Question : Traffic-Power Search Engine Placement - User Feedback?

A website I take care of is using an outfit called www.traffic-power.com which guarantees a certain % of top-10 placements in the top 40 or so search engines.

Has anybody used this outfit?  

I have serious reservations about their methodology and effectiveness, and yet my boss keeps forking over money to them.

Would appreciate your thoughts on their methods:
1. They take 20 keyword phrases the owner thinks are important.
2. They then create "attraction pages" which are templates based on those phrases.  There are 14 pages full of keywords and links for each keyword, for a total of 280 extra htm pages they add to your site.  I think of these as "Search engine bait."
3. They create another htm page that is nothing but links to 1000s of other sites, that have no bearing on the business at hand.
4. They do something that sounds suspiciously like spamming.

The  fee is around $1600/yr.

Would greatly appreciate your thoughts.  Here is their description of how they work.
http://www.traffic-power.com/sep_faq.php

This is my first post to E-E.  If there is interest on methodology, I'll post later about effectiveness.

Thanks,
Bill

Answer : Traffic-Power Search Engine Placement - User Feedback?

Here is my opinion on the matter.

But first, let me elaborate on that link popularity issue since I think I was somewhat ambiguous. Those 1000s of links are probably links to their other customers. While they are trying to help you, they are continually trying to help their current clients by further increasing link popularity. They probably have their other clients linking to your site as well.

Now, for the beef: of course it would be nice to rank amongst the top of search engine results. Since a lot business wants this, it makes sense to offer a service that attempts to “boost” a company’s rating in search engine results.

Before obtaining such services, I think a company should probably ask itself if it relies heavily on internet traffic for its business. Not all companies depend on this. This is where someone needs to do a study a weight benefits from costs, etc.

Remember that the purpose of search engines is to provide the use with the most relevant results. Different search engines have employed different algorithms to implement this. There is no one standard. Each search engine has its own way of determining relevancy, and whoever does it best becomes the most popular search engine.

In an effort to return the most relevant results and improve its services, search engines continually enhance their algorithms. These constant changes probably would support the argument for soliciting the services of a search engine placement company. It would make sense to rely on a dedicated professional service to handle these matters since this matter is indeed complex.

In the case of Traffic Power, their apparent reliance on “keywords” seems to contradict the report on SearchEngineWatch.com. Is this dedicated company able to keep up to date with the changes? It appears that is has not. But then again, “keywords” aren’t the only consideration – many others factor in.

In the end, I think the results should determine whether a search engine placement company is successful or not. Take a few of the keywords you think your customers may use to search for you on the Internet, then try it on some of the popular search engines. If you appear on the first page, then the search engine placement company was very successful. If you do not appear within the results at all, then it may be time to reconsider things.

I suggest you try gain an understanding of search engines first by going to the site I mentioned. That will help you assess your current situation a lot better.

Good luck!