I actually replied to one of their spam contacts via their GMAIL account and got a response today from another non-GMAIL account. That’s how I found out that National Positions was behind the scam.

They are using various GMAIL accounts to carry out their spamming. The GMAIL accounts are typically different each time I get spammed but it’s always an identical message.

I reported the last email address to Google and everyone else receiving their form spam should do the same. They do rank well for “SEO Company” in Google which is surprising because after my research I see they’ve been doing this for quite some time under a couple of different names.

Before I joined my current employer, they were ripped off by a SEO company that charged them $6,000. When they tried to fight the charges, they realized that there were small prints in the contract which were overlooked initially. Be very careful, these SEO companies hire good sales people.

After Jesse told me what his company could do for my website he gave me a tour of other websites and showed me the source pages to explain what changes they make to the html codes. Always stating that they could make me #1 on the search engines.

Jesse told me the usual fee was $1000.00 per month, but when I explained that I was a small company with very limited funds he lowered the price to $600.00 per month, no contract. All the way through his pitch he kept saying that my site would be on the first page within a few weeks, which I thought meant 3 weeks. Jesse told me step by step what the company would do within the first couple weeks.

I signed up and let them charge $600.00 to my credit card. Initially Chris contacted me often updating me of the work he was doing. After the first couple weeks, I was not getting routine e-mails from him anymore. I would write e-mails and it would take a couple days for him to respond. He told me upfront that it took approximately 8 months to get to the first page on search engines, which was totally different from what Jesse told me and I said so to Chris. I told him that if Jesse had of been honest with me then I would never have hired National Positions because I knew I didn’t have $4,800.00 just laying around collecting dust.

Meanwhile, Jesse who said if I ever had any questions to contact him as he was the sales manager, never once replied to my e-mails or phone messages.

After the second $600.00 charge I put the brakes on. I let Chris know that I was not happy with being left out of the loop, and that I had not received any updates concerning improvements to my site and therefore how my money was being earned.

When Chris called me back I told him of my unhappiness with the outcomes of their service and the fact that I had told Jesse several times that funds were limited. I had no orders in 6 weeks and could not afford another payment to National Positions. I sent him a cancellation e-mail as requested, changed my passwords and canceled my credit card.

I think that if you hire a company to do the optimization for your website that they should send an invoice as to what updates they have made and where you can look to see these updates. If they have put a link on another website to your website then they need to give you the name of the website so that you can see for yourself the link and test it. For all I know they may have spent a couple days initially making changes in Titles, Descriptions and Keywords, but the rest of the time playing checkers and collecting payments from credit cards.

I bought some books; Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, HTML and CSS, how to build a website from scratch. These books have become my new friends and they didn’t cost $1,200.00.

“I get these spam emails all the time. I thought I would point out the fact there is no Verdugo Way in Camarillo. Go figure.”

I should have said that there was no Verdugo Way in Westlake Village.

Sorry, gang. My bad.

I hope you’re not saying that these are definite criterias for spotting a scammer.

In any case, I understand your intent.

Here I leave 4 important points to identify a SEO scammer:
1 – The SEO company’s email can never be from a free email accounts: yahoo, gmail, btinternet, etc. They must use their company’s email address.
If you received an proposal for optimization from a free email just move it to your SPAM folder…

2 – The company must have a website and their website must have minimum Page Ranking 3 (use google toolbar to check).

3 – Their website must be on top 5 in google when you search for a keyword such “Webdesign Marbella”…
The trick is use always the keyword of the service offered + your location:
SERVICE + LOCATION
example: seo London, webdesign California, search engine Optimization Canada…

4- If you’re in USA never contract a service from an Indian company, China or whatever place is far from your zone. I’m sure there are plenty of professionals around your zone(google is your friend). Sometimes is better pay a bit more and know where you have to go to complain if necessary…

“Real SEO experts will match all the requirements above so you can be sure you are not going to lose your money.”

I hope this helps,

IT-Design

And another one from SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/washington-state-sues-seo-company-visiblenet

Keep up the good work, Jill!

Everyone be on the lookout for a company called Visible.net. They’re one of the bigger SEO firms that have been ripping businesses off. These SEO firms tend to prey on small businesses that don’t have much knowledge of SEO. Then, once they get them signed up for a 3-month contract, they fabricate a bunch of BS documents “to prove they did a lot of work.”

Visible.net is known to also fabricate positive reviews online. Their reviews are so obviously fake. They are currently being sued by the Attorney General in Washington – your state Jill.

I love researching spam when I get bored which is how I came upon your site. Not only do I get the lamo spam for SEO, I frequently get phone calls for it too. I like to toy with them simply by saying “you do search engine optimization?” when they say “yes” I google Search Engine Optimization and when they don’t show up in the first three pages, I tell them “guess you’re not very good at what you do…” To which they ALWAYS respond by telling me to search for their company’s name. So I tell them, “well if I search for my company name, I come up first too”. The call usually doesn’t last 10 more seconds after that before they realize it’s time to give up.

National Positions writes the contract such that they do not have to perform in order to collect your hard earned monies. For instance, they will say “Up to 25 Keywords will be optimized” for your site. Zero is a number within that set of “up to 25″. You don’t think about these things till after the fact. Next, they’ll say “A Fulltime technical support person will be assigned to your account” – what they don’t tell you is that person will sit in Bangalore, and simply stare out of the window. Technically, he or she is assigned fulltime to your account, but no visible work is being performed.

Next they’ll tell you that up to 95% of their customers renew with them. What they don’t fess up is that the contract is written to automatically renew, even if you send them a registered cancellation notice.

I’ve lost $3,000 on them so far, not to mention countless hours of my own time – my site’s rankings dropped with all of their great service, by over 1,000,000 places in the space of two months.

Of course, you’ll not receive any ranking reports, as that would be embarrassing to them and hard to explain. I could go on – maybe another time.

65% of people searching the Internet will never find your web site unless you’re ranked on first page of Google, MSN, or Yahoo. If I help you obtain as much as 4 times more WEB traffic to your online business by promoting you to the first page of the search engines would you be interested?

Our company is on the first page when you search on Google for our primary search term “SEO Company.” We would like to do the same for your web site so you can come up for your main keywords as well? All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.

This special SEO program includes:
• No upfront fees
• A month-to-month program
• More traffic guaranteed

Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
______________________________________________________________________
Sincerely,
Nevada Deberry

501 VERDUGO WAY
WESTLAKE VILLAGE , CA
91362 – USA

Dear Website Owner,

65% of people searching the Internet will never find your web site unless you’re ranked on first page of Google, MSN, or Yahoo. If I help you obtain as much as 4 times more WEB traffic to your online business by promoting you to the first page of the search engines would you be interested?

Our company is on the first page when you search on Google for our primary search term “SEO Company.” We would like to do the same for your web site so you can come up for your main keywords as well? All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.

This special SEO program includes:
• No upfront fees
• A month-to-month program
• More traffic guaranteed

Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
______________________________________________________________________
Sincerely,
Chia Stowers

501 VERDUGO WAY
WESTLAKE VILLAGE , CA
91362 – USA

Dear Website Owner,

65% of people searching the Internet will never find your web site unless you’re ranked on first page of Google, MSN, or Yahoo. If I help you obtain as much as 4 times more WEB traffic to your online business by promoting you to the first page of the search engines would you be interested?

Our company is on the first page when you search on Google for our primary search term “SEO Company.” We would like to do the same for your web site so you can come up for your main keywords as well? All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.

This special SEO program includes:
• No upfront fees
• A month-to-month program
• More traffic guaranteed

Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
us.
______________________________________________________________________
Sincerely,
Gita Dingle

501 VERDUGO WAY
WESTLAKE VILLAGE , CA
91362 – USA