I work for Hobo, a seo company in Scotland.

OK so I finally talked to my very expensive libel solicitors and although I am not letting on what exactly I’m doing at this stage, I’m happy with the way we seem to be going forward with this. As you may know, I am being threatened with legal action (a libel / defamation) suit over commentary i made about a seo company and it’s practices. I said rightly, wrongly or stupidly that the seo strategy / practices they were selling were, in my opinion, and I’m paraphrasing here, bollocks.

Again, at this stage, I’m not linking to the original article until I actually get the chance to speak to my lawyer face to face. I’m not even confirming at this time whether the seo firm suing me is the correct one.

As it has transpired, now TWO others are being sued, I think simply because they cited my article. Sorry about that guys! Rest assured I believe and still believe I have the paperwork to back up all my claims about the company I…er…didn’t name in the article…. I am … er … being sued / threatened over.

You’ll see my article is still in place at this time. Until I clarify matters, it will remain there. I am open to removing it if it is pointed out to me privately or publicly where I’m wrong in my opinion. I honestly believe my comments were in the public interest, my interest, , Industry interest, my client’s interests and of course, this is at this point purely my opinion.

Unfortunately the other people have been scared off a little / are smarter than me and have removed the offending articles so I now stand alone as one of the very few places on the net you can hear anything bad about this company (that I don’t name). Wonder why that is?

OK so in reality this is a threat to my seo company’s very existence. We might have a PR 7 site (yes I know pure vanity) but we’ve still only been around just over a year. If I fight this, cash-flow will certainly be a problem, but i would undoubtedly recover. I’ve started with fuck all before and done all right.

We don’t try and game Google (well not too much ) - instead we try and simply make sites better, cleaner, and slicker. We normally get decent results that improve client satisfaction with us, our industry and internet marketing as a whole just by doing this, and then finding a handful of decent links. A lot of our seo is done on-site where we concentrate on internal navigation, anchor text, google-juice flow and of course good content. We have never participated in buying links or massive link farms. We also try to follow Google’s guidelines as much as possible when making sites. I tell clients I cannot guarantee listings, and I tell them I don’t know how Google works. We charge an honest days pay for an honest days work. Our costs are very competitive, and our business practices are as transparent as possible, clients can walk away from us, no questions asked, if we fail to deliver. In the end, we try hard to make seo work for clients.

In my commentary I have given a (clearly personal) opinion on the business practices of a seo company I’ve not named. I know a client who is still paying a finance company, a year after sacking this seo company, and because of the agreement signed through a finance company it looks as if they’ll still be paying them this time next year too. It’s worth pointing out within 8 weeks we had the client site at the top of Google for a keyword or two when we took over, it was pretty easy, too. An ad hoc in and out, virtually 100% on-site seo - a clean up.

Now it’s in the lawyer’s hands.

Let’s face it there is only one organisation that can help me here and that is Google. I used their guidelines to hold this company to account and I was using their search space to out them, rightly, wrongly or stupidly. Am I so naive to think that Google would bother even noticing a minute speck in the industry as me? Would anyone at Google actually like a copy of the “evidence” I have? Will submitting a spam report help my case?

I’m SUPPOSED TO DO THIS - right?

I can say “this is crap seo which i think can get a site banned”, but in the end, it’s only my opinion. Even these guidelines are a bit grey in areas. I’m not sure how you define unethical seo or business practices these days. If it looks shady to me, does that mean I have a responsibility to report this? I’m supposed to work in this industry, I’m supposed to “know”. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about people trying to earn a crust screwing Google for their own motives, that, I have little interest in - G can take care of themselves quite adequately. I’m talking about an industry I operate in, an advertising industry, where people pay good money to buy a service they believe is just another part of the marketing mix, and I stand by and say nothing when i think something is questionable? Naive?

Even though I have had some fantastic support in the seo community, only Google can confirm this is crap seo, right? Would anyone at Google actually even like to point out to me even “yeah it’s shit seo but we’d be opening up a can of worms if we banned that sort of borderline (?) stuff so just take the post down and get on with your life”?

I’m a bit obsessive and this is already screwing things up a bit in my schedules, and I’m back to a near state of insomnia that I thought I was getting on top of. I’ll deal with that later, at least I don’t work in Tesco any more.
All my clients are very understanding too, at this point, but the sooner it goes away the better, because i have got work to do.

Let’s face it, I picked this fight. If I lose I learn a big lesson and it costs me. If I win I get a lot of satisfaction.

Probably I’m asking Google too much. I use them for a ton of stuff, personally and through my business. The big G even gives me my livelihood, so I know I don’t have any real right to ask for anything more.

Well…. maybe just this last thing?

Big G - Want to see that “evidence”?

shaun.anderson (at) hobo-web.co.uk (HoboWeb)