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In my last article regarding how TopSEOs continue to use deceptive business practices, I closed out the article looking for opinions by “award winners”.  Essentially, I believe that one of the most serious problems our industry faces when it comes to cleaning up the SEO cesspool is that seemingly upstanding and highly regarded companies don’t go far enough in railing against the scum that causes harm to unsuspecting business owners looking for services from our industry.

Looking For Opinions

To this end, I visited a number of web sites for companies that are listed in the TopSEOs system where those companies otherwise appear to be legitimate.  Believe me, that was a challenge simply because so many of those listed have turned out to be ripoffs.

Nonetheless, there are companies out there doing good work from an overall perspective, (or there are complaints floating I have not personally been able to verify) and I was curious to find out, directly from them, why they continue to sport TopSEOs banners that make the claim they’ve gotten an award for quality service even though everyone now knows that TopSEOs themselves don’t really perform an unbiased comprehensive review, and that their new disclaimer page actually states that there’s no reason to believe that their claims are based on any facts whatsoever.

By developing and posting such rankings, topseos.com makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or factual basis of the rankings

Now any reasonably intelligent human being who reads that line can clearly see that their “rankings” are complete bullshit.  Yet while that tidbit is buried deep near the end of a 942 word disclaimer (that only appeared on their site after my scathing Jeev Trika interview article and a plethora of complaints came out during this year’s initial Sphinn push initiated by Edward Lewis forced them to issue a public apology and vow to change), the fact remains that they continue to distribute and promote those asshat badges.

And those seemingly legitimate companies in our industry I reached out to continue to display them.

Which means a business owner who doesn’t know better will see that and may think “Hey – wow – this company looks legit – they’ve even won an award…”

Which we know is complete bullshit.

You Can Run but You Can’t Hide Forever

Long story longer, not one single response came from any of the companies I reached out to.

Until SMX Advanced.

Up in Seattle, the first night of the conference, Third Door put on a “Meet & Greet” – where early arrivals could socialize, get introduced, and begin the experience that I think is the most valuable of all at conferences – networking.

One of the first people I had the pleasure of meeting was Bruce Clay.  Generally speaking, I have always appreciated how successful Bruce has been over the years.  By some people’s accounts, the size, scope and scale of his company is something they only wish they could achieve.

Personally, I don’t aspire to run a company with a global reach and such a large staff, because I’m not that type of business person.  Let’s be real right?  I’m such a renegade, so fiercely independent, and thoroughly inappropriate in my approach that there’s no way even I could tolerate me as a boss. 

Bruce, on the other hand, is obviously more than skilled at running such a venture.  His business acumen is proven through and through.  And his employees sure look like they have a lot of fun at all those company parties

And while there has, over the years, been some controversy around Bruce’s linking methodology, I personally haven’t seen or explored enough of that to be able to say, with complete certainty, that it’s anything other than grey-hat stuff, if that.

Bigger Problems

Yet one of the biggest thorns in our industry is how BCI, with all their recognition and weight, sports a TopSEOs “award” right there on the BCI site – right along with their own Bruce Clay Inc. code of ethics badge…

(note – at the time of this article, that “award” has been removed from the BCI home page, replaced by their “SEO & PPC Competition” banner, however the “award” remains on their About page)…

So naturally, I felt compelled to speak with Bruce about that.

Curiosity And The Cat

Why, I wondered, would such a pillar of the search marketing community, need to display their “best in” badge, knowing full well that it’s not an independent rating? Why would they want to be associated with such a deceptive company at all?

To Bruce’s credit, our conversation was not only polite, it was downright relaxed.  Having never previously met or spoken with Bruce, I had no idea what to expect going into this.  It turns out (no surprise to anyone who has actually dealt with Bruce, I am sure), that he’s a really decent guy.  There was no arrogance, no holier-than-thou energy about him at all.

And he proceeded to explain to me why he continues to associate with TopSEOs.

Profit As A Business Motive

It turns out that BCI actually gets a fairly substantial amount of business that comes through that channel.  Even though Bruce told me exactly what percentage, he didn’t say I could share that here, so I’ll just say this – you might be shocked if you heard the number…

So that’s a major factor right there.  It’s not personal – it’s just business.

But what about the whole deceptive practices issue?

Bruce was very clear on this point.  He told me that he most definitely doesn’t like all of the things they do over at TopSEOs – from article scraping to the concept of bait and switch (for the record, Bruce said that to his knowledge not one time did any such unsuspecting prospect get referred to BCI), and just as important – he clearly thinks there’s a serious problem with how some highly questionable companies get top billing.

The Good Guy Hat

Since they do get a serious amount of business from that channel, Bruce doesn’t see any problem in participating in that way – he says that since his company does quality work, he figures if he didn’t get that business, there’s a good chance that those clients might just end up at a less than reputable company and get ripped off.

That’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t previously considered.  That while TopSEOs steers God knows how many unsuspecting businesses toward scummy solution providers, at least some percentage of them are potentially going to be sent to companies that actually deliver real solutions…

Now, personally, I don’t think it’s enough that legitimate companies are thrown into the mix.  The sheer volume and weight of the asshattery, in my opinion, far outweighs the good that might come out of this whole deal.

Yet as far as Bruce is concerned, and according to him, “I prefer to remain neutral in this” – it’s not his policy to address such concerns…

The golden Ticket

Here’s where things really get fascinating.  And why we have a critically serious problem in our industry.  What I’m about to share was, when I heard it, both shocking and not surprising in the least…

Bruce told me that he doesn’t pay TopSEOs one cent.  Nadda.  Nothing.  No monthly membership fee whatsoever.

Of course he doesn’t.  He doesn’t have to.  TopSEOs needs the “legitimacy” factor that comes with the relationship.

By sprinkling in highly visible and highly touted industry players into the mix of craptastic thieves, it lends a massive amount of credibility cache’ to what they’re doing.

So how many other companies (legitimate or otherwise) are not paying for those badges?  And how many who ARE paying, know that someone else ISN’T paying?  but I digress…

And That’s The Rub

As long as companies such as BCI continue to sleep in the same bed as TopSEOs, Jeev gets to play his game.  For all the negative that comes when the industry cries out against them, every service provider that plays, and every industry conference that continues to allow them to play the role of sponsor or “partner”, counters the outcry.

A Matter of Business Ethics Perspective

And that brings me back to a point I brought up a while ago in this ongoing discussion.  Business Ethics.  While many of us have defined the concept of business ethics, as it applies to the TopSEOs situation, to mean that you’re either against TopSEOs altogether (and refuse to have anything to do with them), or you’re not.  And if you’re not, in our view, you’re contributing to the problem, and that, in turn, means you yourself are running an unethical company.

Except to some people, that’s just our opinion.  And it’s not good business sense or realistic, according to them. In fact, when we look at what goes on in the business world – whether it’s participating in a TopSEOs type scheme through the display of phony “awards”, or it’s outsourcing overseas and paying people 80 cents an hour for work that generates your company hundreds of dollars an hour in profit, capitalism from a detached perspective doesn’t factor in moral or ethical issues the way some of us would prefer.

It’s a cold, hard, reality.

Exclusive Insights – Bruce Clay talks TopSEOs is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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INDUSTRY OUTRAGE LEADS TO OFFICIAL APOLOGY

Outrage over TOPSEOs deceptive business practices has been brewing for a couple years, and came to a head over the past couple months.  As a result of the SEO industry’s coming together with one voice in opposition to Jeev Trika’s deceptive game playing and the seriously mounting complaints from both industry professionals and business owners who had been deceived, I reached out to Jeev in an attempt to get his side of the story and wrote about it on April 26th.   Three days later, TOPSEOs issued an official apology press release, vowing to change.

TOPSEOs ANNOUNCES THEY’VE CHANGED THEIR WAYS – BUT HAVE THEY?

That was more than a full month ago, so a review of their claimed pennance and changes is due. Especially since they issued a subsequent press release claiming they’ve changed their ways.  Let’s look at the facts and then you can decide for yourselves whether TOPSEOs is a reformed criminal, or Jeev Trika was full of shit.

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS, MAYBE

One of the biggest complaints that came out of this was how TOPSEOs listed countless companies in their database that were not paying for leads, and when someone would click on a link to contact that company, it would actually be redirected to paying members without the knowledge of the innocent site visitor.

In their “we’ve changed” press release, they state

Some of the changes implemented include of: (i) enabling the contact request for all companies across the five regional sites without the agency being required to sign up for the leads service, (ii) contact requests within articles, case studies, research materials, and jobs have been disabled, (iii) the links within the articles sections have been enabled, and (iv) the website response times have been further optimized.

At the time this article is being written, I can confirm that contact requests within articles, case studies and research materials have, in fact been removed.

As far as contact requests being redirected or not, I’m still testing this and will need to report on my findings only after I have done enough testing to truly confirm this, a daunting task given how vast their database of listings is.

LOOK AT US – WE’RE BETTER NOW

IF my ongoing study of the bait and switch issue proves them truthful in this aspect, I highly encourage Jeev Trika to tout that fact prominently on the TOPSEOs web site.

Except it might have to read:

Since 2002, one of our primary business models has been based on bait and switch tactics.  But we heard the outcry, and we no longer pull that bullshit on unsuspecting business owners!  Sure, we still deceive you in countless other ways, but hey, at least now we’re no longer performing the most egregious of criminal activity, so please – cut us some slack!

NEXT – THE BAD BAD BAD

Exhibit #1 TOPSEOS THEFT OF ARTICLES

An article by Marty Weintraub originally posted at SearchEngineWatch on February 22nd, 2008 continues to live on in its entirety at TOPSEOs, with no original article attribution, and presented to TOPSEOs readers as if it’s an article originally posted TO TOPSEOs by Marty.

An article by Jill Whalen originally posted at HighRankings.com (Jill’s site), on May 30th, 2004, continues to live on in its entirety at TOPSEOs, with no indication that this is a stolen article or that it was originally posted at Jill’s site.

UPDATE – Jill just notified me that in that article, they are, in fact, properly attributing the article to her, and linking back to her site. As such, she would not call that infringing. So we can give TOPSEOs a break on that one article.

Yet that leaves all these other articles, and God knows how many more I haven’t uncovered…

A Case Study by Michael Gray, origionally posted to his Wolf-Howl web site, continues to live on, in its entirety at TOPSEOs, as though he wrote it for their site.

Articles by Loren Baker, posted to SearchEngineJournal.com, continue to live on at TOPSEOs, direct theft of SearchEngineJournal.com content. And THAT pisses me off, in a more personal way because I am an author at SEJ, and SEJ article scrapers disgust me.

Articles by Ann Smarty, also posted to SearchEngineJournal.com, live on, in their scraped content entirety at TOPSEOs. Hey Jeev Trika, didn’t you get it just now when I expressed how much you piss me off?  Well, now you’re just aching for me to digitally bitch slap you aren’t you?

Other articles originally posted elsewhere by industry professionals continue to reside on the TOPSEOs site and presented as original to TOPSEOs which is both deceptive and in violation of copyright law, such as this article by Chris Boggs, still on the TOPSEOs site.

Do I go on? We’re talking about articles by Matt McGee, Joanna Lord, Andy Beard, the list goes on and on and on…

So clearly, TOPSEOs continues their deceptive practices.

ARTICLE REMOVAL COUNTER ARGUMENT

Some people believe it should be the responsibility of the author of an article to contact TOPSEOs and have their scraped content removed.

To be fair to Jeev, they have set up an article removal request site, where writers can submit a request to have their scraped content removed from TOPSEOs system.  While I applaud them for doing so, nowhere on their actual site do they provide this link that I can find.  Nowhere on their site do they communicate in any easy to find manner, that removal of unintentionally scraped content is even possible.  No, the only reason I know about this method is because I saw that one-time press release.

The vast majority of article writers would most likely NOT have seen that one-time release.  And hell – they don’t even list their apology or “we’ve changed” releases on their own site.  Go figure.

WHY SCRAPED CONTENT REMOVAL IS TOPSEOs RESPONSIBILITY

As far as I am concerned, I call BULLSHIT on Jeev Trika, because they know damned well that they scrape content.  It would NOT take a rocket scientist to know which articles have been posted directly to their site and which ones they stole.  And since they continue to leverage their ability to deceive unsuspecting business owners, I say the onus should be on TOPSEOs, not article authors.  Especially since they stated, on the record,

This content was identified, and is in the process of being removed.

So yes, as far as I am concerned, either they lied when they say they identified the content, or they’re incompetent fools who have no right to exist.  Take your pick.

Exhibit #2 TOPSEOS BULLSHIT REMOVAL EFFORTS

Conducting a search for “Jill Whalen” at TOPSEOs reveals several “press release” and several “article” titles and snippets under both the High Rankings banner and Jill Whalen as author.  When clicking on the link on these to “View Article”, you are redirected to the TOPSEOs home page now.  So at least they’ve removed at least some of the full articles.  But by listing these articles in the search results it means they continue to leach off of the hard work of true industry professionals.

TOPSEOs continues to deceive and leach off of the SEO industry

Similar entries continue to exist for other industry professionals, including Matt Cutts, Loren Baker, Matt McGee, and who knows how many others…

Exhibit #3 TOPSEOs CONTINUES TO LEACH OFF HIGH PROFILE INDUSTRY LISTINGS

A search at TOPSEOs for “High Rankings” lists several companies, including Jill Whalen’s company, High Rankings.  Clicking on the link in the bottom right to “View Company” causes a “302 Found” redirect to the TOPSEOs home page.  So they no longer have a page on Jill’s company on their site, but they still list it in the search results, and redirect that sucker to their home page.

High Rankings Company Profile at TOPSEOs

Exhibit #4 TOPSEOs FALSE CLAIMS

The Independent Authority Lie

Even after Jeev Trika vowed to change their ways, they continue to display a claim that they’re an “Independent authority”. In fact, they mostly claim they are “THE” independent authority.

Again, I call bullshit.  If the vast majority of companies you rank actually pay you insane fees for the right to be ranked, you are NOT an independent authority. You have a VESTED INTEREST in ranking those companies.  You are NOT providing a fair, unbiased and impartial opinion.  This is classic BULLSHIT.

The 4000 Firms Analyzed Lie

To this day, TOPSEOs maintains a claim on their home page where Entrepreneur magazine quoted them saying that they have analyzed over 4,000 firms.  Where do I begin with this one?

First of all, they use the Entrepreneur logo as some sort of “proof of truth” banner.  Kind of like their own “Best in the industry” badges.  In fact, this is no proof of truth or trustworthiness at all, it’s purely a marketing ploy to deceive site visitors who don’t know better.

Then there’s the minor detail they fail to disclose in any real way, that many companies they claimed to have reviewed, turned out to NOT have been reviewed.  Like Vertical Measures, as well as numerous other companies who’s representatives spoke up in the various Sphinn threads and on their own articles across the web over the past couple months.

Jeev Trika never disputed these claims. Not in his interview with me, or in their official apology press release.

So I call BULLSHIT on the 4000 firms claim.

Highly Questionable Rankings

To this day, many of the companies that have been well documented as to be highly questionable, and where actual clients have accounted where they posted complaints directly on the TOPSEOs web site, only to have those complaints mysteriously disappear without resolution, remain highly “ranked”.  Some companies that have been ranked, are, upon a simple lifting of the hood, companies that use black hat techniques to achieve whatever results they achieve.

No, we don’t believe that TOPSEOs has actually done proper, reasonable, or respectable “independent authority” due diligence in their “ranking” process at all.  Not in the least.

So I call BULLSHIT on the claim of ranking companies as “BEST” anything.

Exhibit #5 BULLSHIT DAMAGE CONTROL

Let’s face it.  When a murderous criminal is caught with blood splattered all over their body, gun shot residue spread across their hand, and the crime scene isn’t properly scrubbed of all DNA trace evidence, it’s pretty damned hard for that criminal to erase all traces of their criminal activity, let alone perform damage control.

I do, however, give Jeev Trika credit for trying to pretend like they’re covering their asses in a sufficient enough manner.

Take, for example, the now visible “FULL DISCLOSURE” button that appears at the bottom of every page.

Of course, when I zoom in on that little area of the site all the way at the bottom of pages, that green button jumps out at you doesn’t it?

But when you actually go to their site, and you’re looking at the page like most humans do, and your eyes are bleeding from absorbing all the primary content, that green button becomes a blur among a flurry of bottom feeder links and buttons.

FINALLY – THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY

So okay, we already know it’s a BULLSHIT ASSHAT way to skirt the disclosure requirement that was called for in our outcry.  Personally, I called for an obvious and easy to find disclosure throughout and across the site.  This isn’t even CLOSE to obvious or easy to find when you’re overwhelmed with trying to focus on primary content areas.  It’s not in any of the top navigation links, there’s no icons or text directly inside the content areas.  It’s buried at the very bottom in a blur.

But let’s at least look at it to see what they’ve come up with, shall we?

There’s a lot of marketing bullshit about how they do their rankings and this little gem:

The rankings are strictly our opinions based on our research process.

Okay – so we should believe their ability to be trustworthy why?

Oh yeah – they’re the Independent Authority!  (BULLSHIT)

THE “WE DON’T NEED TO BE HONEST” LOOPHOLE

The rankings are usually measured on a series of scores that we assign on five factors within each category.  The scores for each factor are assigned based on our analysis. Only the top scoring agencies make a given list.

Wait – USUALLY?  What the fuck does THAT mean?

It means they have the right to list any fucking douchebag asshat scumbag company they damned well please.  Without otherwise TELLING you that’s what they did.  Because they tell you right there on that disclosure page.  So FUCK YOU if you were hoping for fairness and independent trustworthy rankings.

AT LEAST THEY GET A LITTLE HONEST

They go on to say  in the disclosure page

We charge a standard fee from agencies and tool developers for our time to evaluate.

So there you have it – an actual truthful statement that they get paid to rank sites.  Isn’t that nice of Jeev Trika for actually being honest about how rankings are bought and paid for?

LETS GET REAL – ITS A BULLSHIT PLOY

AFTER they close out the “disclosure” page content, below the “Summary” and the “Sincerely” bullshit closing, they go on to provide a p.s.!

P.S.:   Our lawyers advised us that we should say a few more things…

Users are recommended to do their own research and investigation before engaging services with any company.  User agrees to not hold topseos.com and/or e-ventures, LLC and/or any members and/or any managers and/or any of our partners and/or suppliers liable from any decisions they take. Furthermore, e-ventures, LLC is not liable for any statements, representations, descriptions, comments, or opinions posted on the Site.  e-ventures, LLC cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of Rankings. Under no circumstances will e-ventures, LLC or any third-party providers of the Rankings be liable in any way for any Ranking, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any Ranking/s, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of the Ranking/s.

(bolding by me for emphasis)

Do you grasp what that paragraph means?

It means they have the right to lie, deceive and otherwise spit out the most insanely nonsensical, totally non-independent, non authoritative, non-trustworthy “rankings” they want to, for whatever reason they see fit, and if you don’t like it, FUCK YOU.

I especially like the GO FUCK YOURSELVES IF YOU EXPECT QUALITY RANKINGS line:

e-ventures, LLC cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of Rankings.

Isn’t that just fucking special?

DRIVING THE FUCK YOU ATTITUDE HOME

As good as all the above facts are, this line from the disclosure page really drives it home:

By developing and posting such rankings, topseos.com makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or factual basis of the rankings

Translated, this line says “we make no claim that any claim we make about rankings is even fucking real or factual.

See?  Their lawyers insisted that they admit somewhere on their site that they really don’t have any need to honor their bullshit.

LOOKING FOR OPINIONS BY “AWARD” WINNERS

Bruce Clay Badges

I’ve made several attempts to reach business owners whose companies have actually placed “BEST IN…” badges on their sites or in their marketing materials.

The one question I ask each time is why they choose to display their badges and fail to disclose along side them that they’re just bought and paid for, not truly independent awards (as in J.D. Power or Consumer Reports type ratings).

It’s a simple, fair and reasonable question given how some of these badge holders are very high profile companies, like Bruce Clay, Inc., for example – a company that touts quite proudly, their own SEO Code of Ethics. RIGHT BELOW THEIR TOPSEOS Badge.

So they’re either also bullshitting the public, and that means they’re in collusion with TOPSEOs, or they’ve been duped by Jeev Trika.

As of the time of the writing of this article, only one company has had the balls to step up to the plate and discuss the whole TOPSEOs “ranking” bullshit.  They no longer display any of their “awards” based on a position they’re taking that TOPSEOs is in violation of FTC regulations regarding endorsements.

Sadly, not one other company has had the balls or guts to step forward to defend their asshat bullshit badges.  I can only assume the reason for this is that they don’t want to get their business dragged into the public maelstrom or the vortex that this has become.

Except by the mere fact that they have chosen to ignore my inquiries, and they continue to display their bullshit phony badges, they’re complicit in the TOPSEOs deceptive practices we’re talking about. Especially given that they’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars paying for the ongoing right to display that crap.

It’s disgraceful.

And I highly encourage anyone who ever comes across a company displaying or promoting their TOPSEOs badge to run.  Away.  As fast as possible.  And not look back…

TOPSEOs Continues Deceptive Practices is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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rankings bought and paid for

There’s been a flurry of renewed activity in the past few days regarding the fact that TOPSEOs has been caught using deceptive business practices in their operation.  Apparently someone at TOPSEOs, perhaps Jeev Trika himself, finally felt that enough pressure was being applied, because yesterday morning (April 28th), a press release was posted through PRWeb.com where TOPSEOs issued an official apology “to the community” for “confusion”, and where they vow “Changes to the Site”.

So did Jeev Trika finally get the message, and are they really going to implement the changes I called for in my article Monday as well as those required by Chris Elwell from Third Door Media? Will they go as far as Edward Lewis thinks they should?  Or is this just another marketing ploy?

Let’s Break It Down

Let’s look at the “official” word from TOPSEO’s and Jeev Trika in this release.

Scraped Articles

In a review of topseos.com’s operations, it appears there was a challenge with specific content having been placed on topseos.com/~/ This content was identified, and is in the process of being removed.

This, of course, refers to the fact that they had been displaying articles, without permission, some by highly reputable people in our industry.  While it’s nice to think they’ll actually delete those, as they legally should delete them, I have concerns about this actually happening.

How can we be sure that all of the illegally published content will be removed?  We’re talking about a lot of articles, across all of their sister sites and from their Visibility magazine.  That’s a huge amount of content that needs to be culled and removed.

Who’s going to know that this has been achieved across the board?

Scraped Profiles

topseos.com will also be changing its policy for SEO vendors who have not responded to requests for participation on topseos.com’s either as a sponsor or non-sponsor. topseos.com will be removing their content, and writing a brief synopsis about each company consistent with safe harbor practices used on leading review sites in all industries.

Really?  Out of the tens of thousands of profiles you have, you mean you’re going to remove the vast majority of them?

Will you then change all your banners, and marketing materials to reduce the false claims you used up til now proclaiming things like “Over 4000 firms analyzed”?

Will you then notify all of the news outlets you duped, and who’s references you make liberal use of in your marketing materials? (Like that reference to Entrepreneur Magazine you so prominently display on your home page?

Bait & Switch

topseos.com’s lead program is being altered, because despite the disclosure given to participating companies, there still was confusion amongst some companies, and topseos.com has decided to change the system to enable contact forms for all vendors listed on the site.  This means that if a potential client requests to contact the vendor via the profile on topseos.com, the email listed on the profile will receive the contact in real time.  This modification will be enabled within 7-10 days.

This refers to the fact that companies who didn’t pony up the thousands of dollars a month TOPSEOs charges to participate in the leads program, never, in fact, in at least some cases, received those contacts, let alone any notice inviting them to join in order to get the lead.

So what they’re saying now is that from now on (effective within 7-10 days), if a visitor clicks the contact form for any company that is NOT paying for leads, that contact form will go directly to the email on file for that company.  This also implies that this lead will NEVER end up going to members who pay for leads.  That would be refreshing, since the way it works now is a lead gets sent to 7 or 8 of those paying members chosen at the discretion of TOPSEO’s.  Which was one of my most serious concerns given how it deceives site visitors, and it causes undue harm to companies not paying for leads because site visitors were led to believe that company would get that contact info, and failing to respond then implied that company was less than professional.

Ranking That Never Took Place

While it is true that vendors do pay for vetting, topseos has always disclosed there are fees involved to be vetted to enable ranking.

That line is a very disturbing claim, because some vendors were initially ranked, WITHOUT paying, only to end up with lower rankings in an attempt to strong-arm those companies into paying the fees TOPSEOs insisted on.  So that statement is patently false.  A lie.  Verified by testimony from multiple sources, all documented publicly.

Deception Of Consumers

In the interest of consumer’s, topseos will more prominently include this detailed disclosure throughout its site.

The need for clear disclosure was another one of the action items I called for in Monday’s article.  So it’s good to see they’re committing to that in writing.  How they go about this will prove an interesting study in itself.  The key here is that though there were disclosures buried on the site a couple clicks down, it was NEVER clear to the consumer performing a search within the site or directory.

A Sincere Apology?

Jeev Trika, Managing Partner of topseos.com said, “We sincerely apologize to the community, both consumers and vendors, for the confusion caused. We deeply regret them. We have learned from our mistakes, vow to fix them to even better, more transparently educate the consumer, and with our forthcoming changes hope to provide an even more valuable, product to the SEO industry, and marketplace moving forward.

Well heck – that’s a direct response to the outstanding footwork that Edward Lewis has put in on this endeavor, and exactly what Chris Elwell called for – an apology.  And it also responds to my direct call to Jeev in that last article for these exact changes to be made.

SEO Community Raised The Alarm

I also want to thank SEO’s around the world, both sponsors and non-sponsors alike, for suggestions about making topseos.com site an even more detailed, and credible resource for all.

You’re welcome Jeev. Though to be clear, we never said we thought TOPSEOs was a credible source.  In fact, we’ve consistently stated that we believe TOPSEOs is at best, a sham, at worst, a scam.  So if the changes you state are made, you may possibly one day become a credible source.

More Changes Must Take Place

While all the claims of reform sound good, in just the past 24 hours I’ve learned you’ve been deleting legitimate negative ratings from your site.

Deleting Legitimate Complaints = AssHattery

What gives you the right to remove negative comments?  According to at least one person, their complaints were removed multiple times, without having had proper explanation provided let alone satisfaction. Edward Lewis has been tracking other instances of this nonsense, so it’s not just one case.  Which means its a part of the overall pattern of deception and intentional manipulation for financial gain.

So for all the changes you claim Jeev, this one’s a new one you better have a valid explanation for because it’s a big one.

Member Badge Abuse

Given that badges are bought, the fact that members use the statement “Rated Best___” is also misleading.  The more I think about this one the more I believe the entire badge program needs to change and the actual badges need to make it crystal clear that these do NOT come from an independent unbiased authority.  If it was an open rating system that truly rated thousands of companies, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

But since the vast majority of companies in any given category are NOT actually rated, AT ALL, it’s a bogus claim and consumers visiting member sites that see that badge don’t know that given the design of the current badges, and clearly members spin the badge as if it was that which it is not.

Since TOPSEOs are the ones who created the foundation for this, and actively encourage members to market their companies based on this lie, it’s up to TOPSEOs to find a way to change this culture they themselves created.

Abuse Of The Press

Too many references exist that claim organizations like Entrepreneur, CNN, and SmartMoney have all given TOPSEOs high marks for their “independent” authority. They even tout the fact that they were interviewed by American Airlines for AA’s in-flight radio a while back. Heck, Jeev has enjoyed being interviewed a number of times within our own industry…. Knowing full well that his message of deception would go out to industry professionals, all with the intent of luring in companies.

And if these media outlets were used to unknowingly propagate TOPSEOs deceptive business model, this has to be addressed.  Equating TOPSEOs to be among such notable organizations as Good Housekeeping, J.D. Power & Associates, and Consumers Digest  is deplorable.  Something needs to be done to address this.

Perhaps it means they contact the major news organizations, Webmaster Raido, and the like directly, and request new interviews.  That would help.

And how about putting this admittance and forgiveness request press release on your actual site?  You seem to have conveniently left it off your own site…

What About All The Other Sites?

Now that this release has been published, it clearly acknowledges wrongdoing, and claims change is on the way.  Though it only references TOPSEOs.com, not their other sister sites around the world, let alone their Lawyer “ratings” site, or their Retirement community “ratings” site, nor their Magazine, or any other web property they own.  So that too will prove to be interesting to observe.

And ultimately, given how many companies have taken advantage of these paid-for ratings to make false claims about being the best in our industry, the question remains – is it all a little too little, and a little too late?

We shall see, indeed.

Regardless Of Outcome

Regardless of the ultimate outcome here, it’s pretty obvious now that Edward is to be commended for starting the ball rolling on this one and documenting as ceaselessly as he has.  And everyone in the community who has spoken up should stand proud that we’re all contributing to help clean up the SEO cesspool.

We’ll Be Watching

It’s also important to communicate that one press release that has a lot of marketing spin in it, and one outright lie, is not, itself, enough to compensate for the tremendous harm TOPSEOs and Jeev Trika have perpetrated on the business world.

And while a number of people are already calling for them to shut down altogether, I’m leaning in that direction, however to be perfectly fair, I’m at least willing to play the waiting game for a short bit of time.  Just to see exactly what they do and how comprehensive the changes are.  So just beware Jeev – we’ll be watching.

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TOPSEOs Apologizes – Legit or more Deceptive Business? is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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The TOPSEOs discussion (mostly industry leaders and participants calling for TOPSEOs to stop their deceptive marketing practices) has been raging for a while now. Not long after this all started, I attempted to contact Jeev Trika, one of the owners of the company.  At first, I did this with a direct email to Jeev via his LinkedIn account.  When I got no response to that after 2 weeks, I called them and was actually able to talk with Jeev himself.  It turns out that Jeev not only stands firm in his view that they have a legitimate business model, but he even told me he sees this as just a witch hunt out to smear a good business.

My Apologies For The Delay

Before I continue I need to apologize for the lengthy delay in the time between that call and this article.  The fact is that I have a life outside my blogging.  Go figure.  Sometimes I’m swamped with client work.  Other times, personal life takes over.  In any case, even though it’s now been a couple weeks since that call, I think this is still a timely article, and as a follow-up to my own original article.

Especially since Third Door Media has most recently contacted TOPSEOs and demanded they cease and desist with not only their blatant scraping of the legitimate content created by Search Marketing industry professionals, but that they remove the SMX logo from the TOPSEOs site, as they have used that without permission.

And, of course, more companies have come out with complaints against TOPSEOs, a number of which can be found in the comment threads over at Sphinn.

A Desire To Hear The Other Side

Okay – so I called TOPSEOs and asked to speak with Jeev Trika directly, because hey – nobody from their company has had the willingness to participate in a legitimate discussion about their business practices.  And rather than just being one of the people who raises a concern based on personal opinion or just because several complaints have shown up, I figured I’d get Jeev’s take on this whole thing.

Jeev Sidesteps A Desire For Accuracy

Now mind you, I’m not a reporter.  I don’t have professional journalism training.  And I’m not an investigative journalist nor a private investigator.  So I didn’t know exactly how to go about this.  But I figured I would want to be as accurate in my reporting on this conversation as possible.  And so I invited Jeev to either answer a series of questions by email, to get his replies in writing (can’t get much more accurate in quoting someone than that) or perhaps we could do this over Skype and record it, for later transcription.

Jeev laughed at both of those suggestions.  And declined them as well.

Now, on the one hand, that decision can be seen as an innocent choice.  On the other, given the situation we’re dealing with here, it could also be seen as Jeev not being willing to be quoted on the record with any of his responses to my questions – so that he could later deny everything.

So given the fact that this was purely a verbal conversation, I can not guarantee that everything I state as being attributed to Jeev is his actual words.  All I can do is my best at paraphrasing and offering my own opinion on what I felt came out of that call.  It’s not ideal, but this isn’t a court-room either, so it will have to do.

The Court Of Public Opinion

Okay so this isn’t a court of law.  We’re not going to get all of the facts, presented as pure facts, when it comes to TOPSEOs official corporate stance on all of this.  As a result of their unwillingness to provide an official response, as much as Jeev might not like the altnerative, it’s the alternative we have to go by – the court of public opinion.  So here goes…

Jeev Shouts Witch Hunt, Tries To Evade Reality

When we first started talking, Jeev acknowledged having read the original Sphinn article, as well as my own original article.  He summed all of that up as being a witch hunt perpetrated by a competitor of his (Edward, who runs SEOConsultants.com – he (Jeev) really was clear on painting the discussion as an unwarranted attack on his business.  He even pointed me to an old article that was written a few years ago where that article painted Edward in less than stellar light.

Oh – Look – a Shiny Object

Personally, I read that article but will not link to it here.  Not because I have any desire to prop up Edward as a saint or some such nonsense.  Instead, I won’t because this discussion isn’t about Edward Lewis.  It’s about Jeev Trika, TOPSEOs and the now growing list of complaints about their company.  If Jeev Trika wants to try and get us to discount the entirety of the complaint base due to one person’s participation, that’s not going to fly with me.

The Link Bait Tactic

I need to say that overall, Jeev was quite pleasant to speak with – and communicated both an appreciation for my being the first person to actually call him directly, as well as for my willingness to actually get his side of this whole thing.  He did, however, say that the thought the only reason I’m doing this is for link bait.  Which is NOT true.  And I informed him that when I write articles, I do so because I am passionate about our industry, and that passion leads to my writing on things I care about.

He also told me that while he was quite open to answering questions I presented, that it couldn’t be an unending list of questions – and I acknowledged the fact that I didn’t expect him to sit there on the phone with me for hours on end.

The Honey Buys More Than Venom Tactic

I need to mention up front that at one point toward the end of the conversation, Jeev mentioned my being a columnist at SearchEngineJournal.com and he invited me to write articles for the magazine they (Jeev and his cohorts) put out. You know – the one that happens to share part it’s name with that of the company they rank #1 in the SEO field…  I thanked him but declined.  go figure.

Why Complaints Matter.  And Don’t.

So on the one hand, there’s an ever increasing list of companies complaining about the TOPSEOs service.  Some have paid money to companies that TOPSEOs rates as highly rated, only to believe they’ve either been ripped off, or at the very least, that they’ve gotten far less in services than they were promised. Others have complained that though they’ve never paid, and nobody from TOPSEOs has ever spoken with them, that they were rated nonetheless.  And in those situations, some of them have reported that they then got a call from TOPSEOs offering to boost their ratings in direct relation to that company paying into the company’s monthly fee structure.

Still others have complained that TOPSEOs took their articles without permission, and the list of other complaints of varying types just keeps mounting.

99.8% Satisfaction

According to Jeev during our conversation, the reality is that they rate thousands of companies, so it’s reasonable that a few people would complain – you can’t satisfy everyone all the time.  At that point, there had only been perhaps five specific companies that had come forward online (that we’d been able to find or who joined the conversation at Sphinn). So Jeev was like – what’s 5 complaints compared to 3,000 companies in their system? That’s like a 99.8% success rating.

The Illusion Of Numbers

Truth be told – by itself, that concept – in its most simplistic form, is not unreasonable.  The fact is that in all my years in business, from time to time, I screw up just like everyone else does.  Occasionally, clients end up unhappy.  For a host of reasons.  So in that light, if that was the only issue, TOPSEOs would be considered an outstandingly good service provider.

Yo, Dude, It’s Not So Simple

It really isn’t so simple in this situation though.  Because we have to also look at the type of complaints, and the response mechanism in place to determine, in this court of public opinion, whether the “vast majority are happy” claim is true or not.  And how severe the complaints are. And how TOPSEOs responds.

The Toyota of the SEO World

Okay so this isn’t a perfect analogy, but it’s close enough.  If the complaints that come out against a company are of the “we’re not satisified, or “we didn’t get what we paid for” type, then the easy fix is to do what I do – to refund your client’s money.  And acknowledge that you’re far from perfect.  And to strive to do better next time.

But if the complaints are ones like Toyota recently faced – failed brakes, stuck gas pedals… well, those are much more serious in terms of how you need to go about addressing the complaints and what you’ll do to compensate for them, how you’ll take corrective action.  Because people die otherwise.

Now, I’m not saying that TOPSEOs is causing SEO industry people to die.  No, it’s not THAT serious.  What I am saying though is when we look at the complaints, – like stealing other peoples articles for your own gain, or claiming to allow site visitors to contact a company in the database even though that company has not paid to receive leads (and therefore that company will NOT receive those leads, but a company – a DIFFERENT COMPANY than the one the site visitor EXPECTS to contact, one that pays TOPSEOs for leads, will…

See – now we’re talking about some very serious complaints indeed.  Ones that you can’t rectify through reimbursement.  Because in both those cases, we’re talking about people who did not pay TOPSEOs in the first place and- in the case of stolen articles, TOPSEOs did NOT seek permission nor did they obtain it.

SCRAPED PROFILES – OR NOT

In at least one case, it was reported that a company had NOT paid to be listed, and that their listing was scraped, without permission or knowledge of that company.  It turned out, during my call with Jeev, that someone at that company had, in fact, a couple years back, submitted their company for a free listing.  I confirmed this with the person who made the original complaint.   Except Jeev told me that the person who had submitted the info originally had even contacted them afterward to have the profile updated.  That aspect of the rebuttal from Jeev is still being denied by my contact.  He says the profile info is at least 3 years old.

Either way – whether it’s been updated or not, in this one case it turned out that someone inside that company did, in fact, submit the information to TOPSEOs.

So that begs the question – of all the other companies claiming that nobody in their organization submitted their profile – that it was scraped without their knowledge – how many of those instances are like the one I investigated, and will turn out to be situations where one hand doesn’t report to the other what they’re doing?

I expect that at least some of the profiles in the system were scraped, because that’s how most directories get the beef of their content – they go out and gather information.  They don’t in fact, wait for companies to submit profiles, nor do they bother to contact those companies directly to ensure the information they are posting is 100% accurate.

But given that in at least one instance a person at the company did submit the profile, it’s a legitimate question that I ask of our industry.

SCRAPED ARTICLES

Clearly, in the case of those people claiming that TOPSEOs took their articles without permission, I tend to lean toward believing that to be a serious, legitimate complaint.  After all, if I wrote an article, I know damn well whether I gave someone else permission to use it or not.  And honestly, I’d love to see how Jeev counters this one.  We didn’t discuss it on our call so I can’t even begin to imagine how he’d dodge this bullet.

DECEPTIVE VISITOR SERVICES

Here’s one of the more serious charges – a visitor goes to TOPSEOs, scans the list of companies in the directory, clicks the link to contact that company, reasonably expects that someone from THAT company will contact them, and then gets pitched by another company.

I don’t care how you couch it, that is scum tactics.  Nowhere in the form process are you informed that you may not in fact be contacted by that company unless they pay a fee for leads, but that instead, you’ll be pitched by another company.  It’s not like the form says “Fill out this form to have an as yet undisclosed company pitch you on services”.  It specifically communicates that this is a form being sent to a specific company.  A company you, the visitor, took the time to select.

Heck, the moment you fill out the form, the confirmation even says you’ve contacted that company.  The one you THOUGHT you were contacting.

A Glimmer Of Hope In A Sea Of Bile

To Jeev’s credit, when I brought up that concern, he did tell me that “maybe I can improve that”.  He alluded to the possibility that disclosure could be improved in that contact form process.

But that was weeks ago.  And when I tried just now, nothing has changed.  There’s nothing obvious or clearly communicated, either on the profile page, or in the contact form process that states at all that you may or may not receive a contact back from the company we just told you that you contacted.

Why That’s Serious And Disgusting

It’s been said by others, but I’ll say it here.  In my own words.

Deceiving a site visitor into believing that they are submitting a contact form to a specific company and then diverting that contact form to another company is pure bullshit.

Jeev Has An Answer For Everything

Jeev’s rebuttal to my view on that tactic was cold, matter of fact, and pure “unethical business 101″.  He said – when that form gets filled out, we do send a notice to the email we have on record for that company.  We then invite them to join our leads program (the one for the hefty fee).  If they decline, it’s not our problem.  We then pass that lead along to another company.

WOAH JEEV – THANKS FOR NOTHING

This is simple business ethics.  Really people. It is.  If the recipient declines to participate, the ethical thing to do would be to inform the person who filled out the form that you could not, in fact, pass the lead along because that company chose not to participate in your leads program.

Better yet, you need to inform site visitors of how your system works in a clear, obvious and reasonable manner BEFORE they fill out the form or AS they’re filling out the form.  On that same form page.  Not buried in some disclaimer somewhere either.

And by failing to do that, your actions cause the person who filled out that form to consider the possibility that the company they tried to reach doesn’t care to even bother to respond to a simple contact form request.  Even though that’s not what happened.

WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON HERE?
Jeev was quite clear with me in stating that they make it perfectly clear that TOPSEOs is a lead generating company, and that if you want to get those, you have to pay.  He also confirmed that their rating system and their SEO / PPC Competition are two distinctly separate services.  But he also confirmed to me that he thinks it’s quite reasonable to give only companies that pay a fee consistently high rankings in the general rankings system.  Jeev’s stance, as far as what he communicated during our phone call, is that they run a legitimate business offering legitimate and perfectly reasonable services.

My take on it is that Jeev and whoever else runs that company are of the “business ethics is a game” mentality.  If you do a whole bunch of scuzzy things, it doesn’t matter as long as you convince enough people that you offer a legitimate service.

And that’s where we cross into no-mans land….

Questionable Ethics In the SEO Industry

The SEO industry is just like any other in many ways.  One of those ways is that many business owners think that it’s either perfectly acceptable to buy awards, buy ratings, or buy a place in some phony “Who’s Who” book (SOOO 20th Century), or that it’s actually a legitimate business marketing tactic that helps you differentiate your company from the rest.  Even if they’re not truly unbiased, truly independent awards or ratings.

Some business owners are perfectly happy to pay their way to the “appearance” of being the best.  They just don’t care about consumer rights, or fair play, or anything else in that realm of life.  They’ll do whatever it takes, or almost anything this shy of their own ethical threshold, to get ahead. 

The truth is, it’s just marketing to them.  And at a societal level, it’s condoned across the board.

Fact – Fast Food will kill you.

Fact.  Smoking Cigarettes will kill you.

Fact.  Taking prescription medications based on a doctor’s best guess that they’re what may help you, may also kill you.

Fact.  The fine print that flashes on the bottom of the television screen for 3 seconds is so tiny and gone so fast, that no reasonable human being will ever be able to read them during that commercial.

But we don’t live in a society that truly cares enough about the consumer – we live in a society where those facts are discounted, laughed at, and otherwise spit upon by business owners, politicians, and the sheep society they’ve mastered.

So a company like TOPSEOs will, in all likelihood, continue to prosper.  Because so many companies will continue to pay for bullshit awards that aren’t otherwise worth the toilet paper they should be printed on.

CALLING ON TOPSEOS TO REFORM

Okay so lets pretend we live in an ideal world.   One where a serious bunch of legitimate complaints are filed against a company.  Complaints that point to flagrant abuse of industry companies and clearly stolen content.  In that ideal world, here’s what I think Jeev Trika needs to do.

1. Remove the Stolen Content

Delete every single article ever re-purposed that came from people or companies that did not provide clear, written permission to use those articles.  Not only is their use wrong, it’s a crime.

2. Clarify The Lead Re-Routing

Provide a disclaimer directly on the contact form on company profiles that unless the company in question has signed up for and paying for leads, that the form will be rerouted to another company of TOPSEOs choosing, and to offer the site visitor the option to opt out of having that form submitted if they don’t want another company to contact them.

3. Get Honest About Ratings

Provide a disclaimer directly on the top of every page that lists companies currently billed as “Best companies” in a given field that not all of the companies listed have, in fact, been thoroughly vetted as is claimed in the vetting process descriptions elsewhere on the site. 

4. Declare A Spade A Spade

Provide a disclaimer plainly visible in a substantive way on the site as appropriate, that informs visitors that only companies that pay a fee for a rating are going to end up with the highest “awards” and that “awards” are tied to money exchange.

5.  Stop The Spam

Clearly the volume of “press releases” sent out by, for or on behalf of TOPSEOs is at a volume directly proportional to the shear asshattery that this whole sham of an awards system is at.  Either stop sending them out altogether, or include the above mentioned disclaimers directly in every press release.

6.  Respond To Complaints Maturely

When so many perfectly legitimate companies complain and get no positive resolution, it’s disgusting.  There should be a clearly explained mechanism for complaint handling and every company that has lodged a complaint in this discussion to this point should be contacted by a TOPSEOs manager with the promise to resolve this issue to the complaintant’s satisfaction (within reason).  And then that needs to be carried out.

7.  Remove every single reference to the word “independent”

Look – billing your company as “independent” gives the appearance of being unbiased, and that you really do rate all companies fairly, not based on financial compensation.  If you don’t make it crystal clear that this is a paid rating service, at least you can have the decency to not claim independent status.  Because you’re not independent.  You’re bought and paid for.

I am sure there are plenty more desired goals that will come from our industry peers, however personally, I think if Jeev steps up to the plate and does these, I’d be quite surprised, and would be happy to write a new article detailing those actions, and show that TOPSEOs really does care about ethical business practices.

What do you think?

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UPDATE 4/27/2010

As I was perusing the TOPSEOs site just now, I came across their complaint form.  The one where you get to register a complaint against a member.  So of course, I took the time to fill it out, given that I have a legitimate complaint.

It read:

See my latest article detailing the litany of complaints that now add up to a clear situation of deceptive practices, questionable yet clearly unethical business methods, and outright theft of other people’s intellectual property.  Would love for Jeev to dispute these in a public format or in writing.  Otherwise we will have no choice but to contact every company in your public database and challenge them to stay with you or bail.

Have a nice day.

I hope they’ll make an appropriate response and chastise themselves because after the form was completed, I got a little popup saying how seriously they take complaints.4

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FOLLOW-UP TO THIS MORNING’S UPDATE

I got an email response back from TOPSEO’s regarding my submission of their complaint form – where I complained to them about them 

Alan,

The form you filled out is focused on trying to resolve issues with those who have purchased internet marketing services and tools and with those who provide such services.  Your complaint doesn’t meet that criteria.

Thank you.

THANK YOU?  You thanked me for not using the form as it was intended?  And that’s all?  < sigh >  I guess they only care about complaints against their members, not against their own company.  How unexpected.

TOPSEOs Deceptive Practices – An Interview with Jeev Trika is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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This week’s buzz in the SEO community is all about complaints against TOPSEOs (and questions for Jeev Trika, one of their owners) – a company that sells rankings and awards within the SEO industry.  While they bill their rankings as a “competition”, people from a number of highly reputable companies in our industry  have come out essentially saying that TOPSEOs is nothing more than a shakedown for money.  And I’ve got one more company to add to the list…

IF IT FEELS LIKE A SHAKEDOWN IT MAY BE A SHAKEDOWN

Early on in my life in business, I was contacted by a company offering to list my company in an “Industry Leaders” publication.  It turned out that all one had to do to be billed as an “industry leader”, was to pay a hefty fee to be included.  This was spun by the sale person as “a great way to gain exposure for your business – a way to let prospective customers know about you and to set your company apart from the competition.”  Well, the whole premise of that nonsense stank to high heaven, and given how many complaints there are now against TOPSEOs and who the people are that are complaining,  it’s pretty clear that TOPSEO’s plays the same game.

I’d come across TOPSEOs previously, though I never much paid attention, other than to laugh at the stupid use of an “up” arrow as the company’s first letter in their logo.  This week however, Edward Lewis from SEOConsultants.com has written extensively about TOPSEOs and has a lot of questions for Jeev Trika.

JEEV TRIKA – THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Jeev Trika is listed on their site as a “Partner” whose primary responsibilities at TOPSEOs is

carving out the strategic direction in addition to sales and account management

Most people who have been speaking up with complaints about TOPSEOs have dealt directly with Jeev Trika.  So whether he’s the right person to answer up to these allegations or not is only a guess, but it’s a good one.

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE TRUST JEEV TRIKA?

Anyone who reads Jeev Trika’s bio over at TOPSEOs, might be confused by all this talk about complaints against TOPSEOs and the notion that TOPSEOs is a shakedown operation, because his bio says

His professional services have been garnered by organizations like IBM Global Services, Siebel, Jordan Industries, Cayman Islands Government, and more

And Jeev Trika’s education is listed as

a Bachelor in Computer Science and an MBA, both from Purdue University.

Which sounds like he’s got a serious professional business background.

Except that’s what they thought about Bernie Madoff as well. And look how well that turned out.

COMPLAINTS AGAINST TOPSEOs

Most notably, Edward has documented a laundry list of quite serious complaints against TOPSEOs over at his site.  He’s also started an open dialogue about the legitimacy problems he sees with the whole TOPSEOs “Pay For Awards” scheme over at Sphinn and as of the writing of this article, that posting has received 42 sphinns.  It seems the legitimate SEO community, for the most part, finds what TOPSEOs does to be distasteful at best, a shakedown service at worst.

ADD ONE MORE COMPLAINT AGAINST TOPSEOs

When I first started looking into this to see whether TOPSEOs is a legitimate service or what, I saw some companies listed there that are rather well known in the industry.  Like Bruce Clay, Inc.  Hell – BC?  They’re about as legit as it gets.  But then I saw companies that have the “highest rating” – like “Increase Visibility, Inc.”  Which, according to many different complaints against THEM (read Edward’s article for details on the complaints against Increase Visibility, Inc.), shows that they’ve got no business being awarded any top rating award of any kind,  let alone one bought and paid for with cold hard cash.

So I put out word to people I know and asked if anyone had any more insight.

Arnie Kuenn, President of Vertical Measures, reached out to me and offered to share his experience with TOPSEOs.  He sent me an email that at first he said I could use in my article anonymously, as he preferred to avoid any potential negative light being cast on his otherwise outstanding and highly reputable Internet marketing company.  I suggested, however, that by identifying who it is saying this would carry significantly more weight than the “a highly reputable member of our community” would. Especially given how Arnie is also President over at AZIMA – the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association.

Arnie then went and spoke with his team at Vertical Measures – to get a sense from them as to whether to remain anonymous in this whole thing, or to come out and take a public stand against what Arnie (and so many others in the industry) feel is a a highly disreputable business model carried out by TOPSEOs.  The result of that discussion was that Arnie gave me his blessings to make full use of his reporting on TOPSEOs business practices.

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HERE’S WHAT ARNIE SHARED WITH ME ABOUT TOPSEOs, IN ITS ENTIRETY:

“The beginning of 2009, we were sent an email by TopSEOs telling us we were ranked as a top 10  company in one of the ranking categories on TopSEOs.  In fact it was a top 7 ranking.  Of course we were proud and posted the badge and sent out the press release as provide by and recommended by TopSEOs.

A couple months later, we dropped to #10 and noticed our score for some of the “scoring criteria” had dropped.  So I sent TopSEOs and email asking how this could be when our customer retention has been outstanding and we have never received a complaint.  Here is the exact text of my email:”

Hello,
I see we dropped from 7th to 10th.  I just don’t understand how that could happen.  We have a “zero” for dependability?  That is just not right.  Our clients love us.  Since we keep the client list confidential, how do you know who to contact to ask about us?

Look at the number of 5 star reviews we have on YOUR site compared to the others ranked ahead of us.

Obviously I take great pride in this ranking.  Please tell me what we need to do to move up.

Arnie then went on to share with me what happened next, and this is what caused me to want to vomit over the TOPSEOs business practices, and what has been corroborated now by other just as reputable people in the SEO industry:

“Within 24 hours I received a response from Jeev Trika:

I will give you a call today to discuss ….

This is from memory, but Jeev did call and then explained to me that the top rankings are reserved for the “sponsors”.  That if we wanted to be ranked higher we need to agree to spend thousands of dollars per month sponsoring his site.  He would then move us up in the rankings.  Of course I became pretty upset and confronted him on how he could arbitrarily attribute some ranking criteria, specifically how our customers felt about us, when our client list is 100% confidential.  You can’t find our clients on our website anywhere.

He said they “have their ways” and they use the client testimonials on their website.  I replied telling him that 100% of our testimonials were 5 stars so how does that indicate a drop to “zero” in dependability.  He had no answer.  He just said that I would find it well worth my while to pay to be ranked as we would get tons of leads from the rankings.

I refused to pay and the next month we were GONE from the rankings all together.  I called Jeev to complain and basically his attitude was “make me an offer”.  He repeated that those that paid to be in the top were thrilled with the leads and exposure.  I asked if I “out spent” them, could I be #1 and he said no, not right away because he had to be loyal to the companies who had been paying for a significant period of time.  He had no problem telling me if you want to get ranked, you have to pay.  I refused again, and he quickly got off the call.  On to the next I presume.  BTW, it’s not that hard to correlate the sponsors listed on the home page to the rankings.  It matches up pretty well.”

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SO IS TOPSEOS A SHAKEDOWN OPERATION OR WHAT?

After hearing this from Arnie, someone I hold in very high esteem – one of the most trustworthy, respectable and downright caring business leaders in the Arizona Search Marketing market, I was sick to my stomach.  And this was only fueled further after reading similar stories from people like Jill Whalen (read her comments over at Sphinn).  Can you imagine JILL WHALEN making something up like this, let alone Arnie Kuenn? I only met Jill this year, at the Epic Dinner during SMX West, but I have to say – she absolutely deserves to be respected for her trustworthiness and integrity.  I may not agree with her on everything SEO, but damn – she’s got integrity.  A lot more than I ever had or will have…

But just in case you think – ‘Who is Arnie Kuenn, and who’s this Jill Whalen you refer to?’ (hey – you may not actually be well connected in the SEO industry so those names may not be familiar to you right?) yesterday Aaron Wall from SEOBook threw his name into the mix as someone with A Review of the Top SEOs Paid Rating Service. And trust me – Aaron wasn’t casting any favorable light on TOPSEOs.  Or the crap companies that associate with them by paying for top billing.

TOO MANY YEARS GETTING AWAY WITH THIS CRAP

After Arnie Kuenn shared his own experience with me, he then went over to Sphinn and joined the conversation, and added his voice to the now growing list of professionals in our industry calling for TOPSEOs to stop their antics.

But let’s be clear here – this is something that’s been going on for years now. And others have complained about TOPSEOs previously.  Like Mark Jackson over at Search Engine Watch back in 2008. And before that, over at Vizion Interactive the year before.   And other real business people have legitimate complaints about TOPSEOs.

So why the hell are they still in business playing the same bullshit games?

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CALL TO ACTION

Please – I beg you, if you care about the SEO industry, get involved!

Read a synopsis of all the people who have complained about TOPSEOs over on Edwards site

Get involved in the discussion about TOPSEOs at Sphinn.

Link to all the articles and the Sphinn story to help spread the word.

And just as important as these – if you personally know someone at a LEGITIMATE company who happens to participate at TOPSEOs (check out the TOPSEOs wall of shame)- ask them outright – “Why the hell are you even listed at there?”  Which will give you an opportunity to direct them to all the online complaints against that operation.  And maybe it will embarrass them into removing their listings.  Because they SHOULD be embarrassed.  Seriously.

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UPDATE 3/30/2010 9:51AM

In doing research on Jeev Trika, I found he’s got a LinkedIn profile.  So I upgraded to business account holder status at LinkedIn (the cost was worth this one email alone!) and as a result, I was able to send him an inmail (LinkedIn email) and invited him just now to join the conversation.  My email:

Mr. Trika,

I am writing to you today to invite you to read and join the dialogue on the discussion regarding your company over at Sphinn.com – there have been a growing number of complaints about TOPSEOs and some new articles have come out reporting on those complaints.

We would greatly appreciate you participating in the discussion yourself, so that you may present your side of the story and let the SEO community have a balanced understanding.

We’ll see if he responds.  Hopefully he’ll participate and we can have an intelligent discussion with him about these complaints.

One More Complaint Against TOPSEOs – Are they a shakedown operation or legitimate service? is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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BACKGROUND

Before I wrote the last article, I hadn’t ever gotten more than 30 or 40 views a day for any of my previous articles. Yeah, I know – lame huh?  Well before now I hadn’t really done anything to focus on becoming widely read within our industry.   Both because I don’t write a new blog article every day like many of my peers, and also because the primary audience for my articles has, at least until now, been my already existing clients and prospective clients who have already contacted me. (How odd – to actually want to offer knowledge and insights to my own client base – such a unique concept yeah?)

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EXPONENTIAL JUMP IN VIEWERS

With the posting of this latest article, I saw a huge shift in my readership.  Every day since the article was posted, I’ve had an average of 300 viewers, with a peak of over 500 a couple days after it went up. Okay, so that’s still a sliver of a fraction of a tiny portion of the traffic that SEO stars get.  Yet it’s a ten-fold daily vierwship increase, all as a result of one article.On a realy major topic that I don’t think gets enough attention.

Now, I don’t expect that I’ll have that many people read every article I post, and it may even be a one-time fluke.  Yet I’ve also doubled my subscribers and greatly appreciate that fact.

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GREAT FEEDBACK AND A “DUCK AND COVER” COMMENT

Since I posted the article, a number of people have contacted me by email, direct Tweets through my new Twitter account, and in person. 

People have been telling me that they really appreciate my investigative skills related to SEO.  Honestly people – any truly seasoned SEO consultant can and probably does, do this kind of digging. And now that I’m showing you the steps I take, you can too.  So no big deal okay?

Others have made note of the humorous way in which I wrote the article, (apparently I’m a barrel of laughs sometimes) and that it’s great to know that many of us in the SEO arena are willing to work on policing our own industry.

Every one have been positive, until the latest comment which was both complimentary and a warning to watch my back. Say what? Here’s the comment:

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THE COMPLIMENTARY WARNING NOTICE

Hey Alan,

This is good stuff!

Good find and good call out.  But be careful – this is the stompernet guy.  He’s pretty popular and may not be too happy about this.

One last consideration – there is a chance that he is being linked to in this way without his knowledge but understanding the circumstances, this is pretty unlikely at this point.

Gennady Lager, Director of SEO
SendTraffic, a division of Atrinsic

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Well Gennady, thanks for that feedback.  And point taken regarding the “chance” that he is being linked to without his knowledge.  If it turns out that Brad is just a poor victim of some other 3rd party conspiracy to bury hidden links back to little .ico files on his server and that’s the cause of all this mess, then heck, I’ll be happy to retract.  Except…

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THE COURT OF ALAN IS NOW IN SESSION

Until proven otherwise, Brad is presumed guilty until proven innocent. (hey, I’m not the US court system here people okay? I rely heavily on my intuitive take and since this is my blog, that’s how I play it until shown otherwise.)

Now – about the warning – I had, in my original review and investigation, come across references to Stompernet.  Yet I hadn’t looked farther into that angle until now.  My initial research led me to see how Brad is, in fact, connected to Stompernet.  Yet I’d never heard of them before.  (Hey, there’s a million people and thousands of companies out there promoting SEO solutions and I’m generally too busy to bother checking them all out ya know?)

But when I got this comment today, I figured I’d better follow up – to see what all the concern was. Like – will a million raging stompernet fans suddenly try and swamp my server out of anger? Come beating down my door, pitch-forks in hand?  Who are these loyal protectors of all that is right and grand about stompernet that I need to be afraid of?

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THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

When I did my initial search at Google for the all  powerful stompernet, the first two paid ads mentioned “Stompernet Scam“  in their title.

Stompernet Scam?

So why would any legitimate Internet Marketing offer have any paid ads that associate the offer with a scam?

I mean, I’ve never seen that come up for just about any white-hat, or truly free-from-controversy Internet Marketing business.  At least not until today.

Okay – so maybe it’s not Stompernet’s fault.  Maybe the ones running those controversial paid ads are the scum of the earth, and they’re just using really low-life advertising methods to steal prospective customers away from Stompernet.  Could very well be.

Or they’re doing it to give Stompernet a bad rep.

I won’t know because I won’t click on paid ads just because they’re up on top.  I’d rather do my own legwork.  It is more fair to do so yes?

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Step 1 – Review the main site offerings

On first view, the Stompernet site offers a 22 minute video from Andy Jenkins, Brad’s partner and co-founder of Stompernet.  My initial impression is that Andy’s an honest, friendly kind of a guy.  Well damn.  If Brad’s using methods that I think at the very least, give a black eye to his otherwise legitimate SEO face, then what’s Andy doing in business with him?  Could Andy have been fooled all these years?

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SO FAR, SO LEGIT

Andy presents the strategy he says doubled his visitor traffic through organic methods.

Oh fun – I feel a fork in the road ahead!

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So I watched the video.  And to Andy’s credit, he did lay out pretty standard legitimate optimization methods and tactics in a really clear, concise and well presented video.  That gave me pause, simply because it means that Stompernet isn’t necessarily a scam at all.  It now appears they are a legitimate Internet Marketing company offering real white-hat SEO solutions to their viewers and followers.

RED HERRING OR RED FLAG?

Andy mentions in the video that what he’s about to show is different than anything Stompernet has ever communicated previously. So what’s up with that?  (see below for more on that one).

STEP 2 THE BACK-LINK CHECK

More than 2200 back-links.  Many in fact, related to the site he’s discussing in the video.  That’s good legitimate SEO. So on that note, I applaud Andy for using white-hat methods.

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But with over 2200 links, I figured I better look at several of those.  Well, it appears that a great deal of the links come from link exchanges with other, similar sites.  That’s important because sites with related content that exchange links provide more value than sites linking that have no related content.

Again, that APPEARS to be good SEO.

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STRIKE ONE AGAINST ANDY

Then, as I continue to scan links, I start seeing what are considered truly butt-ugly links.  I’m talking about links coming from sites that have the sole purpose to leech off the legitimate web.  Scum suckers.

EXAMPLE 1 GAMBLING ON LINKS FROM CASINO RELATED SITES

Some of those links come from Red Flag sites, or at the very least, sites I consider questionable as to reputation, and linking methods.   One for example, is a site called “Casino Review Pages” ( a site that sets my McAfee SiteAdvisor plug-in ablaze in warnings).

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STRIKE TWO AGAINST ANDY

Another, turns out to be a shell site that apparently Andy himself (or maybe it was Brad?) set up a few years ago called the “Yahoo Store Builder”, a site that will show you “How To Create A Profitable e-Commerce Store”.  Seems legit yes?

HA! Gotcha!

The page that links back to Andy’s prized possession eComerce site?   It’s a not even a main page on the site, or even an old-school “Links” page. but instead, it’s a Disclaimer page.

At first I couldn’t find the link.  So I went into View Source mode, and searched for A2Armory, the site Andy is pushing as having obtained high ranking through White-Hat methods in his latest video.  Here’s what I found:

See how there are a slew of 1 pixel high links on the page?  Going to both a2Armory and other sites owned by Andy. Or Brad.  Or both…

So Okay – these are not hidden – but why didn’t I see them on the disclaimer page?  Because they’re so tiny, and the color is designed to not catch your attention, that’s why.

At the extreme bottom of the “Legal Disclaimer” page, there are several 1 pixel high links that are “almost” invisible, but not quite.

So you tell me – is this legitimate link building?  If so, why are those links buried in almost invisible size and color, and on the bottom of a LEGAL DISCLAIMER page?

Do I really have to tell you?  Okay fine.  Because this is one of the sneakiest and most underhanded without being completely black-hat methods that exist on earth.  DUH.

• How many people read a disclaimer page on a site that screams – MAKE MONEY THE EASY WAY?
• How many people who read really long disclaimer pages will even bother to notice, let alone, care about, tiny 1 pixel almost hidden links that are buried below a Copyright line?
• It’s one thing to put a lighter shade link on the bottom of pages for aesthetic reasons. It’s another to do so at this extreme level and only on an otherwise ignored page.  How many other sites do you do that on Andy?

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ANDY, YOU DISAPPOINT ME

Like I said from the beginning of my evaluation, Andy offers some truly legitimate SEO tactics.  Ones that I recommend to my clients all the time.  But then, just like Brad, he went and polluted all that good stuff with this nonsense.  What a shame.

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Now – back to this whole “Stompernet Scam issue.  If Stompernet is a scam, is it because other people have uncovered the shady gray hat methods that Andy uses or the black hat methods Brad does?  Or is it something else?

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BACK TO GOOGLE AND STRIKE THREE

[thank God I have ADHD - all this bouncing back and forth really would annoy most people, and that's why I think people like Brad and Andy get away with it and never change their ways, even when doing so would only improve their reputation]

Back to Google to see what that’s all about…

In that search for Stompernet, I read through many of the reviews, discussions and comments made by people where the words Stompernet and Scam appear on the same page.  They go back a few years.  Something about a loss-leader “Try it for just $1″ offer to recieve “the instant you’re going to be rich overnight thanks to our secret sauce” kind of bullshit that so many hacks offer out there you’d want to puke from all the smell of bullshit…

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SPEND A DOLLAR, LOOSE $798

It turns out that there was a problem for some people who ran out of that first 30 day trial period before they could fully evaluate the claims made, and who subsequently got slammed for $$$. I found more than one that claimed when that 30 day trial ended, they got hit with a $798 charge to their credit card and that would be the fee they’d be automatically billed every month they remained in the program.

(Just do a search for Stompernet Scam on Google and you can weed through the plethora of sites, complaints and groaning).

Others complained that the trial version didn’t give access to the full advanced info, so people couldn’t really evaluate whether this was worth the investment or just fluff…

At least some of the people who tried this offering were of the “Make Millions Online” mentality.  Well good on them for that.  But only if they intended (or still intend) to make their money through legitimate business methods not using underhanded ballot-box stuffing SEO tactics, and where they provide real above-board value to their customers.  Otherwise, I hope they get sucker-punched into reality real quick.  thank you very much.

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BUT WAIT -THERE’s MORE

Stompernet is so much more than what the “scam” claims make it out to be.  It turns out they’ve got a whole system, with offers for “Ninja Ad Words” “SMARTS” reports, “SIMPLE” (that’s the program you get for a buck folks!), the Freeline report (Hey, that’s one of Brad’s – good to know this isn’t all about Andy!) and a whole lot more.

With that $800 a month, heck, you even get access to their “Faculty”.  LOL Faculty?  { pause while I puke }

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THE GURU BANDWAGON TO MAKING GURUS WEALTHY

Look, the whole Stompernet thing can be summed up like this. If you are GULLIBLE enough to fall for this crap, sure, spend $800 a month for the rest of your life.  Spend countless hours becoming indoctrinated into the Stompernet Universe (yes that’s one of their catch-phrases offerings too), and follow their methods.

It’s really no different than Russ Whitney in the “Become a Quadrillionairre by buying Real Estate with no money” market, Laurel Langemeier in the “pay off your debt to become a Gagillionaire” arena, and countless other Gurus who want to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge so that you can walk across it.

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WAIT.

Did I just type what I think I did?

You mean, They want to sell me the rights to walk across a bridge that I can walk across for free? ?
Holy Crap!  I did!

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See, the truth is, if you follow the vast swath of SEO experts, and Affiliate Marketing experts who use WHite Hat SEO methods, and take just a bit of time to learn as you go, you can learn how to do ANYTHING these cretons teach you, without having to pay for it.  And you can do it without risking having Google slam you out of the index.  And thus you can actually have a GOOD reputation, and not be seen as others as the scum of the earth.

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EXISTING BUSINESS OWNERS NEED NOT APPLY

If you are a business owner who wants to get high rankings on the search engines without having to do all that heavy lifting yourself, sure you’ll probably need to pay someone to do that for you.  With Brad and Andy, you get to pay them the same amount of money, or more, ongoing, forever, and they give you the privelidge to do all the lifting for yourself.  Isn’t that nice of them?

And oh yes – it means that you’ll have to give up actually running your business -sell your storefront, and become willing to sit in front of your computer being the geek you were never meant to be.  Just so Andy and Brad can continue to live the high life.

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A WORD ABOUT AMWAY

What? You didn’t really think I’d write this article, come to the conclusion that Andy and Brad are ripoff Gurus and NOT Mention Amway, did you?  HA!

Look – Amway is great if you’re willing to treat it like a real legitimate business – go around and find stores to sell your products, or open your own store.  But if you’re of the Quixtar mentality, that all you have to do is get ten friends who will themselves then get ten friends and so on, logic,  well here’s some statistics to wake your pretty little head up.

Last year, Amway started bragging in advertisements that they brought in about $3,000,000,000 in revenue in the past year.  And that they boast over one million “Independent Business Owners” (little marching ants gathering friends to gather more friends).  Well let’s do the math.  One million generate three billion.  Uh, that’s a whopping $3,000 in TOTAL SALES per business owner per year.

If you are capable of grasping what that means, God bless you.  If not, it means that as an Independent business owner, your personal income from that is about enough to pay for your weekly latte’ and a couple movies a month.

Exept not even that.  Because that’s the AVERAGE.  There are a handful of people at the top who make hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have put in a lot of years gathering worker-ants in their “down-line”.  Which means that a whole lot of people generate less than $3,000 a year in revenue for the company.  And THOSE people earn about enough to pay for one or two of the books or motivational CDs Amway sells you to motivate you into getting more worker ants…

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So now that my rant is done, I’m choosing to take the position that Andy and Brad are people you don’t want to do business with, unless you’re into thinking you too can become wealthy by doing unscrupulous things.  If that’s the case, have fun.  Enjoy.  Go in peace.  Already.

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And one final note about that warning from Gennady.

If, for some reason, you have the ability to prove any claims made here to be false, please provide them to me and I will gladly retract.

Should any of Andy or Brad’s minions wish to do me harm, I offer that you will not want to test my skill or tenacity at ruining any fun, pleasure or satisfaction you think you might get.

Deceptive SEO Tactics – The Case of the $798 SEO Guru is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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HELP!

If you find this article interesting, helpful, or problematic, please leave a comment!  I can only improve my blog by getting feedback from my readers!

And don’t forget to subscribe – either by RSS feed, or signing up to receive my blog updates by email!

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THE DECEPTIVE CASE OF THE COOLEST GUY ON THE INTERNET

Today I was introduced to the coolest guy on the Internet.  In fact, it appears there are several people who claim that they are the coolest guy.  At least when it comes to anyone on the Internet…

So how do I know the guy I was introduced to is really the bona fide real deal coolest guy on the Internet?

Actually, he started following me on Twitter tonight.  Then almost right away I got a direct tweet.  In it he said:

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And sure enough, at that moment, the first result at Google for the phrase “coolest guy on the internet” was for Brad’s page.

Now, I really found this cool.  Maybe even the COOLEST.

Except my name is Alan Bleiweiss and I always thought that I am the coolest guy on the Internet.

No, seriously – I don’t think I am- in fact, there are probably millions of guys cooler.  But I get paid really good money from legitimate business clients to be able to get them onto the first page of Google and because I care about their reputation, and don’t want them to ever get banned from Google, I follow white hat SEO methods.

And part of my work involves digging up the truth when my clients see an email (and now apparently Direct Tweets) offering what sounds too good to be true.  Now THAT is cool.  I love this aspect of my work because I’m really inquisitive.  In fact, at one time about 20 years ago, I was in the credit collections business and got really good at skip-tracing people who were scammers.  And before that I was in the Army, in the Military Police, and I was in charge of crime prevention for the 3rd Infantry Division, and before that, for Fort Meade Maryland (hint -where the NSA is).

So I guess sniffing out BS and preventing my clients from being ripped off is in my blood.

________________________________________________

Anyhow, back to Brad.

Below Brad’s listing, I saw a slew of other wanna be sites.

All of them claim the “Coolest Guy On The Internet” moniker one way or another.

Well what’s going on here? I wondered…

And pretty quick (within about one second) I ventured to guess that there must have been or is currently, a “Coolest Guy” competition, specifically as it relates to that phrase (on the internet).

So how did he get to the top?

If it’s legitimate, my hat’s off to Brad.  After all, his Twitter profile shows that he’s a free-wheeling world-traveling kind of a guy- one who is on top of the world and not only that, but he’s out there wanting to help you achieve the kind of goals he has!  For Free!

(Oh boy – another red flag to me.  “Free”.

So I checked his main site out. The one that comes up on the top of Google.

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THE ANALYSIS BEGINS

And if you check his site, or the Google results for it, you’ll see that he hasn’t expended any tremendous on-site optimization for the phrase Coolest Guy On The Internet.  It’s not in his home page’s title, and it’s not in the meta description he uses for his home page.  It’s not repeated over and over throughout the content.

And it’s not in his domain name, as so many of the other “wanna-be” coolest guys have done as you can see either.

It’s not a full phrase in his home page’s content, or inside any alternate attribute field, or as part of any link labels either.

The closest he gets is reference / linking to the “’2nd Coolest Guy On The Planet”.  and he has a blog article with the title “Coolest Heisman Trophy Winner On The Planet” as well.

But guess what – if you do a site: for his site on Google’ you’ll see that he has over 2500 pages on the site.

Now that’s cool.  I love the Internet – it really is the coolest, and this is one reason.  I can have as many pages of content on my site as I want.  And I can link them all together in a web (uh, that’s why they call it the world wide web Alan).

But here’s the really coolest thing about the Internet these days when it comes to marketing, SEO and Google.  The more high quality pages you have on your site, and the more you tie them all together with a cohesive linking strategy, and when you do the right thing to get them listed on the first page of Google, you build a tremendous amount of weight value to every page, and to every phrase that you might come up for, even if you skip some of the more “routine” optimization tips and techniques.

I know this because I am the coolest guy on the Internet regarding SEO.

Then there’s about 208 links that Google recognizes point to his site.  It takes some fairly decent pages that link back to your site to garner being able to show up for a link: test at Google.  Brad gets some of these because he maintains a number of sites.  So he can cross-link from one to the other.  I do the same for my own business, as well as many of my top tier clients.  It’s part of a good overall white hat SEO fundamentals regimen.

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DIGGING FURTHER

Then it was off to Yahoo.  anyone who is as cool as I am when it comes to SEO knows that if you go to Yahoo and do that link: test, (making sure to change the settings to “except this site”, you can find how many links, good, bad or ugly, there may really be that point to someone’s site.  So what did I find?  There are over 17,000 links back to his site!

This guy may or may not be the coolest guy on the Internet.  Either way, he sure has something going on when it comes to building content and back-links!

But wait – there’s more!  It turns out that if you change the Yahoo Site Explorer settings from the default “show links only to this URL” to “Entire Site”, you find there are over 24,000 links.

DUDE that’s awesome.

But is it?

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THIS IS WHERE I REALLY GOT SUSPICIOUS

So I scrolled through those links and started digging.  One of the sites that was listed was a POKER site.  Ut Oh.

Dude, if by now, I’m not smelling a scam, then I must be dead.

So I clicked through.  Nowhere on the page that was visible was anything to do with his site. So what gives?

This is when it’s time to go to VIEW SOURCE.  Then do a FIND within the source for the web address that this site is supposedly pointing to.

Sure enough – SCAM!

There’s a “LINK REL” line in that code – pointing to a .ico file that’s on his site using the HREF method.  And it’s buried above the BODY of the page in the head area.

So as far as I am concerned, this is a complete scam method of getting links.

And while I respect the depth and volume of content on his sites themselves, I look at how he got to the first page of the web for a ridiculously generic phrase that a bunch of people are competing for in some sort of competition.

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Brad’s Hidden Link Business Model = Deceptive SEO

Why this is most sad is because Brad bills himself as an SEO expert. If he pulls this crap on his client sites, he’s setting them up for serious problems.  And he’s deceiving them at best, committing fraud at worst.  While I don’t like the notion of having regulatory bodies dictate what constitutes SEO, especially given how SEO is always changing, and government bodies are really bad at even grasping the digital world, if we can’t find a way to call slugs like this out or do a better job at helping to inform the unsuspecting client, I don’t see how some headline-seeking suit isn’t going to one day want to take up that very cause…

For now though, if you are a business owner who has been pitched by the likes of Brad,  if you ever want to know whether someone is selling you a bridge to nowhere, or if you think “it’s too good to be true”, please – either do the footwork to dig, or just contact me- and I’ll be happy to dig for you.

But whatever you do, if you refuse to accept that REAL SEO, the kind that is sure NOT to eventually bite you in the rear, takes time, and on-site optimization, and LEGITIMATE links back to your site from LEGITIMATE high value sources, well then you’re on your own.

It’s sad in this case, because Brad really does have a foudation of fundamentally sound SEO methods going for him.  But then he pollutes his trustworthiness by pulling this nonsense.

Too bad.

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UPDATE

One hour after his first direct Tweet, I got yet one more of these from Brad.  Apparently he’s got an automated direct Tweet blaster and THAT just killed any hopes that Brad might be a good guy.  I have now blocked Brad.

And I sent a direct Tweet to Twitter @spam

And one final thing.

Within 20 minutes of my writing my blog article, where I only used good white hat methods, it was already showing up on the first page of google for over a dozen short phrases such as:

uncover SEO scams ( 2nd position just below Google’s page)

how to uncover SEO scams (top position)

deceptive SEO tactics (top position)

And I didn’t have to get a single fraudulent link.

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Update 4/25/09 – Spam Report Filed With Google

I realized just tonight that I had forgotten one of the most simple things that we can do when we find such deceptive SEO practices – report the problem to Google through their Spam reporting link in the Google Webmaster Tools program.  So I just filled out the form.  Let’s see what happens.

Deceptive SEO Tactics – The Coolest Guy On The Internet is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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Get 1 Million Real Visitors For Free!

Of course, I knew it for what it was without having to read the “question”, but of course, I love seeing the newest spin on the oldest scams… Here’s what the person who sumbitted it wrote as the details to the “question”:

The operative words here as far as I am concerned are “REAL visitors to your site”.

So just to confirm my intuition, I went to the site listed. Before I did, I made sure my McAfee SiteAdvisor browser tool was operating properly (a great free tool that shows the status of a site you’re visiting on your browser’s status bar – green is safe, yellow is questionable and red is dangerous. In this case, the site was “safe”, but only because they don’t have hidden software ready to automatically download without your knowledge…

And here’s what this site says about “how it works”:

So is this really a scam? Or should I get sued for even putting this up on my blog?

Now why would I slam this guy’s posting at LinkedIn, and why would I label it as a scam, deceptive and manipulative? After all, I have no desire to be slapped with a lawsuit for libel or slander right?

Well let’s consider the posting. It was at LinkedIn, and the category was in the Internet Marketing category. I suppose if there was a category for “Click fraud” or “Shady ways to get millions of visitors that don’t really come to your site for any other reason than to build your traffic statistics”, I wouldn’t have a problem here.

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So if all you want is to get people to show up at your web site for 15 seconds then leave, then I suppose you can if you want to. but obviously if you want people who are going to come to your site to buy your products or hire you for your services or read your blog or participate in your social network in an interactive and return-visit way, then the offer is most definitely in my opinion, deceptive and manipulative.

  __________________________________________________

 Update:  when I saw this question posted and did my research, I felt obligated to supply an “answer”, to help warn potentially unsuspecting small business owners who might see it and out of desperation, think they should participate.  I essentially said what I say here, but in a synopsis.  I also flagged the question to alert LinkedIn staff to this issue.

It’s now two hours after the original question was posted and I am happy to report that that question is “no longer available”.

Beware Link Clicking Schemes & Guaranteed Visitors offers is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright protected - all rights reserved.

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