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US State Sues Web/SEO Firm For Deceiving Mom-and-Pops

Posted by kdawson on from the about-time dept.

netbuzz writes "The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."

2 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You would think by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously. The easy way to do this:

    1. Go to Google.
    2. Search for 'search engine optimization'.
    3. Go to MSN
    4. Repeat step 2 ...

    The company highest on the list of all search engines checked is probably the company you want.

    --
    My blog
  2. Re:scam by MrCawfee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes and no (note: i work for a company that one of the products is SEO related);

    The yes:
    The SEO companies the "promise" higher rankings ARE a scam, and they are complete BS. 90% of SEO is guessing what google indexes, and those criteria do change pretty frequently. And because of the undefined nature of SEO, it is extremely easy to pull shit out of your ass and profess it is true, and take people's money. Any SEO guy that speaks in absolutes, is scamming you. Anything that seems like it isn't useful to the user, is bullshit.

    The No:

    SEO is actually real, and is necessary for pulling newer websites from lower in the rankings. Effective techniques are pretty easy, and they are listed below. All others that these stupid companies suggest are either BS or will not survive a google update in the future.

      1) Page names in the URL that are relevant to what you are doing (not article11151.html)
      2) Meta tags in the document that are relevant to it's content.
      3) Clean HTML, use tags (such as h1) for what they were designed for
      4) Internal linking (limits redundancy on pages)
      5) Sitemap.xml
      6) No javascript/flash content

    Not much else is really necessary.

    But yes, 99% of the SEO companys are praying on these small company's dumbness.