Scammers, Spammers and Snake-Oil Salesmen
Posted on June 13th, 2010 in internet marketing
Scammers, spammers, snake-oil salesmen. The Internet is full of them. But up until last week, I hadn’t seen much existence of them in real life.
Last week I attended Search Engine Strategies in Toronto. It was my first time actually attending an SES show, and they graciously invited me to speak (or, well.. do a site clinic). Overall, the conference was done quite well. Great bunch of speakers, awesome networking events, and a nice location.
But… (you knew there was going to be a but). I question the decision to include some of the exhibitors. Or, just one of them, really. TOPSEOs had a booth set up, front and centre as you walked through the doors of the expo hall. This wasn’t their first time exhibiting at a Canadian search conference, as I’d also spotted them at SMX Toronto back in March.
If you haven’t heard, TOPSEOs is a scam rating service, meant to elicit money from search firms wishing to be included in their listings. Among things like stealing copyrighted material, they claim to be the “independent authority” on rating search and internet marketing firms. The search industry is pretty much up in arms about this practice. For a review of the goings on, Edward Lewis has tracked all the articles and complaints about TOPSEOs going back to 2007.
So why is this an issue? Most intelligent search marketers should know to stay the hell away at this point, right? Right. But the crappy ones, the snake-oil salesmen our industry has become known for, they might just jump on the chance to be seen as a reputable organization. And what about the innocent business person, new to internet marketing, looking to hire a decent search agency? They aren’t likely going to know the difference. They know they need help, and here is a company claiming to represent the search industry.
By having them front and centre in the expo hall – and even encouraging attendees to visit the booth, through the “Booth Bingo” game – SES is essentially duping newbies into falling for TOPSEOs crap.
Now, I’ll admit, I don’t know the inner workings of running a conference. Are exhibitors screened? Is SES really promoting the so-called service that TOPSEOs provides? I don’t know. Likely, they were in need of companies to exhibit in order to cover the cost of putting the conference on. But there is the perception that SES is promoting the services of the vendors in the expo hall.
On a funnier note, I did have the wonderful experience of meeting a couple of snake-oil salesmen in person. At one of the networking events, they tried to claim to me and several others (including Canadian search industry veterans), that they were able to out-rank Canada’s 3 major telecoms for “extremely competitive” (read: long-tail) keyphrases, using their network of link farms. It was all I could do to contain my laughter, but others were visibly amused.
Dawn,
You’re hitting on a vital aspect of the TOPSEOs problem. Conference organizers either aren’t paying any attention to the groundswell of opposition to them, or, more likely, turn a blind eye to them because of the sponsorship money.
It’s further made worse by a few select industry leading companies participating in the lead generation program because they don’t care enough about the negatives, due to the fact that they are perfectly content with accepting business through that channel.
I spoke with one such company owner this past week while at SMX Advanced and he is perfectly aware of the problems they cause. Yet he makes money as a result of the relationship. That’s the most important factor as far as he’s concerned.
So the question comes up for me – is that reasonable? Is it “good business”?
Spot-On Dawn! Hopefully the event organizeers will see that this was a complete error in judgement….and take steps to never allow this again!
!!!
Jim
Some of the top search engine optimization companies are on there simply because of it presence. While I can appreciate there’s a lot of con artists out there not everyone is. The only thing I’ve seen from that site is barrages of emails from India asking for link building contracts. I however agree it’s certainly not ethical to pay for it, and unlike a lot of my competitors I haven’t. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of change to SEO until Google gets their shit together and stops ranking domain keyword matches so high.
For a system that’s supposed to have over 200 different variables it’s still pretty blatant in functionality in a lot of places. The equity of search is placed way too high on the stupidest of variables.
Spot on. There’s a lot of this going on in the SEO community. It’s not just spammy companies, but conferences are letting people from “any” company speak.
I’ve been looking over SMX, SES, Pubcon, etc and there’s lots of speakers from companies that nobody has ever heard of. If you click though, you notice that some of their company’s biggest clients include mom and pop web shops that measure their weekly visitors in the hundreds.
I can only assume these people are paying to speak.
The trend in SEO seems to be shifting away from actually doing SEO and towards trying to make money writing about/talking about SEO.
Large conferences usually delegate finding vendors/exhibitors to one of their employees. But….I’m still guessing if it’s a large enough sponsor that the top ppl of the conference will see/hear about them (topseo) signing up.
We (Search Exchange) turned down a few MLM ppl and companies who wanted to sponsor us. We couldn’t be seen promoting garbage even if we lost money doing it.
Conferences shouldn’t be a livelihood for anyone. It should be used to promote content and bring like minded individuals under 1 roof.
I think we all know by now that money stil lspeaks louder than…well everything.
@Ryan Jones. As someone who came from a small company no one ever heard of, doing local SEO for mom & pop shops – I have to disagree that no being well known means they shouldn’t be speakers. Some of the best SEOs out there are nobodies, and rather than trying to get in the spotlight, they’ve got their heads down making money for their clients. They shouldn’t be excluded from the chance to speak.
However, when a company/speaker has shown themselves to be of poor quality, then I don’t think they should be given the opportunity to speak/have a booth.
@Robert Exactly. I think you guys are doing it right (not promoting what you know is garbage). And from what I heard, Search Exchange was a really well done show.
@Ryan Sad by true my friend.
TOPSEOs is creating a huge that needs to be address rather quickly by more SEO and internet marketers. There have been more than a couple of potential clients that are using their rankings as golden rules to selecting an SEO company.
Unfortunately, they are outranking, simply blaming Google for their algo. is not the solution.
My biggest grip is not that they exist, but when a low quality competition uses TopSEOs to gain clients, and they provide poor service, then it creates a black eye on the whole industry. That’s where you get stories like, “well I tried SEO in the past for $99, and it really didn’t get me much traffic, and it was a company listed on TopSEOs.” It’s going to make selling SEO that much harder.
That’s exactly it, Adelard. It encourages the snake-oil salesmen that give this industry such a bad name.
Spot on, Dawn! Unfortunately, for some reasons already stated, crap-hats that can write the check will be able to get front & center space, until OTHER exhibitors express their unwillingness to support the conference that allows it.
Then, of course, you have another problem… who decides which exhibitors are “worthy”? TOPSEOS is an extreme case, that few would disagree on (at least few that I’d care to listen to). But there are many shades of gray, and depending upon the venue, I could even imagine some hosts having legal difficulties shunning a wannabe exhibitor.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I thoroughly agree with your assessment of the damage done to the industry by such folks.
Yeah, which exhibitors are “worthy” becomes a fuzzy line. I’ve seen text link brokers exhibit at shows too. Some would say those guys should be kept out, but others might that’s more of a “buyer beware” situation.