First Page Guaranteed??

john_loch

Apr 13th 2004, 6:39 pm

Has anybody heard of this group? They "guarantee" you 1st page placement at a reasonable fee. Sounds fishy. Any feedback appreciated.

121limited.com (http://www.121limited.com/1st_page_guaranteed.html)

Sure !

I can guarantee you first page placement too, for the search term "bg fvyudiefcgfuoregfvureo" if you like !

Maybe, with a bit of luck, I can even get you in the top 20 !

Hell, I can even do it on the Googly thang too.

I know I sound sarcastic - but then, it's not directed at you, it's directed at the idiots who make these promises without clarification - I've seen plenty of them. As Google demonstrated last year - even the most successful and knowledgable seo specialists can't guarantee anything.. know why ?

Google is interested in money - oh yes - money through results, but money just the same - even GOOGLE (or execs who work for them) respond with - we make no promises - (googles response to webmasters who complained about thier unannounced changed to the way they rank results).

So, to put it simply - here's how I think you should proceed:

a. specify the search terms - be very clear about them. Research them yourself.
b. Ask them HOW they're going to achieve this for you, with demonstrable examples.
c. if they guarantee ranking, get it in writing, and don't pay them until said outcomes are achieved.
d. maintenance clause: it must be maintainable for a specific period of time (assume 6 mths - a year) for a specific cost. No/falling rank, no pay.

e. FULL DISCLOSURE of how the ranking was achieved. All inventory - all links, PR of these links pages, the works. Don't allow corners to be cut. If they're not willing to disclose all in detail, don't use them. It's that simple.

You'd be amazed at how many fools believe owning a copy of joe bobs position this or trellians optimize that makes them an seo expert.

Remember FULL disclosure. Anything less - go elsewhere. You'll have questions, ask them without hesitation. If their answers don't make sense, don't use them. Phew.. I think that sort of says it !

In reality - guaranteeing ranking is not possible. It involves risk. Make sure the risk isn't yours !

I can only think of one person in the seo field who is open and up front enough to give honest (unbiased guidance) though there are no doubt others - (perhaps even Shawn - the guy who runs this forum) who might offer you further guidance - and clarify the process for you. You can try SEO Guy. Just search google for "SEO Expert" and click on the first link.

No doubt there'll be a number of folks out there who wear the hat well whom I know nothing of. No doubt they'll stop by and build on my commentary :)

Foxy

Apr 13th 2004, 11:23 pm

Nice commentary John_Loch

I can get you Number 1!! Not just the 1st page on one of the 6 SEs shown!!!

Notice that I specify one - they don't - but thats what they mean - and that 1 will be Altavista

If I remember rightly Altavista does a quick "burst" to the front of the queue and then you fade away into oblivion - just like Altavista has

So if you want to be conned into paying away to someon else do it - on the other hand if you want to try yourself go set up your page for the keywords you want [don't use anything too competitive], if I remember rightly- its been that long - you don't need back links, and submit it to altavista then do the search on that keyword over a period of about 1-2 weeks on altavista - and there you will see your keyword and site appearing.....and then disappearing ;)

Mr T

Apr 14th 2004, 12:01 am

They could also just put you in AdWords - you'd appear on the front page of Google, but its probably not a viable way forward, plus you could do that yourself.

Dont believe ANY promises concerning SEO, its not possible.

Old Welsh Guy

Apr 14th 2004, 1:56 am

Most of it has been covered above, but I will add this.

I believe in absolute transparency in what I am doing for a client, (so do my online friends and associates) just as John said above, you deserve absolute transparency.

I will have to be careful in my response so as not to cross the line into libellous comments, (so feel free to edit Shawn, it�s your butt as well as mine) ;-)
This company are mixing apples and oranges, by that I mean they are referring you to press releases from their web traffic pages, that are not about the page they have referred you from. They have a very good service where they act as a virtual office and call centre for you (by good I mean conceptually good, I do not know the company) it is smoke and mirrors they are misdirecting you.

121 is the name of one of the largest domain and hosting companies in Europe, this lot have called themselves 121limited, indicating to me they are a limited company, but I can find no trace of them in companies house UK, (I assume they must be an LLC registered 'somewhere else�.) This is my next point, where are they? There is no contact address for them anywhere on the site, all contact is via email, and mostly not even that, rather their 'lets get started' buttons. I would never do business with any company that did not have bricks and mortar addresses on their site. (Apart from anything else, it is illegal to do this under UK business disclosure legislation).

Next what do they do? This little snippet buried deep in the site told me what I already feared " setting up the links to my website " it is from the testimonials page.

ALL Optimisation including your site, should take place ON YOUR SITE! (Apart from off page linking) This company appears to be building satellite, or gateway pages that will 'drive qualified traffic to your site' (their words). You do not want anyone to 'drive' traffic; the pages should be on your site 'attracting' traffic.

This company have all the cards in their hands, they hold them, you stop paying them, they turn off your traffic, they go bust, your traffic stops. Can ANYONE confidently build a long-term business that is so reliant on another for its own success? IMO No!

I searched this site, and all there was on it was a lot of hype and sizzle, not a sausage in sight. Sure we should sell the sizzle not the sausage, but your clients have to know about the sausage as well.

In my opinion (and it is just that, based on what I have read on their site) this company set up gateway pages, as all the work appears to be offsite. Do yourself a favour and look at the Google Webmaster guidelines where it CLEARLY tells you NOT to use gateway/doorway/ (whatever) pages. Eventually this practice will be caught in a Google spam trawl, when it does, companies like this can just say 'thanks for the money' and walk away, and can you do the same to your business?

I will repeat what I and others have said, All work should be itemised, I actually charge for a written detailed report, as it is actually a blueprint to do the work yourself, although the cost is taken off any work I carry out. (We have to do this as there are also bad customers who will ask you to have a look at their site and let them know what needs doing and the cost, then use your report to do the work without paying you, so there are two sides to the coin).

ALL work with the exception of incoming link building (obviously) should be on your site, and integrated with your site. The reasons for making the changes should be fully explained. Unless you are using pay per click or paid placement, then ANY company who offers 100% guaranteed placement are either naive, dishonest, or hopers and dreamers. Personally I use this phrase " SEO is not a guaranteed science, and no one with the exception of the Search Engines themselves can guarantee you a placement in their organic listings, all I can guarantee is that I will give you the same level of work as I have given my other clients.

Apologies for the length of post

OWG

ephricon

Apr 14th 2004, 5:06 am

I searched this site, and all there was on it was a lot of hype and sizzle, not a sausage in sight.

Thats absolutely priceless!!!

Here's another very contrarian take on this idea of gauranteed rankings (and not at all any endorsement of this company, i've not even visited their site):

For the right price and the right situation, I would gladly offer my clients a 100% money back gaurantee for top 5 rankings for their keywords. I would do this after looking at the existing competition, figuring in my skill, and concluding if I could or could not get their keywords ranked as such. If I think I probably can I'd do it. Grant it, I would want to charge more for this guarantee than if I just did their SEO w/o a gaurantee, but knowing my skill level I would only agree to gaurantee placement for terms that I felt I had a good 80% chance or better of getting into said position.

Maybe this isn't so much your typical gaurantee - but is some insurance for the client. Most of the time when I explain to them the bit about no one can gaurantee rankings they understand, but still fear they have no insurance - no way to know they aren't just throwing their money out the window (and many have had bad experiences b4 with sketchy SEO firms). If it makes sense financially and was something I felt confident about I'd gladly gaurantee something I think I can do... Just some thoughts...

T0PS3O

Apr 14th 2004, 11:29 am

Speaking of the devils...

Received a call today from Alex Doyle Associates who offered me GUARANTEED no 1 position in 27 search engines.

Hahaha was my reaction ( I just read this post and immediately the phone rings ).

So I asked the guy how it is done. He didn't know so put the sales director on. After a long conversation and plenty of questions and an email with the contract and terms & conditions it looks like they will actually redo your page for available key word phrases and keep them number 1 for 12 months. If it drops for over 10 days you get your money refunded in full.

It all sounded obviously too good to be true so I asked for examples.
Google world wide - body kits uk - comes up with number 1 ccmotosport.co.uk which is their client apparently. A quick look on the page sees how they got it there, with blatant key word stuffing but apparantly allowed by google. It wasn't #1 in yahoo though and I can't be bothered to check all the other SE's. Checking overture, just to make sure it wasn't some stupid phrase no one would ever use, shows it's a fair choice I suppose.

Once we have completed all the work we xml feed you through to the search
engines and within four weeks from the date of purchase you will be at the
number one position.

Due to the fact that our service guarantees the number one position on all
major search engines we are privy to certain information and certain policy
changes within the search engine positioning structure so that every time
the search engines add to there criteria of how they rank sites we can keep
existing clients at the number one position and also place our new clients
there.

We hold the intellectual rights to the programme so that we are the only
company that can do this.

I'm not planning to use this simply because I don't like their style and you need to provide full FTP details and can't update the pages without their consent. And I don't believe they can keep their promise even when it all seems pretty legit. They can't even get their own page on G's first page :s And the contract was a bit Mickey Mouse, with spelling mistakes and arbitrary statements. Heck, I'd rather do it myself anyway!

Just wanted to share this to show the sort of monkey's out there. Thanks for the tips, they made it a pleasure sussing them out.

Why pay someone else, SEO DIY!

If anyone would want to offer a guarantee I agree with ephricon's tactics. Top 5 or Top 10 can be achieved for quite a few economically viable key phrases.

Foxy

Apr 14th 2004, 11:18 pm

Absolute classic stuff everybody

They can't even get their own page on G's first page

Speaks for itself!!!!

Need I say more?

Don't think so

tsptom

Apr 16th 2004, 3:42 pm

I agree. Thanks everyone.

Doobey

Apr 19th 2004, 12:16 pm

I am an ex-employee of Alex Doyle Associates Ltd and I have read what has been said here.
Firstly I'd like to point out that what you have said about the company is completely untrue. Alex Doyle Associates Ltd are not a bunch of monkeys or con men etc. They are a company that are made up of different people from different backgrounds with different skills and experience. I no longer work for Alex Doyle Associates due to personal circumstances. However, I know that the service that they provide works. FTP access is not always given to the company. This has never posed as a problem because the page(s) that were to be optimised would, in these cases, be downloaded and the changes would be made and forwarded on to the customer so that they could add the work themselves. Many of the clients I dealt with were satisfied clients and in most cases went on to renew their service time for another twelve months. Many of the clients would contact us and ask us for extra search terms because the ones Alex Doyle Associates had provided initially had done so well, they wanted more traffic going to their websites and in turn, increasing their amount of business.
I understand that many of you have had bad experiences in the past when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation companies, but I can honestly say that Alex Doyle Associates Ltd are a legitimate company that provide a legitimate service and can do what they say they do because I've been there, I've played a part in it and I've seen a website that hasn't even been in the first ten pages of a search engine optimised and gain a serious amount of top listings and number one listings with my very own eyes.

GuyFromChicago

Apr 19th 2004, 4:51 pm

Foxy

Apr 20th 2004, 12:01 am

Absolute classic stuff everybody

Quote:

They can't even get their own page on G's first page

Speaks for itself!!!!

So go on then show us this one at number one - The Alex Doyle associates page

and when you explain that these people are absolutely very nice people doing an honest business why is it you do not say that the techniques used ar3e absolutely spam free?

t2dman

Apr 20th 2004, 8:09 am

It was rather easy to get high pre November 2003, but since then it has not been easy to get new sites listed high on Google. Top for everything for the mother site Auckland Restaurants Guide (http://www.time2dine.co.nz/) - www.Time2Dine.co.nz (http://www.time2dine.co.nz/), but for clients it is now soo easy to overoptimise on Google and get dumped from the listings for a term. Easy enough to overoptimise that the whole business of SEO is very risky indeed.

ferret77

Apr 27th 2004, 8:22 am

ephricon

Apr 27th 2004, 8:28 am

we aren't really talking about easy low-competitive terms. anyone can simply do on page optimization for most of those terms and get top 10 rankings easily within a month or two.

its another ballgame to gaurantee top 10 for highly competitive terms - this type of thing requires constant maintenance and actions and focuses more on content and link building than just on page stuff.

ferret77

Apr 27th 2004, 8:34 am

whats the difference?

any one in business can guarnetee anything they want, people get guarentees in almost every business transacation why should seo be any different

If company is confident they can deliver a top ranking for a competitve term why shouldn't thye guarentee it

why should a client have to pay for something that has not been obtained

I don't think any seo would be smart to guarentee number 1 , but thye should at least guaretee something reasonable like top 20 , or 10

GuyFromChicago

Apr 27th 2004, 8:36 am

I don't know what you guys are talking about

anyone who is confident in their skill can guanttee whatever they want

why would you not want guarenteed top 10 rankings

I havn't really done a lot of seo work but I have always gaurenteed top 10 rankings

if I am not confident of success then i shouldn't be taking people's money in the first place

what are going to do give money to someone who says "I'll do my best , but if your site doesn't rank its not my fault"

You can�t guarantee SERP results in the search engines.

You don�t own Google, Yahoo or any of the other SE�s and don�t have any control over how they return pages.

Guaranteeing SERP results is like a weather man guaranteeing the weather tomorrow. It just can�t be done.

You can�t guarantee what you can�t control.

ephricon

Apr 27th 2004, 8:42 am

I think perhaps we are talking about two different types of "guarantee"...

- There is one thing to be said about offering a money-back guarantee to appeal to your clients and give them some reassurance that they are getting something for their money. In my opinion it is fine to say "if we don't get you top 10 rankings we'll give you your money back". That's a business decision each of us makes. I probably wouldn't do it - but for the right client and right paycheck sure I would take that risk in some cases....

- Secondly, there's the notion of "guaranteeing" the client something as to say that it is fact that you will get those top 10 results. This NO ONE can truly guarantee, since we dont own the search engines. Thus, in good faith no one can just say "we guarantee top 10 rankings" and say that there is 0% chance you wont get those rankings. This would just be unethical business.

The former, however, I would have to say is okay. That is more of a warranty or specification of what you will deliver. If you are confident you can deliver than go right ahead and say that you'll deliver top 10 or they don't have to pay. That's fine.

*** But make sure they know that this doesn't mean 100% they will get top 10, just that they don't have to pay you if they dont' get top 10.

ferret77

Apr 27th 2004, 8:44 am

I can guaretee my skills if I want

In fact i do it with anyone who I work with

Its a gambling thing , you figure the chance of success and then go for it

If I fail I don't get paid

its that simple, if someone said they wanted to be top ten for "web hosting"

it would be out of my legaue, but if I had ten employees , hundreds of websites in my control, and large budget I could possible guarentee it.

ok, I gues it would be more of a no-pay gaurentee then actually rankigs guarnetee

ephricon

Apr 27th 2004, 9:08 am

ok, I gues it would be more of a no-pay gaurentee then actually rankigs guarnetee

Exactly!

You can do anything you want with your own business. If you want to offer the money-back thing to assure the customer than go for it!

BUT, to run an ethical business you'll let them know no one can truly gaurantee that there is a 100% chance they will get their rankings. The best you can do is say you are willing to give them money back if not - that should reassure them. It would be unethical to mislead them into thinking you truly have that kind of control over the rankings - as only the SEs truly do.

jbgilbert

Apr 27th 2004, 6:07 pm

Being an "experienced" SEO, I prefer to NOT guarantee anything other than improved rankings and traffic.

Guarantee 1st, 2nd, top 10 -- Good experienced SEO's understand that this is not a business model that stands up to time tested results. SEO's are at the whim of the SEs and the competition -- they are not in control.

ephricon

Apr 28th 2004, 4:29 am

I'd never be one to discredit someone else's business model, so long as its unethical and legal in nature.

That said, in my opinion I certainly would prefer not to make gauarantees. But there is one overwhelming truth in this market as in all others: The customer needs to feel confident in their purchase.

If you are well-known and have a large client base with many sites in your portfolio than your reputation alone or your demonstration of past success make be enough to allow the customer to feel confident that they aren't just wasting their money.

However, if you are new or have not done much SEO work, its very difficult to get some one to trust you when you've not got much to back it up. If you want to make a money back gaurantee here this may work - since they've eliminated their risk.

GuyFromChicago

Apr 28th 2004, 6:58 am

If you want to make a money back gaurantee here this may work - since they've eliminated their risk.

Making a money-back guarantee is an acceptable business practice.

Guaranteeing a client the top spot in the SE's is nothing more than a well spun lie. You can't do it (ethically anyway), that's the point I was trying to make. You can guarantee you will give their money back if you miss the target, but you can't guarantee you'll even hit the target.

ephricon

Apr 28th 2004, 7:04 am

Making a money-back guarantee is an acceptable business practice.

Guaranteeing a client the top spot in the SE's is nothing more than a well spun lie. You can't do it (ethically anyway), that's the point I was trying to make. You can guarantee you will give their money back if you miss the target, but you can't guarantee you'll even hit the target.

I think we are saying the exact same thing.

GuyFromChicago

Apr 28th 2004, 7:14 am

I think we are saying the exact same thing.

Yes we are.

The whole guaranteed first page results thing ticks me off. I have a handful of clients I perform SEO services for. It never fails, at least twice a month I�m spending � - 1 hour explaining to one of my clients why they should continue to use my services when they get the �first page guaranteed for next to no $� offer from someone else.

It aggravates the hell out of me having to spend my time explaining why the company making the offer is full of it.

ephricon

Apr 28th 2004, 7:27 am

Yeah well I'm sure we all know that in this industry there are alot of terrible companies trying to make a quick buck. Half of my customers have come to me from them. Its sort of just what we have to deal with...

ferret77

Apr 28th 2004, 7:35 am

Well I guess I am one of them

becuase with some people I work with they stop paying if they fall off the first page

"why they should continue to use my services"

why should they pay for your service if you are not delievering

its kind of like back in the day people used to thousands of dollars for a 5 page static html site and 50-100 a month for hosting

most don't anymore, I think the same thing will happend to seo

I thnk people like the pay for results model better then the pay for some vague concept of improvement

competition changes things

ephricon

Apr 28th 2004, 7:50 am

I thnk people like the pay for results model better then the pay for some vague concept of improvement

I'll tell you exactly what people like. Sales and leads. That's what I deliver. That's how I make my living. Sure they like being in the top 10 for a given term, and often that's a great way to get leads, but I think you are sort of missing the whole point.

The point is NOT just to get top 10 results. I can think of hundreds of terms I could go out and get top 10 on within 1 week. But are those terms searched often? Do they pertain to what I'm selling? Are they searched by my target market? These are what matters.

Let's say I had a web design business. Any fool could get top 10 for say "affordable web page development in Podunk, Iowa". And sure, for the two or three people that search that term every year you are well positioned. However, to get top 10 on something like "web design" is almost impossible. By contrast, there's phenominally more traffic here, but chances are the traffic is not nearly as qualified as the first.

Let me take one particular client of mine... I'm targeting about 50 search phrases for them - and I track these phrases closely. Of these 50 they have about 20 or so that are almost always in the #1 spot. About 5 of these represent a HUGE amount of traffic. The other 15 #1 rankings produce very very little traffic and very few leads. In fact, there are several #5-7 and #12-15 ranked terms we have in very very highly competitive search phrases that bring in alot more traffic. I wouldn't trade some of these #12 phrases for the world - b/c the produce visitors and leads.

Moral of the story - its about business, man. Sure you need to have high rankings... but why? To get business. If you produce top 10 and top 5 rankings for every key phrase a client asks for, but they don't notice a significant positive impact on their sales, leads, inquiries or whatever they're looking for - then your services are worthless! High rankings are the means, not the ends.

GuyFromChicago

Apr 28th 2004, 7:54 am

"why they should continue to use my services"

why should they pay for your service if you are not delievering

I do deliver - but I'm realistic in my assesment of where I can get them without too much, or any, risk. I also don't take on a lot of accounts - I'm not about the volume I'm about the quality. I only have so many hours in the day, and don't want to hire anyone or outsource the work. My services are not "cheap", and a lot of these "first page guaranteed" companies undercut my rates. It's sometimes hard for my clients to understand that they are not seeing an apple to apples comparison. After I explain everything to them they get it - but it's the fact that I have to spend an hour explaining the differences/risks to them...again - when that's an hour I could have used to work on their campaign.

Maybe I'm sometimes more frustrated with the client who never took the time to educate themselves on what they are buying than I am at the company taking advantage of that ignorance.

ferret77

Apr 28th 2004, 8:05 am

most poeple don't see much past the dollar sign unless they have been ripped off once

I know the sales are the end product but if you have someone who has a bad businees model , no amount of seo will save him

that doesn't mean he shouldn't have to pay for top 10 rankings

if what they sell is junk or overpriced thats on them

"However, to get top 10 on something like "web design" is almost impossible"

umm, I'm ranked 8 for "website design" right now, so I would say it can't be that hard, and I'm not even a real "seo"

/////// disclaimer I disappeared again

but I disappear every other week, sometimes day,

the thing with ranking high for terms like web design, I live in NY USA people who type in general terms like that are looking for cheap as hell web design , I cannot compete in price with some people, say in the third world

Kirkburton

May 11th 2004, 6:03 am

Going back to Alex Doyle Associates, I was conned into parting with money (my own fault, I was new in business and green around the gills). With hindsight I should have known better, especially as

1. thay did not design their own web site (see http://www.anvilmasters.co.uk/clients/alex_doyle.htm)
and
2. they cannot even come top on Google for their own name.

Office of Fair Trading here I come.

ephricon

May 11th 2004, 6:12 am

Okay so I just checked out their site - looks like their just a keyword vendor and don't do any SEO at all. This is quite possibly one of the more poor jobs of SEO of one's site I've ever seen. What's with the * * * in their title? Do they not understand that the title tag is an important attribute in SEO? I feel for all you who lost your money to them as the 30 seconds I spent on the Anvil Masters website and AD's website it became pretty apparent to me that they are highly amateur at best.

Bootleg

May 11th 2004, 7:19 am

Where did you find the Alex Doyle site? I searched on "Alex Doyle Associates" and this forum comes up #1. I couldn't find their site anywhere. So much for their SEO work...

Foxy

May 11th 2004, 7:26 am

ephricon

May 11th 2004, 7:30 am

Where did you find the Alex Doyle site? I searched on "Alex Doyle Associates" and this forum comes up #1. I couldn't find their site anywhere. So much for their SEO work...

Same search w/o the quotes on Google. I got them as the #6 listing.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=alex+doyle+associates

It does, however, bear a strikely similarity to the AsOne site. I'm guessing they are the same/partner company.

schlottke

May 11th 2004, 9:13 am

How can these guys continue to practice such bad habits and get away with it. We should start a black list or something.

wsks

May 16th 2004, 6:26 pm

compar

May 16th 2004, 6:42 pm

ephricon

May 17th 2004, 5:11 am

This is the reason i dont use SEO companies. There is just too much factor to guarantee a website in 1st position, if they can guarantee, all the SEO companies will be listed 1st place wouldn't they?!

If you read the forum you will realise many of the tips and trick can be easy done even by novice there are great deal of information out there those days. The main factors are:

1.Keywords
2.Contents
3.links

just my 2 cents

This is just ridiculous. I'm not even going to bother going off on my rant about "guarantees" and SEO - which relies on fluid SERPS.

However, a solid point is brought up here. Yes, any fairly regular Joe with some basic web design/html knowledge can certainly read these forums, read other info, apply to their site and certainly see definite improvements. The tough part is when you are optimizing for highly competitive terms. This is when you need some professional help. But then again, what is the difference between a professional and anyone else? Just experience really. If you want you simply keep reading these forums and optimize many sites and after enough time you'll be good enough to call yourself a professional - mind you it may take several years but it can happen.

When you pay a professional you are paying for their experience and knowledge. You are paying for the fact that they have been reading these forums and learning and keeping up with the latest for a long time. Indeed, they spend probably 1/3 or more of each of there workdays in these forums - typing posts, replying to people who make ignorant comments in an SEO forum that criticize SEO companies and don't realize that 80% of the forum participants are small SEO companies themselves! Hey, this is part of the 1/3 of my day right now.

Foxy

May 17th 2004, 6:43 am

Hey, this is part of the 1/3 of my day right now.

Oh you are so right Ephricon! :)

ADA

May 18th 2004, 5:10 am

I am a representative of Alex Doyle Associates. As a market leader I'm sure you are all aware of the waves that you create within the marketplace especially waves of jealously of all the techs who believe that they are seo experts. We have been in business for 3 years now and have many high profile clients that are receiving top rankings for many years and are happy and most importantly profitable clients. We have certain "techs" commenting on a site that is now obselete and has been for one year, as a result it was never optimised. We began dealing with keywords and have developed an seo package that works without adopting any of the illegitimate processes employed by other "seo companies". Comments therefore have been made through conjecture regarding a site that is obselete and conclusions have been made on this to the degree that we are "amature at best". The person who has posted this, if they would like to forwarded me a list of there successful blue chip clients currently gaining top rankings, please feel free to do so and we will compare portfolios. There are other comments posted regarding our services when they haven't even employed Alex Doyle Associates. I'm sure we will all agree that conclusions like this are dangerous and shouldn't be made. Longstanding clients of Alex Doyle's are currently writing testimonials that will be posted shortly. Our website will be live and optimised within four weeks. If you have any feedback regarding the site please don't hesitate to post this, if you would like to gain top rankings please do not hesitate to contact us directly. Thank you for taking the time to post these comments on the forum. Regards Alex Doyle Associates Ltd.

ephricon

May 18th 2004, 5:42 am

This is worthy of a response:

First, in trying to learn a bit about your company my first inclination (no surprise) was do go to your website. Thus, a did a Google search on Alex Doyle Associates -

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Alex+Doyle+Associates

The first result is the DP Forum, followed by a design company that claims to have done your logo. Next is another forum with a complaint about the sales rep. from an SEO company - the thread has your company's name in it. Next is a geocities site followed by a link farm and then several sites that don't seem to relate to your firm at all.

The site I did find did not appear to be optimized in any way for the SE's - which would probably explain why I didn't find your firm's own website ranked #1 for your name (which I would expect from most any SEO firm).

However, if you are indeed redesigning your site and intentionally do not wish that site to be found, than I can understand that. Thus, I'll retract my remarks based on that site - as if its not truly your current company site than I really have nothing to say positive or negative about it - as there's no site to speak of.

You said -
>>> "We have certain "techs" commenting on a site that is now obselete and has been for one year, as a result it was never optimised."

I say - so you've not had any site up then for one year? As an SEO I find that one of my best selling points when speaking with clients is the fact that they've done a search and found my site at the top of the rankings. I can them simply assure them that I use the same principles to optimize their sites. I find cold-calling businesses on the phone to be a displeasureable experience and unnecessary when my own site brings my the leads I desire.

>>> "As a market leader I'm sure you are all aware of the waves that you create within the marketplace especially waves of jealously of all the techs who believe that they are seo experts."

I find this a bit tough to follow. I don't agree with your generalization of people in this forum though - including myself. I'm actually not a "tech" person in any sense of the word. I have a marketing background. Naturally others may be techs, as I believe the general focus of this particular forum is tech-based, but personally I'm not a "tech" person in any way.

>>> "...and conclusions have been made on this to the degree that we are "amature at best". The person who has posted this, if they would like to forwarded me a list of there successful blue chip clients currently gaining top rankings, please feel free to do so and we will compare portfolios."

Here I am. I don't feel the need to convince you of my work - as I really don't care that much. Rest assured though I'm doing just fine making a living doing something that I enjoy. My clients are quite happy with their high rankings.

You are right in that those conclusions were made on the only website I could find for your firm. As I said before, if indeed that site is not your current site and you have no current site than please accept my retraction of those comments. I stand by the notion that that site was poorly optimized, but if its not a fair evaluation of your work than that is understandable and thus I apologize for judging you on something that is not a current work of yours.

>>> "Longstanding clients of Alex Doyle's are currently writing testimonials that will be posted shortly. Our website will be live and optimised within four weeks."

Great! I wish you the best of luck and would be interested in checking out the new site. I've not heard of your company before a few weeks ago or whenever this thread was started, and thus the only thing I've seen was that obsolete site. I stand by my statement that based on that site the work was amateur at best, but once again - if indeed its not a current site of yours than its obviously a poor evaluation of your true abilities.

Best of luck and continued success to all of us.

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 6:33 am

through conjecture regarding a site that is obselete and conclusions have been made on this to the degree that we are "amature at best". The person who has posted this, if they would like to forwarded me a list of there successful blue chip clients currently gaining top rankings, please feel free to do so and we will compare portfolios. .... Longstanding clients of Alex Doyle's are currently writing testimonials that will be posted shortly. Our website will be live and optimised within four weeks. ....

Well, if I was a potential client and saw your lack of attention to detail I would not touch you with a 40 foot barge pole!! So some questions:

Q1. How does the potential client know the site is obsolete? [nb the spelling of obsolete! Lack of attention to detail here] A1. They don't, so how could anybody, here as well, be held to be "jealous" of a site falling short of professional?
Q2. If this site falls short of being professional then it must be in the category of amateur is it not? [nb the spelling of amateur! Lack of attention to detail here]
Q3. How do you spell "forward"? [nb not forwarded! Lack of attention to detail here]
Q4. Longstanding clients will be writing... They already have, here, in the first post. That is shorter than shortly is it not? [Lack of attention to detail here]
Q5. Our website will be live and optimised within four weeks...why does it take so long? [Lack of attention to detail here] Professionals could do it in days. There is a few of those here [more than a few I might add] but I would guess that they would not touch you or your site with a forty foot barge pole....if they could find where you were! ;)

PS spot the deliberate lack of attention to detail - can you?

ADA

May 18th 2004, 6:37 am

Thank you for your quick response.

The posted message was not directly aimed at yourself but as you can imagine it does get frustrating when it appears you are being judged unfairly. This industry is becoming increasingly marred by illegitimate techniques used by "seo companies" that employ gateway pages, keyword stuffing techniques, redirected pages, link framing etc to gain rankings. They all guarantee rankings but have small print within their contracts that allows these companies a massive loop hole enabling them to gain money under illegitimate means. This has a domino affect, making it increasingly difficult for good standing professional marketing and seo firms like Alex Doyle Associates and yourselves to make a good honest living. It is actually refrshing to converse with someone who has a modicom of intelligence and knows how search engines work and rank sites. Perhaps we could work together to prevent these cowboys from marring the seo industry?

It has been confusing at Alex Doyle when a supposed "client" has posted a statement saying he has been conned and is going to the office of fair trading. We are not aware of any of our clients that are in this position and would encourage the person who posted this to come forward and contact us, if you really are a client of Alex Doyle's, rather than remain anonymous. We can't mend what we don't knows broken.

I understand you statement regarding the fact that you reassure your clients through the fact that you have good rankings with your own website. Our methods are slightly different where we reasurre clients through showing our existing clients that have high rankings under search terms purchased and then the prospective client can contact our consumers to ask them how Alex Doyle has performed. We use this because many potential clients believe the proof is in the pudding and the eating of such.

I'm happy for your success and wish you every success in the future with your clients. Maybe one day we will work together.

ADA

May 18th 2004, 6:43 am

ephricon

May 18th 2004, 6:52 am

I understand you statement regarding the fact that you reassure your clients through the fact that you have good rankings with your own website. Our methods are slightly different where we reasurre clients through showing our existing clients that have high rankings under search terms purchased and then the prospective client can contact our consumers to ask them how Alex Doyle has performed. We use this because many potential clients believe the proof is in the pudding and the eating of such.

Yes - that's why I do both :)

Certainly existing clients make great samples and case studies for potential clients. Even further though - there's no way I could take someone's money and tell them I can help them make money online via search engine rankings if I myself wasn't already running my own business is such a manner.

Regarding the sketchy SEO companies, I believe we all share our dislike of them. Typically you don't see many of them in these SEO forums though, as they don't care about actually learning - rather they care about tricking and such. Sure you see alot of them with a random post now and again... The key way to tell is look at # of posts - very few spammy companies will bother in forums long enough to accumulate a large # of posts...

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 6:58 am

Thank you foxyweb,

My obvious lack of "attention to detail", is because I'm too busy optimising sites and providing a professional service to clients to check every word I spell. Perhaps you would be better suited as an English teacher rather than commenting on a tech site regarding seo, to which it appears you have no knowledge! It takes four weeks to send the site live due to copr reading flash movies built within the site and a vert we are creating. We need our site to ouse professionalism so that we don't get commented on how unprofessional we look. We also have to check spelling mistakes on the site of course.

Really? Too busy to spell check? I don't think so - it is a sign of lack of attention to detail.
I should be and English teacher? Not an SEO? Interesting - go click on the reputation button in the members list and see what other people think - and by the by I don't do SEO for other people I leave that to the real professionals like Compar McDar SEOguy Rustybrick - but I sure use my sites to experiment.
It takes four weeks to send the site live...? Who are you trying to kid - when did you start building the site? Why did you not have the site running before? there are a lot of VERY professional sites out there that don't need all that crap you are about to inflict upon the owner of a 56kbps modem!

Vote: I'd go and hide ADA :D

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 7:01 am

Also ephricon

sorry missed you out of my list

duvetdave

May 18th 2004, 7:10 am

The way to find the best company.....Easy , just look for one that is slated only by anon.ie competition from other less competent rivals.
And if they dont do what they say,then get your money back.
Not hard is it.

ephricon

May 18th 2004, 7:19 am

Also ephricon

sorry missed you out of my list

Haha thanks anyways!

ADA

May 18th 2004, 8:01 am

I understand completely with the view that a majority of seo companies are interested in tricking rather than making clients any money or achieving any form of rankings. At Alex Doyle we continually thirst for knowledge and are regularly updated on changing algorythms, we have a department of programmers dedicated to this research. We focus mainly on Google as this seems to be the engine to crack in terms of profitability for the client and Google's holding within the market place. However, I don't think a measure of competence can be measured by how long a company spends within a forum, because a lot of knowledge shared within a forum is qualified or correct ,the majority seems to be conflicting views based on a lack of industry knowledge. All this achieves is constant scepticism and confusion from clients, when all they really want is a professional firm to achieve and deliver what they promise. Alex Doyle achieves rankings consistantly for clients because we remain cutting edge through constant research conducted and as a result our position within the market place grows stronger everyday and as a result of this Alex Doyle is here for the long haul.

I would be interested in sharing knowledge with yourself, I'm sure we could both shed some professional light on different technoques currently being adopted.

Dennis

May 18th 2004, 8:13 am

So i received a call from alex doyle associates who offered me the service described in this forum. Obviously i typed in their company name and came up with this forum, when i asked the company about the website etc i was told about it not being live, which i understand. Needless to say i was skeptical but still interested. I received the information and a contract which was very clear and that i would be entitled to my money back. It had my terms on there and that i would be number one and stay there for the full twelve months. I showed this to my friend who is a solicitor and he said all seemed fine and i was covered. Obviously i was skeptical after reading things like this forum so i asked for some more examples of clients. The person i spoke to was very helpful he gave me several examples of people at number one, but what impressed me more was the examples i was given were also given out with phone numbers to contact them. This was a definite plus point being able to speak to existing clients. I rang the references i was given and all were happy with the service they had received and were curretly receiving a massive amount of hits from being number one. So im going to go with the service i feel covered by the contract and having spoken to existing clients feel more at ease. Obviously the views on this forum are one side of the story and there are no views from people who have had a direct relationship with the company. I would hate to think i had missed a great opportunity to increase my revenue by only listening to one side of the story. My contract will clearly cover me to get my money back. Why would a company offer a guarentee if they were just gonna have to give the money back in 6 weeks.

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 8:21 am

OK Dennis thats good - so you will be able to give us the url and other information so that your site and keywords can be tracked to prove just how good this company is?

As ADA puts it - cutting edge - and what is here is not - rather the other side of the coin.

That claim in itself I find interesting - go and ask Compar or SEOguy what they think about that! :)

digitalpoint

May 18th 2004, 8:23 am

Well, as the "Master of the Universe", I can shed some light on this one. Dennis (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=448) and ADA (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=445) are in fact the same person (or at least coming from the same IP address which is based in the United Kingdom (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/?ip=81.137.2.249)).

You are welcome to post your opinion, but faking as a satisfied user is not going to look real good in the eyes of everyone else.

- Shawn

Dennis

May 18th 2004, 9:37 am

Yes i am sending from the same ip address however the quote and statements made are taken from an actual statement from a new customer, who said he was happy with the comments being placed on this forum. The testimonals from existing clients will follow soon, customers who have been with us for two years and are happy with the services, so you will soon have their opinions.

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 9:37 am

Well now, why am I not surprised at that!!!
:)

And stop talking rubbish ADA Dennis you have just proved what you are.

Foxy

May 18th 2004, 10:28 am

We too were taken for a ride by this bunch. If I knew back then what I know now about SEO we would not have fallen for it, but I am sure this is the case for the vast majority of their customers.

I wouldn't mind so much if they had put the work in, but apart from the initial proposal (which did not do anything for our rankings) they have done nothing.

I believe these people to be fraudsters and it would be interesting to hear from anyone else with similar experiences and see if we can put something together for trading standards.

Well said DOMW - welcome to this forum - to be honest, this so called company has sounded like, for some time now, as a one person back room establishment that uses various aliases to purport to be doing big "cutting edge" business [what a joke].

Any support that you would like just ask and I will see what can be done.

In light of the geographic stuff above and by his own admission he has just faked a post I think this thread should be placed in the "Black List" Forum with a health warning nailed to the entrance.

Whadaya think Shawn? :cool:

duvetdave

May 18th 2004, 2:29 pm

duvetdave

May 18th 2004, 2:41 pm

Oh .one more thing.If I were asking a client to to vouch for me I would protect their identity by posting their comments from an address that was only traceable to me.Commonsense or is it just me.

ephricon

May 18th 2004, 2:48 pm

Hmmm, I was willing to reconsider things initially - but I don't think it is at all acceptable to post something pretending to be someone else and make us think that someone else is posting. It seemed fishy right away it how that post was worded, but I'm sorry to say that ADA has now lost the respect which I had momentarily reinstated for them.

If you don't have your integrity what do you have?

ephricon

May 18th 2004, 2:53 pm

ok .Lets keep it simple.Give these alex doyle people your real name and if they sue you and win then the rest of us know the truth.If you win then you will gain our respect and , but you won't will you?

This is just ludicrous.

Also, I'm willing to guess that the duvetdave is also the same person. BUT, I'll go out on a limb here and say they were now smart enough to use another IP address... although probably still coincidentally in the UK???

GuyFromChicago

May 18th 2004, 4:36 pm

This is just ludicrous.

Also, I'm willing to guess that the duvetdave is also the same person. BUT, I'll go out on a limb here and say they were now smart enough to use another IP address... although probably still coincidentally in the UK???

I think there are a couple of the "same person" doing some posting here. Either that, or it's just a rash of people who have never heard of a paragraph and excel in poor use of punctuation.

Look at this way - if they were "dominating the serps" like they claim they can they would not be wasting their time faking posts in this forum to convince people.

They would post once, with a little proof. Maybe a real client of theirs would visit too and put in a good word.

These people, and their so-called seo company, are a joke.

Foxy

May 19th 2004, 12:07 am

This thread is being "bombed" by the "same person" coming up with illogical sale speak that might fool the uninitiated but unfortunately he's coming up in front of the next level of experience "amatures" [read amateurs] as he puts it and his "cutting edge" technology just can't "cut the mustard" - now I wonder if he came up against real "professionals" how he would fair?

This thread needs to have an health warning and put in a Black list otherwise someone just might be conned [even from this thread] and give this guy a sympathy vote, and then, pay him some money which will be too late. :mad:

duvetdave

May 19th 2004, 1:14 am

:) good idea that, blacklist anyone who doesn,t agree with you.

Foxy

May 19th 2004, 2:00 am

Now how did I know that this reply would come from DuvetDave?

Because you first came on as Dennis at 9.02am approx and I posted the fact at 9.03am and then you came here after relogging in at 9.14am.

Oh what a surprise!

In fact I am not saying that you, whatever your alias, should be blacklisted because I don't [look where the apostrophe is - it is not a comma - lack of detail again] agree with you - you can express your own opinions however and wherever you like - but this thread should go into somewhere that has a "health warning" on it so that people take extra care when reading it.

It is not correct to fake a post, whatever your after comments are, in justification of your own position and the Master of the Universe has commented similarly.

ADA

May 19th 2004, 8:47 am

Duvet Dave has nothing at all to do with Alex Doyle, if there are more than one person with a uk ip address using this forum then I guess were guilty!

Here are the facts:

1.) All these supposed "conned or ripped off customers" all state it anonymously. This is ludricrous. You won't come forward with a real identity because you will be subject then to liable, which holds serious legal implications. Could it be that all you are is disgruntled competitors? The fact that you post these cutting statements anonymously is proof itself that you all making false and fraudulent accusations regarding a company that holds the financial and legal weight to pursue this in a court of law. If you have any doubts about how big an organisation we are then check out our accounts and information held on companies house website for all to view, we have nothing to hide. If we had ripped or conned would we not be in court by now? Would you have not already gone to trading standards? You make anonymous statements on a forum because you are lying you are making untrue liable statements! It is obvious we are all intelligent enough not to believe everything posted!

2.) Foxyweb or Chris Bscwhichever you prefer you are a joke and an insult to everyones intelligence! Your self confessed and self optimised site www.world-ok.com has really reached the zenith of the search engine optimisation. The report run on this site by web position gold is as follows:

Report run by web position gold on 19 May 2004 at 11:47am
First place rankings 6 Top 5 24 Top 10 29 Top30 39

Search engines 29 visibility percentage 16.81%

Under the search Terms:

Large Yachts
Super Yachts
Yachts
Boats

The truth is the only term that is performing slightly is large yachts what a competitive term this is? The real terms Yachts and Boasts are nowhere
! You really do employ the professionals. Foxyweb you base your arguments on a few spelling mistakes the rest on conjecture, perhaps if you concentrated on learning something about optimisation rather than being bitter about successful optimisers and commenting on their grammer then your site might start to climb up the search engines, if you need help with this then contact us. The fact is you need us to be profitable on the web the only other option is sponsored links and add word campaigns. The fact that you base your whole reputation on what a few people who write conjecture on this forum that have no real insight into seo like yourself speaks volumes. Foxyweb GO AND HIDE AND LET THE REAL PROFESSIONALS DO THEIR JOB!

3.) EPhricon and Duvet Dave get out while you still have some credability or intelligence left. Anonymous statemets may be left saying you've ripped or conned them next.

4.) All "conned or ripped off" customers contact us we'll know the truth then won't we.

ADA

May 19th 2004, 8:51 am

Testimonials to follow shortly! If anyone wants info on where our customeres are currently ranked then just ask, this is all the proof we need!

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 8:53 am

Okay, where are they ranked?

- Shawn

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 8:58 am

You make anonymous statements on a forum because you are lying you are making untrue liable statements!

I'm curious what you would call masquerading as satisfied customers?

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=5289#post5289

- Shawn

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:03 am

I dunno I think ADA and Duvet Dave are both a little too lawsuit-happy for me.

What ever happened to doing business with a sense of integrity? This is not directed at anyone - just my own frustration about the state of society. Its a shame that law suits are such a major part of business. Sure in some cases it may be appropriate - but still just a shame that so many people don't put a high value on integrity.

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:10 am

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:16 am

I don't think its fair at all to try and criticize Digital Point here. This forum is an open forum - that's what it is. People will post their opinions. Take them for what they are - people's opinions and that only.

Its certainly possible for people to post fraudulent statements - and that's truly a shame and unfortunate - but a part of what the internet is in its very nature - an anonymous medium at best.

There are two scenarios here. 1) It actually is an unsatisfied customer who wishes to express their displeasure with the company's service and either does not feel like spending any more time than that or wishes to keep their identity private - in the same way in which you wish to keep the identity or your clients private (perfectly understandable). OR 2) It is fraudulent posts by competitors for the purpose of making your company look bad. I feel for you if indeed this is the case. Unfortunately it seems as though all a company can do is continue to provide the best service it can and provide prospective clients with past results and good referrals. If people want to be dishonest unfortunately there's not a whole lot that can be done.

Its certainly a bit much to ask that a forum owner monitor each post and demand evidence.

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 9:17 am

As Explained earlier, we would not want these type of liable statements filtering through to clients by people who are making these statements without proof or legitimacy. What would you call allowing people to post fraudulent statements on your forum?
Free speech would be the best way I would describe it.

If you want reports on our client base email me privately sign a confidentiality agreement and I will provide you with the rankings, on the understanding that all liable statements on digital point will be retracted. As I'm sure you understand this is an extremely serious matter and concern that we have with the people publishing these statements on the web and digital point who allows these statements to be posted without proof or cause!

Sorry, we do not filter posts. If we did, we would also have filtered your fake account claiming to be a satisfied customer.

I don't particularly want reports (I'm not looking for a SEO company), I was just trying to help you out so people could see it publicly. Personally, I'm not terribly impressed though considering this forum ranks #1 and #2 in Google for your own company name...

On a side note, a "bribe" to show you where your clients rank in return for killing this thread, is a definite way to make sure I don't. :)

- Shawn

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:17 am

We place a huge importance on integrity that is why we have defended these statements publically. When someone attacks your integrity what do you do. If the person doesn't respond to logic and facts then the next step is a law suit. Potential damage to the reputation of Alex Doyle Associates is massive by making liable statements. As for Duvet Dave I have not seen any posted comments about law suits, why would he want to launch a lawsuit to something that has nothing to do with him. All that it seems is that Duvet Dave responds to logic and facts, if thats hard to believe and everyone wants to again fasly accuse us as being the same person then this is just another case of conjecture posted on this forum I'm afraid. Where is everybodies elses integrity when they are posting completely false comments that hold no weight?

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:22 am

Thank you for your offer of help, but perhaps screening posts is something to look in the future if this situation occurs agin. To publically publish reports will open my client to every Tom Dick and Harry in the world, does this make good business sense? Of course your forum appears top in google under our name because so much has been unfairly posted regarding ourselves and the fact that our website is currently under construction, due to Googles policy of ranking on relevancy this is why this is happening but not for long I'm afraid. Ignorance is not a defence!

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:25 am

Oh .one more thing.If I were asking a client to to vouch for me I would protect their identity by posting their comments from an address that was only traceable to me.Commonsense or is it just me.

Here is Duvet Dave's post regarding lawsuits.

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:30 am

Thanks Ephricon but I cannot see where it states about a lawsuit in this quote. All Duvet Dave talks about is protecting clients identities which as is stated is common sense!

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:30 am

We place a huge importance on integrity that is why we have defended these statements publically. When someone attacks your integrity what do you do. If the person doesn't respond to logic and facts then the next step is a law suit.

If my integrity is attacked I personally don't feel the best course of action is a law suit.

If one of your prospective clients seems hesitant b/c of comments in this thread I think your best course of action would be to simply provide them with results and testimonials and contact info of your satisfied clients. I think that speaks more loudly than responding to the thread with ideas of initiating law suits.

Indeed, I feel as though each post that goes by in this thread merely grows the topic. If left alone for a little while it will disappear - but if we keep adding to it than it will continue to gain popularity and you might have a tougher time regaining the top ranking for you company's website. If indeed I were in this position I would simply address the comment saying that you pride yourself on quality service and integrity and that you are more than happy to provide an abundence of satisfied customers to any prospect who may have concerns. I'd probably leave it at that.

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 9:30 am

Thank you for your offer of help, but perhaps screening posts is something to look in the future if this situation occurs agin........Ignorance is not a defence!

Pre-screening posts is not what a forum is about. People are free to post whatever they want. Most people who participated in this thread are easily contactable. You are able to email them, and most have their website URL attached to their account, so anyone (including you) can visit their site.

Sorry to bring it up again, but you are the one who goes through the trouble of creating a false account here, so you can post what a satisfied customer of yourself you are. Then calling into question other user's integrity after that is pretty pointless, don't you think?

- Shawn

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:31 am

Thanks Ephricon but I cannot see where it states about a lawsuit in this quote. All Duvet Dave talks about is protecting clients identities which as is stated is common sense!

Oops youre right here - he posted two posts together. Give me one second and I'll have it up.

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:32 am

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:33 am

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:34 am

By the way - winning a lawsuit would not necessarily translate into a gain of respect in many people's eyes. For me, its all about how someone handles the situation.

If you are business long enough any company is going to have a few bumps in the road. Certainly the goal is to prevent these - but I wouldn't exclude a company simply b/c one of their customers may have been dissatisfied. The key to me is how did they react? If indeed the company held up its part of the deal and did their best to satify the customer and the customer is just a jerk than that's understandable.

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 9:35 am

Shawn again you are trying to accuse me of bribing you which is completely false. When have I tried to bribe you? All I asked for is integrity for the right thing to be done where people have made false comments and asked for a retraction that Alex Doyle deserves!

Your best bet would be to ask for a retraction from anyone who made false statements against you. I don't know anything about you or your services, so I didn't make any comments about it.

- Shawn

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:35 am

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:37 am

Shawn you conveyed that Alex Doyle tried to bribe you though, is this true or false?

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:40 am

Domw aren't you one of our supposed "ripped off clients". If so why aren't you commenting?

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 9:41 am

Shawn you conveyed that Alex Doyle tried to bribe you though, is this true or false?

"If you want reports on our client base email me privately sign a confidentiality agreement and I will provide you with the rankings, on the understanding that all liable statements on digital point will be retracted."

Your best bet for damage control at this point would be not to cling to things that really have no relevancy, and instead address the issue that people have brought forth. Although at this point, I'm not sure how useful that would in all honesty.

- Shawn

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:47 am

I think all Duvet Dave was discussing was the fact that these supposed clients will not put the money where their mouth is and sue because it is untrue. Their statements are simply false and they aren't who they say they are!

Perhaps. Although as DOMW said - sometimes its just not worth it. I know my SEO services are relatively inexpensive - such that if by chance one of my customers was real upset and wanted to sue me they likely would spend much more in the lawyer's fees than they'd get.

I dunno, I just get turned off anytime people bring up the legal system as a way of settling things.

Its probably about time for us to all put this thread to bed now...

ADA has made it clear that he feels the statements are fraudulent and he can provide prospective customers with evidence of his quality services. Great, if this is indeed the case you can prove yourself to anyone with any considerations. I don't think any more discussion will convince anyone of believing anything other than what they currently believe.

Some people have expressed displeasure, ADA has stood by his company - let's leave it at that.

Note to prospective ADA clients - please take this forum and any forum with a grain of salt. People has expressed displeasure. They may or may not be legitimate posts. If you are considering ADA your best bet is to contact the company and ask for their references and case studies, etc.

I personally don't really care anymore, so for everyone's sake I'm going to try and refrain from posting much more in hopes this thing will die.

DOMW

May 19th 2004, 9:49 am

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:50 am

I'm not trying to cling on things that hold no relevancy, you are avoiding the question and point at hand that people are trying to convey a false image regarding ourselves.

digitalpoint

May 19th 2004, 9:53 am

I'm not sure how much clearer I could have made it for you (I even quoted your offer for you). But yes, I would consider an offer of something in exchange for removing posts a bribe.

- Shawn

ADA

May 19th 2004, 9:53 am

Thankyou Eprichon you are a true gentleman. I wish you the best of luck in the future! :)

ephricon

May 19th 2004, 9:54 am

ADA - I had written a post expanding on my initial comments, but having seen your last posts, I am beginning to doubt that you actually work for this company.

We have given up on trying to recoup the money we paid, but if I was a potential customer and had read your posts on this thread, there is no way I would have signed up (regardless of the comments of others). Keep up the good work!

Yeah I saw the quote and went back to read it but it looks as though you deleted it :-( You said something about how they should check their invoice number 1246 or something like that...

ADA - Seriously, as this thread continues it just looks worse and worse. I'd cut my losses now if I were you.

Seems as though DOMW thinks you might actually be yourself pretending to work for the company for the sole purpose of hurting the company's reputation. This speaks loudly - as it seems as though there's not much to gain by continuing to participate in this thread.

Best of luck to you and to all of us.

ADA

May 19th 2004, 10:04 am

I feel this is coming to a close and would just like to say one more thing. If Don W is a clientand would like to call us if he is unhappy with our services and feels we have not provided him with the services rendered, we will look at his situation and discuss this with him in hope to solving the situation and provide him with the quality of service we pride ourselves on. We have thousands of clients who are receiving good listings and if this is a customer of ourselves then we would like to remedy the situation.

GuyFromChicago

May 19th 2004, 10:41 am

We place a huge importance on integrity that is why we have defended these statements publically. When someone attacks your integrity what do you do. If the person doesn't respond to logic and facts then the next step is a law suit.

LOL, you crack me up. You can't sue someone (and hope to win) because they post their opinion about your company.

For just about every company of any size out there, someone has set up a website or forum to bash them.

If someone had bad mouthed my company and it was untrue, I wold just ignore it. Internet posts don't pay my bills, my service to my clients does. If they bad mouthed my company and it was true, I would post a single explanation of what happened and drop it.

You lost all your credibility in this forum when you tried to fake being a customer posting here.

Want to prove your ability to this forum? Try getting your company name ranked one in Google. All you have to do outperform this forum. Should be easy for an experienced SEO company with thousands of clients.

schlottke

May 19th 2004, 11:02 am

Maybe you should just chill out, you can't sue if its simply an opinion- that isn't how law works... You would need to prove he is wrong and then prove it was him that even typed it- which you couldn't.

You wouldn't have to defend yourself if you were a standup professional, I don't think. You don't see a 10 page post on any forums about how Digitalpoint's ISP software is garbage, now do you?

Bootleg

May 19th 2004, 12:03 pm

Libel - a written, printed, oral, or pictorial statement that damages by defaming a person's character or reputation.

Liable - legally obligated, responsible.

Like if you invite someone over to your home or business, and while sitting at your desk reading this thread they begin laughing so hard they fall out of the chair and bash their head, you may be liable for the medical bill.

I can't believe I'm still reading this thread.

schlottke

May 19th 2004, 12:42 pm

Its ridiculous - just like a first page guarantee - lets end it.

Foxy

May 19th 2004, 2:03 pm

I can't believe I'm still reading this thread.

Neither can any of us - but at least we did - and thankyou everyone for the hours that I have missed and have just caught up on - good posts - good integrity - very good quality argument from this forum.

If I may say so humbly, this forum has arrived, technically and morally, congratulations Shawn and everybody who is part of this forum :)

magellan

May 20th 2004, 3:35 am

I just spoke to them, did a search and this thread came up ;)

Their site is currently under construction...

T0PS3O

May 20th 2004, 12:49 pm

I was the first in this thread to mention Alex Doyle Associates...

Reading back my post I checked the key words they presented me of their existing clients. Yahoo still isn't number one so I guess they got their money back by now. Would be interesting to ask them perhaps. 12 months number 1 on 27 search engines still seems a tad adventuruous to me but hey, one has to aim high I suppose.

I hadn't stopped by at this thread in a while, quite a good read on a rainy thursday evening I must admit. What's all this business about not daring to come out with your real name? ADA never mentioned his/her real name.

I regret deleting the contract sent to me, I could have shown FoxyWeb a catalogue of spelling misstakez in it.

For those interested, the site can still be accessed here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.alexdoyle.co.uk

(That archive site is quite good to be honest, you should see www.google.com back in '94)

Anyway lets not re-ignite the fighting... Thanks for the good read everybody!

Such Great Heights

May 22nd 2004, 8:46 pm

If I may say so humbly, this forum has arrived, technically and morally, congratulations Shawn and everybody who is part of this forum :)
I'd just like to point out this wonderful line by foxyweb.
Very nice.

Now let's just hope it never "jumps the shark". :p

NewComputer

May 24th 2004, 2:34 pm

I have to think that the first page would be the top one hundred links depending on your preferences for each of those search engines. Deceiving, but I will have to look deeper.

DarrenC

Jun 22nd 2004, 12:42 pm

Good thread, very enjoyable reading..

One final couple of words ' Why would a SEO company not have a holding page whilst the "new" website is being designed? '

Surely, this is loosing them custom? Doesn't make business sense to me, but what do I know, I'm only a small business owner learning SEO

Darren :)

peterjohnston917

Jun 24th 2004, 5:26 am

Hi ya all.... Well it look's like i'm not the only one having probs with Alex Doyle....I would love to have a chat with anyone regarding them...and on how to get our money back.
Regards
Peter

peterjohnston917

Jun 24th 2004, 5:29 am

Story is so long...it goes back to Nov 03...and is still goooooooing even today...we are a new internet company...wanting to get on building good customer base and sales...but have been badly let down by a company...who have promised things for the last 7 months and have not come up with the goods...they are now saying that they have done the work...but we are still not getting any listings on the search engines....we have been asking for our money back for the last 2 months....but their director will not even talk to me on the phone!!!!!! Any and all help would be welcomed.

peterjohnston917

Jun 24th 2004, 5:29 am

Ive got copies of contracts and loads of e mails....

Foxy

Jun 24th 2004, 6:55 am

Ive got copies of contracts and loads of e mails....

Sorry to tell you peter but the only things you can do are

1. Trading standards office
2. Post the contracts and relevant comments here to warn others
3. Cut your losses, learn from everybody here and watch your fortunes rise

There are some technically very good people here, and some good people as well :)

peterjohnston917

Jun 24th 2004, 7:45 am

Thanks Foxy,

Posting my comments on here......
I am a very un-happy customer of Alex Doyle Ass......
Any one wishing to contact me...then please do so...
ADA - you may contact me as well....as i'm still waiting??????

Kirkburton

Jun 25th 2004, 2:38 am

ADA, can you post your guarantee here, or give me a link to where I can find it.

Kirkburton

Jun 25th 2004, 2:51 am

Doesn't matter, another poster on here has sent it to me...you quote:

"We offer you five search terms, which will exclusively belong to you for a period of 12 months within which you will enjoy number one listings on the search engines above. Once purchased, these can’t be resold to any of your competitors hence you will have a unique lead on the field.

We will optimise your site, take the search words off our data-base, assign them to your site and then submit to the search engines listed above.

Here at Alex Doyle we pride ourselves on product delivery, to the extent that if for any reason we are unable to complete the work as specified, we guarantee a 100% refund of any money you spend towards this product.

The service period of twelve months will commence once you are on the number one spot of the search engines listed above. The time period of installation will usually take four weeks from the date of purchase at which point you will expect to see a number one listing.

You will receive monthly statistics to report on the performance of your site."

Does this mean I have to wait 12 months before getting my money back?

Kirkburton

Jun 25th 2004, 2:58 am

For those wondering which search engines Alex Doyle Associates is guaranteeing you'll be top for are:

Yahoo
Msn
Lycos
Excite
Fast
Go to (alltheweb)
Alta Vista
Google
AOL
Ask Jeeves
Iwon
Go network
Open directory
Netscape search
Northern Light
Ixquick
Icq
SearchUk.com
Overture

So far for the five terms I chose , three are listed in Jayde, and one in exactseek, neither of which are mentioned in the above, this is after four months.

Foxy

Jun 25th 2004, 3:14 am

For those who need to know [ie everybody] TOPS30 gave this address for the archived site of ADA: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.alexdoyle.co.uk

And to save all of you looking it up, this is what is there:

As a Microsoft ® approved Keyword vendor, Alex Doyle Associates provide a professional service to businesses in all areas of industry.

Keywords are a new type of web address, which permit you to incorporate multiple words, spaces, punctuation and even special characters that are unique to your name or brand, ultimately providing easier alternatives for your customers to reach your website.

Using Keywords, your customer's don't have to type or even know long and complicated web addresses. By typing in your chosen Keyword into the internet explorer address bar, they can reach your website immediately, removing the chance of error in typing incorrectly your web address and additionally cutting out your competition.

Now to all of you, spot the mistakes....hehe - I'll bet Microsoft had something to say about that!!! :D

T0PS3O

Jun 25th 2004, 3:17 am

They are a joke aren't they... Too bad they still managed to lure in so many unsuspecting innocent people.

peterjohnston917

Jun 25th 2004, 3:26 am

Guess what all.....Alex Doyle Ass (ADA) have still not replied to any of my e mails since Monday 21 Jun 04. Thanks to all of you who have contacted me....at least i'm not alone...which is a shame...that we have all been conned!!!!!

ephricon

Jun 25th 2004, 5:09 am

Ok everyone stop for just a minute....

Read this again. I know you don't want to, but humor me:

"As a Microsoft ® approved Keyword vendor, Alex Doyle Associates provide a professional service to businesses in all areas of industry.

Keywords are a new type of web address, which permit you to incorporate multiple words, spaces, punctuation and even special characters that are unique to your name or brand, ultimately providing easier alternatives for your customers to reach your website.

Using Keywords, your customer's don't have to type or even know long and complicated web addresses. By typing in your chosen Keyword into the internet explorer address bar, they can reach your website immediately, removing the chance of error in typing incorrectly your web address and additionally cutting out your competition. "

THIS IS NOT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. THIS DOES NOT PRODUCE HIGH RANKINGS IN SEARCH ENGINES. This is another type of internet marketing service, yes, but not search engine optimization. Go back and read it a third time. They are a keyword vendor.

Here is what you are paying for: The right to be found when someone types in your exact keywords directly into the address bar. Now, the next question: How useful is that? My answer: Not very. 99% of people go to Google or Yahoo or whatever and do a search there. That's where search engine optimization comes in. In these cases the search engines search and rank sites according to what they believe are the most accurate results.

The key thing to note here is that ADA is not an SEO company, but rather a Keyword Vendor. In my opinion their service offering as a keyword vendor is still overpriced, sneaky, and worthless, but that's another story. Try typing your keywords into the browser address bar (no http:// or www. or anything like that, just type them in and click enter) if you are their customer. If your site pops up this way than they have delivered on what they've promised, although they've been quite sneaky and unethical about disclosing what service you actually receive. If you still don't pop up, then indeed you have an even more legitimate beef as they've failed to even deliver on the scammy service they do offer.

T0PS3O

Jun 25th 2004, 5:19 am

Yes and No.

That is the service they advertise on their site, or at least did. When they call you they do offer SEO. And they have provided this SEO service to a few and quoted me as well promising #1 positioning on 29 SE's.

My address bar serach just comes up with google.com results, basically the same as searching from google.com itself thus SEO is involved. But that depends on your browser settings of course.

And what is keyword vending anyway? You can't sell the exclusive right to a word. It's nonsense. You can bid for placement but not own it.

ephricon

Jun 25th 2004, 5:43 am

And what is keyword vending anyway? You can't sell the exclusive right to a word. It's nonsense. You can bid for placement but not own it.

Well, while you can't buy exclusive rights to a word, you can buy exclusive rights within a particular software program or service to a keyword, which is rather served in place of and not in addition to search engine results.

Think of it in a similar way to how AOL uses their keywords:

Go to www.aol.com/search and do a search on "music". The first "matching site" result you should get is www.allmusic.com. This illustrates the AOL search engine and how it works - largely by providing Google results with some readjusting.

HOWEVER, if you have AOL and you type in the keyword "music" into your address bar RATHER than doing a search on music, you'll be sent to music.channel.aol.com, which is tied to the AOL keyword of music. This just means that they own the right to be the resulting site if someone types only that into the address bar. Very different from search, as an AOL search results in a different site as the #1 "matching site" (their term for regular results).

Kirkburton

Jun 25th 2004, 6:55 am

Ephricon, Alex Doyle sold me a conventional SEO on five search terms. I questioned them about what their web site said they sold and they said they no longer did that, just SEO.

anthonycea

Jun 25th 2004, 7:32 am

Yea you can get in top results, it is called get in bed with the right folks, not everything is above board at the SE's. The SE's make selective deals with webmasters they are in bed with, I can prove this and have proved it.

http://www.webcenter.squarespace.com

Proves it is not SEO but corruption in many cases.

I must agree with FOXY for once, he is right, I would not put any faith in this so called SEO firm that makes silly claims.

ephricon

Jun 25th 2004, 7:52 am

Ephricon, Alex Doyle sold me a conventional SEO on five search terms. I questioned them about what their web site said they sold and they said they no longer did that, just SEO.

Okay this is good to know. Now we can accurately conclude that they are capable of ripping people off with respect to two different service offerings - not just one.

:eek:

ephricon

Jun 25th 2004, 7:54 am

Yea you can get in top results, it is called get in bed with the right folks, not everything is above board at the SE's. The SE's make selective deals with webmasters they are in bed with...

Sure, sure, but legitimately well optimized sites still dominate the majority of the SERPS. Just takes a knowledgable person, hard work, and patience.

All of these are apparently even more scarce that I had thought.

peterjohnston917

Jun 25th 2004, 8:03 am

Well hopefully there are honest, knowledgeable people out there who will support the business sector as i am with my customers...and will do for years to come. We are not here for the quick buck!!!! but the long haul
Saying that we still have to make a living :)

anthonycea

Jun 25th 2004, 8:21 am

Yes, hard work, be honest, that all sounds good, but in business, it is MEAN BUSINESS.

So folks that are HIGH UP in business realize that business is not about that, but who can TAKE market share from the other guy.

The business world is filled to the brim with WHITE COLLAR CRIME, SO SCAMS WILL ALWAYS BE.

Buyer beware, a scam is always covered by slick marketing, if you are smart you can see through the "slick marketing".

If one does their homework, true professional services can be found and you can weed out the scams.

That is what we are here for, RIGHT.

Do not ever think that Business is a place for fair play, in many cases the most "so called successful businesses" are involved in many corrupt schemes.

ATT is being sued right now for fraudulent overbilling poor customers, guess why, because their revenues have been declining for years.

So they steal money to keep their ship afloat.

Look at Enron, Adelphia, Worldcom, these are all scams and fraud pulled off on shareholders, workers (pensions lost) and creditors who got left holding the bag, while executives get away with stealing Billions and exporting the money to their Swiss bank accounts.

So crooks are everywhere in business.

Bernard

Jun 25th 2004, 9:21 am

And what is keyword vending anyway? You can't sell the exclusive right to a word. It's nonsense. You can bid for placement but not own it.

There are many scams out there offering this ability to type keywords into the address bar. All of them do work to - for users who have their scumware IE patch infecting their web browser. Not exactly high quality marketing IMO.

On a side note, traffic-power dot com appears to be in trouble right now. It looks like a lot of their clients were banned in the latest Google update and there is a law office in San Francisco that is seeking comments in building a class action lawsuit:

www.girardgibbs.com/traffic-power.html

peterjohnston917

Jul 16th 2004, 1:09 pm

This thread is being carried on go to "Alex Doyle Ass"

anthonycea

Jul 16th 2004, 5:47 pm

Did you pay Digital Point for that advertisement, if not you can expect a bill for a full page ad soon.

The only thing we trumpet around here is webmaster chat man.

Are you sure you are on the right forum?

Maybe you should get on the eyeglasses forum since it seems you may need to get your eyes looked at so you can read the content of a thread.

Or maybe a comprehension forum so you can comprehend the content of the threads, no one is interested in a trumpet lesson.

I think I have seen the greatest spammer ever, now I can kill myself.

fluffywhiteclouds

Jul 20th 2004, 1:40 pm

:mad:

Yep count me in i was screwed too!!!!!

Read the t & C's though if you think you have any hope of getting your money back?

It says that once we have achieved your number 1 positions on all the 27 search engines we will then hold those positions for you for 12 months?

so to quote my legal advice what it means is that there money back guarantee DOES NOT COME INTO FORCE UNTIL THEY HAVE ACHIEVED THE 27 NUMBER POSITIONS THAT THEY ARE PROMISING!!

So as we all know we will be waiting until the next millenium before our contract with this company will become legally binding!!!!!!!!!!!

I have now consoled myself and hit myself repeatadly for quite literally throwing in excess of £2000 down the drain with these guys. I have now resigned myself to the stark reality that i will NEVER EVER ACHIEVE THESE GUARANTEED POSITIONS AND WILL MOST IMPORTANTLY NEVER EVER EVER EVER SEE MY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE COME INTO FORCE.

I am way too embarassed to let you guys know my web address as this is not the first time I was suckered into SEO by a bunch of ********.

At least the last company only screwed me for about £250 though. They too promised me number 1's on google for 20 keywords etc... with guarantees of positions. The company this time was Iomart!!!!

There t & c's are even more laughable than ADA's though as THERE IS ABSOLUTLEY NO MENTION OF ANY GUARANTEE WHATSEVER from them so its like quite literally just throwing your money down the drain with ABSOLOUTLELY NO COMEBACK WHATSEVER!!!!!

Next SEO company to cold call me will have to be outstanding to persuade me on board???

fluffy

Speaking of the devils...

Received a call today from Alex Doyle Associates who offered me GUARANTEED no 1 position in 27 search engines.

Hahaha was my reaction ( I just read this post and immediately the phone rings ).

So I asked the guy how it is done. He didn't know so put the sales director on. After a long conversation and plenty of questions and an email with the contract and terms & conditions it looks like they will actually redo your page for available key word phrases and keep them number 1 for 12 months. If it drops for over 10 days you get your money refunded in full.

It all sounded obviously too good to be true so I asked for examples.
Google world wide - body kits uk - comes up with number 1 ccmotosport.co.uk which is their client apparently. A quick look on the page sees how they got it there, with blatant key word stuffing but apparantly allowed by google. It wasn't #1 in yahoo though and I can't be bothered to check all the other SE's. Checking overture, just to make sure it wasn't some stupid phrase no one would ever use, shows it's a fair choice I suppose.

I'm not planning to use this simply because I don't like their style and you need to provide full FTP details and can't update the pages without their consent. And I don't believe they can keep their promise even when it all seems pretty legit. They can't even get their own page on G's first page :s And the contract was a bit Mickey Mouse, with spelling mistakes and arbitrary statements. Heck, I'd rather do it myself anyway!

Just wanted to share this to show the sort of monkey's out there. Thanks for the tips, they made it a pleasure sussing them out.

Why pay someone else, SEO DIY!

If anyone would want to offer a guarantee I agree with ephricon's tactics. Top 5 or Top 10 can be achieved for quite a few economically viable key phrases.

wcolby

Sep 9th 2004, 1:00 pm

Sure !

I can guarantee you first page placement too, for the search term "bg fvyudiefcgfuoregfvureo" if you like !

Maybe, with a bit of luck, I can even get you in the top 20 !

ROFLOL, Congrats you at least got this page number one http://www.google.com/search?q=bg+fvyudiefcgfuoregfvureo&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0

The point is well made of course.

Rob Holden

Oct 8th 2004, 4:37 am

We supply the Exclusive ISO ITALIA Professional Commercial Sunbeds and Tanning Units to the UK tanning market. Google the number 1 search engine has proven to be excellent choice of search engine for our advertising campaign until Alex Dole Associates got involved, Suddenly we where dropped completely out of googles rankings. It has been over six months and still we are not able to be fond on Google.
When contacting ADA which I might add is almost impossible, these are their latest replies:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your account has now been sent over to be investigated and it normally takes 7 days for a decision to come back to the Admin department. Once we have a decision you will be informed.

Regards

Michelle Hancock

Customer Accounts Manager
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over one week passed, still no reply, and then I received this.
Hi Rob,

You will receive by post information why refund not granted by end of the week.

Regards

lisa
ADA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have replied to ADA this morning with the following:
Good Morning Lisa,

You did state as above that we would receive information before the end of the week, it is now the end of the week
As expected because of previous experiences with your company, we received no information why we will not be granted a refund.
Please could you advise why we have not received the information and when we might expect to receive this important information?
Many Thanks,
Rob Holden
www.iso-italia.co.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY CONTRACT WITH ADA STATED: £995.00 +vat would be the total cost.

ADA has taken £1398.24????????? This amount was not in contract, this amount was never authorized, THIS IS THEFT...................

I have been advised this is theft, I have take all the legal action I can, Police, OFT, TS, SBF, BL. See you at court ADA.

I will keep all informed of the new replies........when and if they come?