Traffic Power - Stay Away!
A little over a year ago we were talking to a company based in Las Vegas known as Traffic Power (aka First Place). At that point we were considering outsourcing some SEO work, so when they cold-called us we gave them a few minutes to give us a pitch. They are a true black hat SEO company that tries to manipulate the search engine algorithms in order to get their clients higher in the search results. I asked them about the possibility that we would be blacklisted from Google (and the other SE’s) for links from their link farms - they assured me that while they did use link farms, they were “relevant” link farms like About.com, so we had nothing to worry about.
We negotiated a price for their services and we were literally a few hours away from signing up with them. Note that during the entire negotiation process they were very pushy and came off more as used car salesmen than internet professionals. They even went as far as to come back to the negotiating table saying “OK, you got me, you win” - the next time I hear those words I’m going to run the other way. But I digress…
Before signing the contract for service that they had provided, I decided to do a quick Google search on their name. I figured that because they are SEO’s, they would come up high on the SERP (search engine results page). They didn’t come up, so I did a “site:trafficpower.com” - they didn’t exist in the Google index! So I knew from what I had read that they had been blacklisted by Google… red flag, at this point the deal was off.
I did, however, find another site called Traffic Power Sucks that had actual clients complaining about their service. Apparently there is currently a class-action lawsuit where their former clients are trying to recover not only the fees that they paid Traffic Power, but the financial damage that was done when Google blacklisted them - so all of their clients have been blacklisted by Google as well.
If an SEO calls you from First Place or Traffic Power, I would just hang up the phone. They are trying to promote their website again and are actively recruiting clients. In fact, if an SEO calls you from Las Vegas I would do some serious digging to make sure that it isn’t these guys - it’s not worth risking your rankings in Google. If you are interested in white hat SEO, I would check out InfoSearch Media.
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[…] You probably recall my post about Traffic Power suing Aaron Wall for defamation and publishing trade secrets. The lawsuit is completely bogus and totally threatens freedom of speech on the web. Purchasing his book will help him protect our rights online and put a very shady company in their place. […]
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