First of these was VerifiedSEO, who attempted to establish a system to verify SEO providers for a $99 fee. With a record 130 comments on Sphinn, the outrage from the community surprised many. It was hard not to draw the conclusion that Rhea’s activism had shamed many into action that day.

The campaign, led by Edward Lewis was successful, with the VerifiedSEO project closing it’s doors in the evening. The owner was shocked by the responses but admitted it had been a learning process.

Next against the wall has been TOPSEOs.com, who claim to be “The Independent Authority on Search Vendors”. I won’t go over the numerous complaints in this post but feel free to follow these links to understand the back story.

TopSEOs.com – A Review of the Top SEOs Paid Rating Service
TOPSEOs – Independent Authority on Search Vendors
Complaints and Discussion About TOPSEOS®

Particularly worrying was the insight given by Arnie Kuenn, President of Vertical Measures in this post on TopSEOs by Alan Bleiweiss and Mark Jackson at VIZION Interactive. Both previous customers of TopSEOs.

It’s easy to understand why these schemes upset so many in the online marketing industry. Especially when these operators have little or no interaction with the community they claim to police.

Any long-term marketer knows that standards are a common discussion topic in this industry. We circle through the same arguments every couple of years. It would be great if this current wave of activism could be directed into moving this debate forward.

However much the community dislikes TopSEOs and other companies profiteering from the lack of standards, they are fueled by the poor, ineffective or downright shady online marketing companies out there. For years these companies, big or small, have been a blight on the industry and hammered the reputation of professional SEO/SEMs.

If 2010 is the year to clean up the industry, we can’t ignore this elephant in the room.

There is a demand from clients for honest reviews of potential SEO/SEM suppliers. If the allegations of “Pay to Play” are true then TopSEOs has now become part of the problem not the solution. It’s unlikely they will be the last to respond to this need, as Edward Lewis has pointed out, the business model seems too profitable.

For the next group to try, take note. Standards can only be introduced by a group respected within the community. Their motivation, practices and business model must be completely transparent. Anything less will quickly place the proponents up against the wall – to face the wrath of the SEO revolutionaries.

** Afterwards Tom and Eric weren’t exactly sure at which point during their discussion the elephant had entered the room by David Blackwell, one of the artists who release their work under a Creative Commons license at Flickr – thank you!

Technorati Tags: SEM, SEO, Standards, TopSEOs, TopSEOs.com

Underneath each submission there is an add button, as you see below. Click this to add this person to your network.

Then turn network filtering on, using the option at the top of the ‘Hot or Not’ or front page.

You then have your news filtered according to the submitters you want to follow. Less noise, more signal. You can also see this view of the site by default in the My Network tab. Here you can see who is in your network and who has placed you in their network (i.e. following you).

Here are 20 top-quality submitters from my network that you may want to follow. You can also do this from the link on their profiles.

1. Sebastian X
2. ViperChill (Glen Allsopp)
3. Matt McGee
4. Ruud Hein
5. Chris Winfield
6. Hugo Gill
7. Tamar
8. JillWhalen
9. Danny Sullivan
10. Onreact (AKA Tadeusz Szewczyk)
11. Everett Sizemore
12. graywolf (Michael Gray)
13. Brian Chappell
14. richardbaxterseo (Richard Baxter)
15. Matt Siltala
16. Dave Davis
17. incrediblehelp (Jaan Kanellis)
18. St0n3y (Stoney deGeyter)
19. kevgibbo (Kevin Gibbons)
20. AgentA (Alec Green)

Free free to add me to your network also (Nick Wilsdon)

If you’re submitting great material on Sphinn, please add a link to your profile in the comments below. I’m always on the look out for quality submitters to follow, especially outside the usual circles.

It may help you too. Getting yourself onto the network of regular Sphinn members raises your visibility within the platform. It shouldn’t guarantee votes but it will get your submissions read by more users.

The only thing they were good at was stealing my money. The scammed me with a guarantee, took my money and only achieved minor results in Yahoo and MSN, never even got any of the 60 keywords within the first 100 pages of Google! I think they even got me banned from Google for three months for using black hat techniques.

The results were poor and the pricing is high. I would recommend them only to the largest search spenders.

In summary, [Company] misrepresented their expertise, their technology, and showed no integrity as they breached their contract, refunding nothing to us. I strongly warn anyone and everyone to avoid spending any resources with this organization. Take your money and burn it. You’ll get more satisfaction from that experience than with working with [Company].

Part of me applauds this effort. Everybody knows there are companies who fail to deliver for clients. If this site can stop businesses falling into this trap it could raise the standard and public perception of the entire industry.

However there are some problems with the model.. First users are allowed to comment anonymously. This could lead to malicious attacks by competitors. Second, it seems unfair not to offer companies a way of replying to the critics. Without this feature, they can’t counter any bad publicy or address the issues presented by the reviewer. In fairness to SEMCompare though, their representative, Boris Mordkovich has publicly agreed to address these issues.

My final gripe though, is the way the pages have been optimised. SEMCompare has placed the company name in the title, meta description and the leading H1 tag on each page. It’s hard not to see these review pages ranking for companies who have been slack in protecting their company SERPs. If that sounds like you, I’d start building those company web profiles fast.

As for us, we only have a few select clients, and the ones we have would hopefully be more sensible than to identify themselves in public. In this age of negative SEO, it isn’t clever to attract the scrutiny of competitors or certain search engine employees. This site isn’t exactly going to help keep you under the radar. If you’re about to publish your URL as a site actively optimising, you better be very sure you don’t have any skeletons or say…paid links in your closet.

If SEMCompare decide to publish reviewer details I anticipate a sharp slow down in posts. Another factor maybe the company’s current relationship with that vendor. If they refuse, they will face lawsuits from angry SEM agencies, determined prove the claims are false. You have to hope they are making money from such a hot potato.

Although this story has been published in various industry haunts, we’ll only see the true reaction when these reviews appear in the SERPs. If I were Andy Beal, I’d be jumping on the opportunity by offering all companies reviewed a free copy of his Trackur software. After all, if Danny Sullivan’s Sphinn introduced most of the industry to social media, SEMCompare may be able to pull the same trick with reputation management.

NB: The more observant among you will notice that I’ve chosen not to link to the new review site. First I want to see what direction they take the site in and if the points above are addressed.

Technorati Tags: Andy Beal, Boris Mordkovich, Danny Sullivan, Reputation Management, Sphinn, Trackur