This is a free white paper about a Shenyang manufacturer of leather seats for golf carts that hired our SEO Company to fix the mistakes of their previous SEO firm, which was based in China that ruined their search engine rankings.

The client had filled out our contact form, and had requested we look at his site, which of course was nowhere to be found on the search engines, as it had been penalized. After contacting him we quickly learned that he was a 72 year old serial entrepreneur that had trusted an SEO company in Shenyang China to get his site to the top of Google for very niche key phrases. The Shenyang SEO firm must have thought very low of Google engineers, as they broke every single one of the Google webmaster guidelines. They had several doorway pages that were key phrase stuffed, using white-on-white text (so the page looks like it's empty, when it is thousands of key phrases stuffed on it). Moreover, they were doing a redirect to the actual site, if the visitor was human, and keeping it on that page if the visitor was a crawler. What that "Shenyang SEO company" learned the hard way, is that Google will not declare itself as the Googlebot on every visit. They have several different "unmarked" IPs that show Firefox or Chrome, a normal monitor resolution size etc just so they catch sites that do exactly what that Shenyang SEO company had done! In fact, it's not just Google, other search engines do the same thing too.

Our client requested we fix his site, and get it back on Google. He said he needed to get back on the first page of Google within 4 weeks, before he attends a crucial trade show. We felt there was no hope of getting such a ruined website back on the first page of search results in such a short timeframe, and we rejected the case. However, we advised the client to use AdWords in the interim, remove all of the bad SEO work his Shenyang SEO firm had done, and file a reconsideration request with Google. Unfortunately, as of this writing, Bing did not have the same webmaster tools as offered by Google. The client hung up. A couple of months later he called us, and said he had started a new website, and wondered if we could help. It was a simple WordPress website. Since the site was clean and had no bumps and bruises on it like his old site, we gladly accepted that project. It took us a few months to get his brand new site prominently listed on Google for his key phrases. The key phrases were relatively easy and he had lots of great content about his leather seats. Once you read through his site, watched the nearly dozen videos he had recorded of himself explaining the product, how it's made, how it's different than the competition etc, you can tell it was more than just a business for him; he loved what he did for a living. It was sad that an unscrupulous SEO company ruined his 12 year old site by damaging it that way.

Here is what we learned:

Certain SEO companies do not value what it takes to build a website. They do not value the years of hard work that goes into building a business. These SEO companies just look at sites as one-way opportunities for them. They do not advise clients of the high rate of risk that is involved in doing blackhat SEO. Perhaps they look at all domains as throwaway domains. They do not consider the fact that behind those sites are real people with real families that depend on them; sites they use for their livelihood.

SEO Lesson:

Even if someone gives you free blackhat SEO, and guarantees in blood to rank your site on the first page of Google, and even if they get your site to the #1 position of Google for your target key phrase, know down to your core that such a position is not sustainable, and that your site will undoubtedly get caught over time. Do not risk your livelihood so you can save a few bucks. Use only white-hat SEO methods by provided reputable SEO companies to position your site on the natural search results of search engines.