I took over hosting of this website in November 1. Up until this point my new customer's web site was not coming up in any Search engine. The previous Host, was charging them $400 a month for SEO services.
I moved their site. However, they did want search engine placement because they thought that they already had this service.
About a month into my hosting this site, the previous host contacted the client stating that my new client moved their hosting and because of that they had dropped out of the search engines and they are losing money...
Here's a copy of the email that he sent to my new client...I did change the names. In this version old company is called (previous Hosting company) and my new client is referref to as abc inc.
MIND YOU I HAVE NOT AT THIS TIME STARTED ANY SEO SERVICES, SIMPLY MOVED ABC inc.'s WEB SITE FILES FROM ONE HOST TO A NEW ONE!
-----Beginning of excerpt from previous company's email on 12/06/07 --------
Dear All,
Your search engine rankings have all but disappeared!
This is due to a couple of factors:
1) The links (1000s) your site had from our other clients pages
to your web site have been removed because you left our services.
Google, Yahoo and other search engines use the number of links to your site as a major factor in determining rank.
(2) The new company does not appear to know anything about search engine marketing, and made some changes that have adversely effected your rankings. Keep in mind that there are only a couple of good Internet Marketing companies in Houston, and your new provider is not one of them.
Our understanding was that (abc inc.) relied almost exclusively on Search Engines listings to bring new business, and based on the disappearance of those listings, we can only assume that (abc inc) will suffer a great loss that will threaten the future of (abc inc.).
From conversations with (abc inc.) we learned that the reason for leaving (Previous hosting company)'s services was due to problems with email delivery, which could easily have been worked out if the problem was communicated to us.
We can and are still willing to help (abc inc.), so if interested contact us, but keep in mind that it will take 60 to 90 days to reverse the changes.
In the event that you do not want to use (Previous hosting company)'s services, we would strongly encourage you to use one of our competitors that is good at Internet Marketing, because the company you are with now is not capable of giving you the results you were used to with (Previous hosting company).
Thank You,
OWNER OF PREVIOUS HOSTING COMPANY
---------end of email -----------------------------------------------------------------
Now let's take this letter apart....
1. 1000s of links...If they have 1000s of clients that were linking back to abc inc's website ... why is it if you look on google for "link: http://www.previoushostingcompany.com/" there are only 111 sites that link back to them...
This is not 1000(s) of links from other Previous Hosting Company's clients. I find it hard to believe that they would have given (abc inc.) more back links than the they the company would have... Seeing how these were all the previous hosting company's clients so their name is on all the web sites they create? hmmmm seems fishy...
This also sounds like a link farm to me and I do believe that google frowns upon this as well. Please refer to Google's SEO page @ http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
2. At the time this letter was written I had not changed any of the website pages at all, so the work he was putting down was his own!!!
Now let's see what the previous hosting / SEO COMPANY HAD DONE TO ABC INC's WEBSITE!
The Previous hosting company had made my new customers web site in frames and had stuffed all the keywords in the No frames portion of the web site. (which as most people know that this is not a valid SEO technique - if it was EVERYONE would just put a lot of keywords in the NO FRAME section )
Please again refer to Google's SEO page @ http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
The funny thing is the previous hosting company had used this same strategy on their own web site.
Needless to say you can not find the previous hosting company on ANY SEARCH STRING that they are targeting... Say for instance "houston web hosting" (hey look who's at the top of the page it's me!! - which mind you my website has been on the top of these search strings since 2005. )http://www.google.com/search?q=houston+web+hosting&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
I'm debating on wether or not I should sue the "previous hosting company" for libel for the comments he makes about my ability to do SEO and my professional reputation? What do you think?
Please post your comments below!
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