRetirementDestinations.com? I’ve done some rough calculations based on the above published e-Ventures numbers… Total Time: 10.5 Hours Per Rigorous Company Evaluation 10.5 Hours X 23,000 Firms Evaluated = 241,500 Hours 241,500 Hours / 14 Rigorous Evaluators = 17,250 Evaluator Hours There are 8,760 hours in a year There are an average of 2,080 work hours in a year Ya, I know, a mish-mash of numbers that are best guesses. I went through the entire evaluation process claimed by e-Ventures dba TOPSEOs.com and estimated the time it would take to perform what they claim to do in their rigorous evaluation process. BestWebDesignAgencies.com is nothing more than another shell for e-Ventures LLC to obtain leads for their Leads Programs. It appears that the same issues present with TOPSEOs are also present with this site. Not to mention the other sites in the e-Ventures LLC portfolio of companies. Attention Consumer: Please do perform due diligence when hiring any companies from BestWebDesignAgencies.com. Don’t let the badges, endorsements, etc. fool you. Always perform background research on anyone you may be hiring for contract services. One quick check is to enter their company name and the words scam, complaints, ripped off, sucks, etc.
If it wasn’t a serious money making venture it would be a joke…..
Its see through PR simple as that.
What a load of bollocks all that is – I would love a “Proud Not To Be On Top SEO’s” bage ;)
Well I don’t know the guy’s attribution requirements are, but nicking the image and linking back, as an an seo, is always all I ask for ;)
Guys, I’d be a bit wary of promoting the “anti” topSEOs logo or sticking it on your sites. They probably have rules about publishing their logo – I know some of the corporates we work with are very particular and have raised actions against companies in brand protection law suits. I’m no legal expert but working in brand protection I know that what you are doing could be seen as damaging to top SEOs. If this causes them any losses financially then you could be on the wrong end of a law suit.
Kind of awkward this “collection”, but hey, anyone is free the create whatever tops they want, this does not mean that it is “the top”. :)
You should really read this article about topseos as it relates to the FTC guidelines on endorsements: seocompany.com/top-seos.html **(above link removed pending investigation)**
Hmmmm……