They build you a seperate site (like a doorway to your present site), you give them 2-5 keywords and they will get the new site ranked high in the Yahoo directory for those words, if not you pay nothing...

You pay them up front, they pay for the yahoo listing, domain name, ect, if they do not provide results they refund your money and you can track your clicks. The CPC is .05 - .25 depending on how much money you start with.

This sounds to good to be true to me, .05 a click is music to my ears no doubt about it.

Anybody have any comments on this??? I would love to hear them, I do not get how they can promise yahoo rankings in the directory like that but that is why there service has value to me, let me know what you guys think.

Some things to consider...

1) Yahoo bans doorways, so if you get caught, you'll lose your investment.

2) Paying .05 a click only takes 6000 clicks before you hit your $299 each year. At .25 a click, it only takes 1200 clicks. If you are at all skilled in building a site and submitting it, you can achieve this on your own without paying ongoing fees. Let's say they ARE really successful and you get 1000 clicks a month at that .25 rate...you've suddenly payed quite a bit more than you would have for the listing on your own.

3) If you ever decide to stop working with them, you are left with nothing to show for your money. If you optimize your site on your own (or even pay someone to do it) you OWN the site, the domain and the listing. There's no requirement to keep paying or lose your placement.

4) Find out how the click tracking works. If you don't own the domain and don't have access to the raw logs, how will you know they aren't inflating the numbers?

I'd be very wary.

I am looking at this thing like this, I pay around .24 cents per click on overture, this is the Yahoo directory not overture, I am currently in the directory but not for the keywords I gave him. This is untaped traffic and for .05 per click I think I would be a fool to not jump on it.

Jen stated that I could design a site and submit it myself, I am aware of that and feel comfortable doing that but when it comes to the Yahoo directory it is a guessing game for me (my site is in the Yahoo Dir), this company says they guarantee results and that is what you pay for. My site currently does very well on google but the Yahoo directory the traffic will stay about the same unless I do this, so why not???

Thanks guys and keep the input coming.

$7500 will buy you some darn fine SEO work and will leave you with results that will last and last. (Rather than ending as soon as you decide to stop paying for clicks.)

You are much better off hiring a professional SEO with a proven track record that will create/optimize a product that you both own, and have total control over.

Good luck to you. Hope you can work things out.

I hope it all works out OK for you. You might remember the fiasco we had here in May with them. Moose/Steve/Tony.

Unfortunately, a lot of these companies don't yet have bad BBB records because the area is still young and evidence of wrongdoing is sometimes hard to prove, when their contracts are often very vague or cryptic so it is also difficult to get refunds. Also, people that have been scammed often are too ashamed (of themselves not doing proper due diligence) to report issues.

And due diligence can be hard to do when looking for an SEO vendor, as there still isn't one standout source for 'ethical' SEO's although the SEO consultants directory and Marketing Sherpa's buying guide to SEOs are the leaders at the moment.

It's also hard when some so-called SEO firms tout big brand companies, the problem is then that big companies don't understand what they are doing to get traffic, nor do they fully see the risks. But big companies do get penalized.

good luck to you, whatever you do.

This forum was brought to my attention and, once again, I would like the chance to defend our reputation (even though I feel it is somewhat of a lost cause since this forum consists mostly of other SEO companies... but here goes!)

The last time our company name came up in this forum, Janet - you told everyone that our service violated the terms of service of Yahoo. All I asked you to do was to explain to everyone exactly what we are doing wrong.

I posted the terms of service and asked you which terms we are violating. In respose, you censored my postings and removed the entire thread.

I hope you do not censor my postings this time around and will let others judge for themselves if we're doing anything wrong. I think it is unfair of you to be slandering our good name without first being sure of what you're talking about.

We have over 130 clients and we have never had even a single complaint in 18 months of business. I do not understand the talk about how a perfect record with the BBB and Netcheck doesn't mean anything. It is very easy to file a complaint against someone. Doesnt the fact that we've never had one complaint mean anything? Also - If I were trying to hide something would I be openly stating our case here publicly?

Janet - Now that you've told people that we are unethical and rude, I'd like the chance to explain what we do and once again give all your readers the chance to hear the facts and make up their own mind as to whether or not we're doing anything wrong.

Than - once again - I am asking you to explain to everyone here exactly what it is we're doing wrong in your opinion.

We build out affiliate sites that we own and control. We pay all professional design costs and professional copywriting costs. We also pay all the Yahoo submission fees and other search engine submission fees. All our clients pay for is traffic on a per click basis.

On our sites, we provide ALOT of good, high quality, unique content since this is what the users AND the search engines want. Than, amongst all the other content links on the site, we have one single link that goes to our client.

The purpose of our sites is to provide good content to the user. (We spend a lot of time and money researching and writing good content). If after reading the content, a user wishes to buy something, we just send them on to our client's website.

We do not cloak or redirect. We do not make doorway pages or mirror sites. We will not optimize the same key phrase for the same client since that would not provide for a good user experience.

We are a team of professional copywriters and designers making professional, complete, stand-alone websites. Each site is simply an affiliate of our client, just like thousand of other legitimate businesses out there. We're not talking about some goofy WebPosition Pro doorway page generator here.

We pay all fees and if we dont perform, we give a full refund. We have NEVER had to do this.

Janet - are you saying that Yahoo bans all affiliate sites?... If you are, than I must tell you that you are wrong. There are THOUSANDS of affiliates sites in Yahoo and they let them in on a daily basis. They just classify them as affiliates so that everyone can see that it is an affiliate of someone else. I think this is fair of them.

Did you know that out of the 65,000 advertisers with Overture, most of them by far are affiliates and resellers of someone else's product? If you kicked out all affiliate sites, there would be no credit card sites, no insurance brokerages, and hundereds of other perfectly legitimate industries geared towards resellers.

Trust me... we understand EXACTLY what Yahoo and the other engines allow and dont allow, and I can tell you that they will absolutely allow an affiliate site IF AND ONLY IF it has good content on it.

If you submit a page with no good content and just affiliate links, they will not like that. I admit that it is a thin line... but the fact is... Yahoo does allow these sites and we would not have a thriving business if they didn't. You just have to understand what is acceptable and what is not.

Janet - the best way to understand what Yahoo, Google, and AV think about affiliate sites is to simply ask them. Thats what we do all the time... like we did at the last search engine conference in San Jose. They will gladly tell you that they base their decision on a case-by-case basis... and the deciding factor is always QUALITY, UNIQUE, CONTENT.

If you really think about it, Janet - isnt it possible that an affiliate's website could have much better content on it than the parent website? Which would be a better user experience? All of our sites have excellent content on them and I truly believe that we are providing the search engines and the users with a beneficial service.

Janet - you said that Yahoo, AltaVista, and Google have banned us. This is not true as we are ranked very well in all 3 of these places. I don not understand why you would make such a false statement to this audience without any evidence of such.

I have now taken the time to explain clearly what Traffic Logic does for our clients. I am now very eager to hear Janet explain to everyone here exactly how we're violating Yahoo's terms of service...

I would actually truly enjoy to hear people's opinions who think we are doing anything wrong. This is a fascinating industry to me and we have gone to great lengths to try and provide our clients better visibilty, while at the same time providing high quality content to users and search engines alike.

All I care about is where our clients' websites are ranked... and I can tell you that they are certainly not banned and are ranked very high.

Linda - not sure why you're asking, but yes - we do accept all major credit cards as payment. We have never had a chargeback in 1 1/2 years of business.

A search on the Internet for Mailboxes Etc. locations confirms that they have their offices in the exact same address as Traffic Logic: http://www.mbe.com/hpgen/CenterPage.asp?strCenterNum=MBE0332

Does Traffic Logic really have their offices in that building or is that suite number just a PO Box address?

If not, be at their door when they open up. I know it is embarrassing to admit to being scammed, but it is not worth 7k to save face.

Please do not let this experiance give teh impression that all promotional companies are sharks, many of them really are decent people.

1 - Zerys.com was a marketing site we used for awhile while our main trafficlogic.com site was being overhauled. There was no need to mention it to the BBB. It is very common for online business owners to own more than one domain, but feel free to call the BBB and tell them about it if you think we did something wrong.

2 - I never said Yahoo allowed "doorways". I said they allowed "affiliates"... please do not twist my words since there is a big difference. I agree with you that "doorways" are not allowed by Yahoo. The only question is, what is a doorway vs. an affiliate site?

We have had numberous discussion with Yahoo AND Google about what the difference between a doorway and an affiliate site is. Editorial representatives from both engines have made it clear that when they look at a website that has a link to another site on it, the content on the site is the deciding factor as to whether they will allow it in or not.

If you build a site that has no real content value, and just has a bunch of links to someone else's site, there is no real value to the user. If you build a site that just mirrors the copy from the parent site, but placed on a different color site, this has no value either.

If you have a site, however, that has a lot of good content that is unique and valuable, that cannot be found on the parent site, and have just one link among many which leads to another site, how is that a doorway? The content is providing valuable material to the user that they could not find on the other site.

If that were considered a doorway, that would mean that every site that has a link to another site is creating a "doorway" for that other site... that is obviously absurd.

2 - "The site must clearly define its purpose, products, and/or services"

Exactly - the purpose of our sites is always to provide good information to users about a given topic. It is not to push or force people to any other site. They are information resources first and foremost. This is EXACTLY the kind of content Yahoo and Google are craving for their indexes.

I completely agree with your assessment of where affiliate sites are and are not acceptable in Yahoo. If the site is considered to be an affiliate of another site by a Yahoo editor, than he/she will simply categorize it as an affiliate when they add it to their directory so that people know. (By doing this, Yahoo is agreeing that there IS value to affiliate sites or else they would not add them to their directory at all.)

3 - We are not making any false claims whatsoever on our site. We make it very clear to potential clients that we do not need to touch their existing site. What false claims are you referring to when it comes to what Yahoo will and will not accept?

4 - Ok - you got me - our statement about each site costing $299 per year to be listed in Yahoo might be misconstrued... it should say each "commercial" site costs $299 per year... we will update that. This was not an intentional attempt to fool anyone. (Anyone prospective client reading our site would likely be a comercial site.)

5 - Ok - fair enough again - you are right that Yahoo does sometimes put people in a few different categories... I think awhile ago it was only one... not sure... but in any case I dont agree that it is the norm to get 2 or 3 categories. I think that norm by far is to only get 1.

6 - I think we're all talking about 2 different things when it comes to the Google banning and spidering thing. You first told people that Google and AV banned us and I replied that we score very well with AV and Google.

Scott than replied saying he could not find our trafficlogic.com site anywhere on Google. I replied that I never submitted our trafficlogic.com site and there were no links to it that I was aware of so I wasnt surprised he coudnt find it. The ONLY way Google will find a site is if you submit it, or if there is a link to it from some other site it spiders.

Now you are talking about our content sites again... when we list our content sites in Yahoo, they are ABSOLUTELY spidered by Google and rank decent, but not all that great since there is no real link pop to them at that point.

I agree that Google bans doorway pages... thats why they've NEVER banned a single content site that we've created. Our sites have better content and information than most sites they index.

7 - You are correct again - I do NOT have access to Yahoo's server logs, but what I do have access to is a study done by Lycos which they recently published and announced at the last SE coference in San Jose which shows that 80% of people skip over the top 3 sponsored matches. (I think its closer to 90% based on the data we have).

Once again, I suggest you study your facts before making claims you're not sure of - people look to you for advice in this forum and your reputation is on the line.

8 - Janet - why would you say that we dont have any outside recomendations when you have no idea whether thats true or not? The truth is, we give our clients A LOT of referrals to call to see how good of a job we've done for them. I agree that people should not just listen to what we tell them, they should always call other clients and talk to them first.

... it seems that every time an SEO company is asked about in this forum, they're attacked vicously and than everyone else starts promoting their own SEO services (just a personal observation there).

It is quite a common practice for people doing business strictly on the internet to not post their actual physical address to the general public.

Once again, Janet jumps to the conclusion that this means we're a scam. Any legitimate prospect who wants to stop by and visit our offices are welcome any time.

Is there any one here with any decency and a law degree that can tell me whether Janet has the right to slander our company this way? I doubt I would waste my time and money on a lawsuit, but it really doesnt seem right that someone can just make false claims about a legitimate company with a perfect record and not a single complaint as if she was sure they were fact.