See: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/35218
Guaranteed rankings that were never delivered on, and “startup charges ranging from $3,750 to $9,750″ for what, corporate clients perhaps? Think again, this SEO agency targeted a “mostly mom-and-pop clientele through a pattern of unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans”
The full list of charges includes:
- Misrepresenting the ability to significantly increase traffic to customer Web sites by achieving top search-engine rankings and failing to deliver other promised services.
- Falsely claiming an affiliation with other marketers including Specialty Merchandise Company, a so-called drop-ship wholesaler.
- Claiming that its customer service representatives can be reached at any time when, in fact, customers are often unable to reach representatives and sometimes do not receive return calls.
- Failing to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests.
- Continuing to bill the credit cards of some consumers who have attempted to cancel and submitting alleged debts to collection agencies.
- And, failing to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor and failing to provide written confirmation of a consumer’s rights under the Commercial Telephone Solicitation Act.
This is a shock story, there are of course many truly good people out there. It gets me thinking though, one of the hardest things about doing SEO for other people is that so often what people want done often isn’t what is actually best for their site. The ubiquitousness of self-interest doesn’t make it any less wrong, and the lack of transparency that occurs in any industry like SEO with its high hopes and correspondingly high costs, makes it so easy to call dishonesty just “doing business” and, to one degree or another, end up like like the people above.
SEO involves client education. If clients then aren’t thrilled about being educated rather getting what they think they want, well, that’s no reason to give up. Do your best for them, make every dollar count, and show them bit by bit that getting great results and being ethical and keeping clients, employers, and investors happy can all be part of the same process.
That’s what Harvard Business School seems to have come up with recently anyway:
- Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift
and more recently over at the HBS Executive Education Program:
Go on, download a prospectus or three while your there, read them through, learn something.
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