Enterprise SEO Blog

If you like stories where the bully picks the wrong fight and ends up getting his due, you'll love this one.

Web businesses, especially small, vulnerable service businesses, are constantly being ripped off by unethical clients who simply ignore bills for work performed. It's so easy to do, and up until recently, there's been really no ability to seek recourse without spending a lot of money - unless you read this blog. Let's face it - if you're in business long enough, you're going to meet some unethical customers. For some time now, when a client's payments get behind long enough, and we believe they intend to defraud us, we have been successfully using the implied threat of action in the search to get paid.

But in order for that to work, you have to demonstrate a genuine threat whose bad consequences are unquestionable and long lasting. That's where seo enters the mix.

For more background generally, see this.

Most people immediately understand the consequences when they read that post, but we very recently had someone ignore the warning and we were forced to take action against them.

This is the third post following the events of an actual seo effort to create search consequences for a real live deadbeat client. Part 1 | Part 2

The short story here is that after not being paid for 5 months, Bob threatens seo recourse and is then forced to carry it out. We do such a good job that on many of the searches for this clients name, we had 9 out of the 10 page 1 results!

After agreeing to unconditional payment (after being embarrassed by a legal misstep - attempting to add conditions to an existing debt) the lawyer again attempts to force the removal of these websites, but Bob refuses to discuss until paid in full.

We then receive payment! However, in that payment envelope is another legal threat to remove the recourse sites. The deadline for removing the sites was Monday, 18 January 2010.

However, fearful that Bob would continue to up the ante, the client personally calls Bob on Friday, 15 January 2010, and profusely apologizes for everything he had done. We are amazed! We are delighted.

Bob agrees to stop posting new content and block the existing ranks from being indexed. You'll note that the 2 previous posts are noindex, because they were ranking for the client's name (see above link).

Unfortunately for this deadbeat, we used some sites that do not remove their content. One in particular that deserves mention is Ed Magedson's RipOffReport.com. This site puts seo recourse in the hands of anyone. And these reports NEVER come down, even if you sue them - go read the site. They have never lost a case, and if you sue, you will lose and be forced to pay the cost of the defense.

Now we're sure some people will be inspired by these posts, and we encourage everyone to stand up for your rights. Our business now has a system in place making it very easy for us to get our stories posted and ranking, with very little effort. And in case you think this is hard to do, you're wrong. With only a rudimentary knowledge of seo, you can usually succeed - it's much easier than optimizing for competitive products. And if you know what you're doing, you'll rock! And always be paid when you invoice.