Does Anybody Know Who Interflora's SEO Company Is (Or Was)?
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In light of the recent penalty put on the Interflora site, does anybody know who their SEO company is or was (or if they were doing it in house)?
Also, do you think SEO companies that are responsible for things like this should be named and shamed?
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This is going to sound preachy, but I would be very slow to point fingers. Perhaps there were multiple SEO companies involved. If Branded3 was indeed their most recent SEO it doesn't mean that they were involved with the most gregarious spam. (I'm not saying that they weren't - just saying that we don't know.)
Also, I think you will find that the vast majority of effective SEO companies out there are using techniques, that, if reported, would not satisfy the Google guidelines. I challenge you to rank a flower shop number one using ONLY white hat techniques. At this point in time, with the level of effective spam that is out there, it would be very hard to do.
In my opinion, whether or not we point fingers depends on what was discussed between the SEO company and Interflora. It's possible that the agreement they had was that the company was to do all they can even if it meant bending some rules. I've had some people come and ask me to rank their sites using only completely white hat methods and I've had others come and say, "I don't care what it takes - just get it done and we'll deal with the consequences if they come." Sometimes the short term gains are worth it. Plus, until recently, most websites were not aware that you could get deindexed for pushing boundaries too much.
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I think that it was Branded3.
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