Scammer or Legit?

[SteveOllington]

Okay so I keep on seeing stuff like this, I know it's been going on for ages but it seems to be increasing in intensity. Anyway, thanks to Facebook knowing I click on their ads to do with SEO it shows me pretty much just those ad types now.

I'll get to the point. I saw an ad for the "Search Marketing Business Academy", or "SMBA" so I was curious and clicked. There's a chap who professes 12 years experience in internet marketing and has a bunch of companies and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he's offering himself up as basically an expert of experts, one that can show other search marketers how to make it. www.searchmarketingbusinessacademy.com/

There's a few things that look fishy though.

• The testimonials have common names and no business names
• There's no mention of what these companies he runs are
• There's no work to see in the form of case studies or a portfolio
• Under "Meet Lee Gilbert" it states that they've been supporting other SEM companies since 2004, yet a quick Google of the company and the name shows little to support this.
• Googling the chaps name just gets you his own website www.leegilbert.co.uk which professes more of the same and just a bunch of products
• Of just a few pieces of advice given for how to rank on Google it includes keyword density
• The chap seems to still place a lot of importance on Page Rank (As in the old PR that we all know means nothing now, and his blog about this is only a month old)
• From searching, it doesn't seem that there is any history at all, let alone this history of mass success
• There doesn't appear to be any social presence for the company or the man, except that ad.

It seems just like an average SEO (albeit one that's a bit behind on the times) who knows an average amount, trying to say he can tell other SEO's how to master the arts.

He's not even a member on SEOmoz, that's the biggest give away haha.

So, could I be wrong? Am I being too harsh?

[SteveOllington]

Hehe, well spotted!

[KeriMorgret]

And Lee Gilbert has a lot in common with John Hine, at least in the way they use some of the same exact phrases on their website. http://martialartsbusinessacademy.com/meet-john-hine-2/ =]

Agreed that it doesn't sound very legit at all, and I don't think you're being too harsh. I found the above when I started taking random phrases from the website and seeing if they were copied elsewhere on the web.

[SteveOllington]

That's what I thought originally, but on sites like ripoffreport and blagger.com, among others (btcomplaints.com is good) they simply have a disclaimer, that any of the views expressed and stories reported are that of other peoples and not necessarily shared by the site authors.

Plus, chatting to a lawyer friend of mine before revealed that if something is true, and can be proven as true... it's okay to share your negative experience of it if the point is to warn others

[MSSTORAGE]

I think your concerns are well founded. For an SEO guru his site is badly built and optimised.

Personally, i think SEOmoz has all the SEO experts you'll ever need.

[EGOL]

lol......  I think that you will get your bunns sued of with that one.

[SteveOllington]

Yeah I was going to make a thread on something like that actually to see what others thought about the creation of a sort of "SEO Company Hall of Shame"

[EGOL]

I was just being a wise guy.  

Someone should register the domain... BeforeYouHireAnSEO.com and fill it full of warning content for small business owners.... or even companies like JCP who might outsource their work.

[AaronSchinke]

That is such a huge problem. Too much of my time is spent fending off these guess that over promise results with no basis. They just take blind shots and hope to pick up some $$$. Makes the entire industry look bad.

[SteveOllington]

Yeah I didn't even spot that. Damn these fools, they make us all look bad!

[SteveOllington]

Haha I like it!!

But no I'm not considering his services, I just feel bad for the fact that other people probably will, and if I'm right they're just going to be scammed.

I see this kind of stuff around loads and it really frustrates me, it's usually a lot worse than this though.

We had a phone call at work once with some guy trying his hardest to sell his SEO services to me... apparently he didn't realise we were an SEO company ourselves, so I kept him on the phone for ages playing dumb and then told him how everything he'd just been telling me was completely wrong afterwards.

His company had a "special relationship" with Google where they could guarantee position one for any term in organic search, and they could even our company to DMOZ for £50!

Some small business that guy called that day would have signed up to their yearly contract and is still paying through the nose for nothing.

[DavidKonigsberg]

seems like junk - no real contact form - no contact info -no phone number-no address etc

[EGOL]

If you are considering the use of his services call him up on the phone and start talking with him about a specific SEO problem or two.  If you do that either his pants will fall or your BS meter will redline.