In simple terms we were duped by Ken Wisnefski and Edward Cilurso.
To read everything about Webimax and how they take advantage of others visit:
Http://uniquemethod.com/review-of-webimax-seo-practices-and-rankings
You wont find any negative WebiMax reviews at the time this blog post was written, but how does a company that deals with hundreds of clients in an industry where results cannot be 100% guaranteed get by without a single complaint being posted about them?
If you take a look at the WebiMax Top SEOs profile and the WebiMax Best Web Design Agencies profile you wont find any negative WebiMax reviews either. At the bottom of both profile pages youll find the following:
We reserve the right to monitor and remove any and all reviews about WebiMax at our discretion.
Any negative feedback submitted to either site is probably going to be rejected, so if youre an unsatisfied customer of WebiMax and want to leave any complaints about your experience feel free to add your comments to this review below
WebiMax Complaints
WebiMax calls the censoring of complaints reputation management and they offer this service to others, but I would call this something far different. Here are the important parts pulled straight from the Reputation Management section of their website:
Make aggressive pushes to generate positive remarks and statements about the company / brand
The real meat of the campaign, where we use our SEO expertise to generate positive reviews, and push aside the neutral / negative ones
Using SEO tactics, push down any neutral or negative comments
Designing a crisis communications campaign that acts to respond to negative comments / complaints
Reevaluate and clean up any negative reviews still in the search engines
WebiMax also seems to be censoring the Internet by having their lawyers send take-down notices and threaten lawsuits to any website hosting negative reviews about them.in my opinion, this is a gross violation of peoples first amendment rights to criticize a company, an abuse of the legal system, and a complete disregard for the US constitution.
WebiMax SEO Rankings
Top SEOs claims to review SEO companies and provide fair rankings based on their extensive evaluation process.in actuality, they seem more like a web directory that ranks SEO companies based on how much money theyre willing to pay them. WebiMax ranks number one on the list
In order to be ranked, SEO companies can register and pay a minimum fee of $1,000 per month.
If you want to be considered for their SEO & PPC Competitions youll be paying $4,800 per competition totaling $9,600 in fees just for entry into both competitions. Below is a screenshot of the form to improve your rankings on Top SEOs.
Heres a blog post written by Aaron Wall at SEO Book, a well respected SEO site within the industry, where he explains more about the rating service. I also recommend you read this eye opening story written by Davy Feller at HTML Link about his own personal experience with Top SEOs, and youll understand more on how the it all works.
WebiMax Web Design Rankings
Best Web Design Agencies is almost an exact copy of Top SEOs just with a different logo. If you check their rankings list youll find WebiMax yet again at the number one spot.
In order to register for inclusion in the rankings on this site youll have to pay a minimum fee of $500 per month.
Below is a screenshot of the form to improve your rankings on Best Web Design Agencies.
Would you really believe that WebiMax is the best web design company out there because this website says they are? I think it is easier for the average person to see whats really going on here as opposed to the Top SEOs site because you can actually see a web design, but you cant really see SEO.
Full Disclosure
When you first visit either website you may see a popup message at the bottom of the screen that makes it harder to find the full disclosure link. For this reason, Ive provided a link to the full disclosure which can be found on either of the websites, and Ive also provided the parts worth reading below:
E-ventures Worldwide, LLC cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of Rankings.
By developing and posting such rankings, topseos.com makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or factual basis of the rankings.
We charge a standard fee from agencies and software developers for our time to evaluate.
Service agencies and software developers may also commit funds towards the continued research and development and marketing of the topseos.com brand to further assist buyers
In no way is e-ventures Worldwide, LLC or topseos.com affiliated in any manner with Consumer Union (Consumer Reports), nor does e-ventures Worldwide, LLC or topseos.com base any of its opinions, ratings, directories, reviews or any other information on that of Consumer Union
I dont think this company provides a legitimate service and appears to sell their rankings to the highest bidder. They cant even guarantee the integrity of their rankings. Dictionary.com defines integrity as adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.in other words, they cannot even guarantee they are being honest.
WebiMax TV Appearances
The owner of WebiMax, Ken Wisnefski, has made multiple appearances on TV networks like Fox Business and MSNBC where he touts about the awards from Top SEOs. They also advertise these TV appearances on their website as if they are network endorsements. Namedropping TV networks like this is one of the oldest tricks in the trade no matter what the industry.
Just because someone makes a few meaningless TV appearances doesnt mean that the TV networks endorse the company.
WebiMax Pricing
Once youve been fooled into thinking WebiMax is the best web design and SEO company in the whole wide world, the next step is locking you into a one year contract. The client terms listed below used to be hosted directly on WebiMaxs website for public access at www.webimax.com/terms, but they have since then taken it offline. Here are the important parts they use to lock their clients into paying thousands of dollars every month:
Neither WebiMax nor any of its employees, owners or agents, warrants that the functions contained in the Website will be uninterrupted or error-free. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Website is with the Client.in no event will WebiMax, its owners or agents be liable to the Client or any third party for any damage
All prices specified in this Agreement will be honored for one (1) year after both parties have signed the contract.
Payments will be made on your anniversary date each month.
Client will provide a credit card that WebiMax will charge as outlined in the payment schedule.
This Agreement constitutes the entire understanding of the parties. Any changes or modifications thereto must be in writing and signed by both parties.
The Laws of the State of New Jersey shall govern this Agreement. Furthermore, it is agreed that New Jersey is the proper venue and jurisdiction of any claims resulting from this agreement.
Youll want to stay away from any company that wants to charge your credit card on a monthly basis for one full year without offering any kind of warranty, liability, or guarantees whatsoever.
If you pay thousands per month for SEO and your search rankings gets worse, website traffic goes down, something gets messed up on your website, they cause your website to get hacked, etc youre going to want a partial or full refund. Thats why you need some type of guarantee just in case they leave you worse off then your were to begin with.
And if you end up having to sue for your money back because of something like this hopefully you live in the same state as the company otherwise have a fun trip! So its probably a good idea to find someone local for this type of work if at all possible.
WebiMax Employees
Are you looking for a new job? WebiMax will hire people with little to no experience, so anyone can apply! Ken Wisnefski, the owner of WebiMax, stated in an interview on Fox Business:
I think that what we had to do, we had to become more creative and take people that didnt really have that skill set and train them to become the type of people that we wanted.
Why would an SEO company prefer to hire people without any real job experience? Well thats because anyone can easily learn the basics of SEO, and so they dont have to pay their employees very much.
SEMPO Member
The average person and most SEO clients have probably never heard of SEMPO and wouldnt be able to tell you what it is. SEMPO stands for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and they claim that their activities are primarily centered on the education and awareness of SEO. At least thats what it says on their about page? But they seem to be more concerned with how many people theyve signed up so they can collect on their annual membership fees.
WebiMax displays the SEMPO logo like its some kind of seal of approval. Theyre a SEMPO Circle Member, and all that means is they pay $5,000 a year to be apart of SEMPOs online community. Anyone can join this group as long as the pay the annual fee, and it doesnt mean they approve your practices if you display their logo on your website.
Google AdWords
WebiMax displays a Google AdWords Certified Partner logo on their website as well. The requirements for this certification are very minimal. Theres only two requirements:
Have at least one individually qualified employee.
Have managed at least a US $10,000 spend over 90 days (to be counted from the day the AdWords account is linked to the MCC). The MCC account linked to the company must have spend on 60 days out of a 90-day period.
So they only need one person at the company to have passed the test provided by Google, and they need to have spent at least $10,000 of their clients money towards advertising on Google AdWords.
An Internet test is like an open note test; anyone capable of having two web browser windows opened on their computer can take the test in one window and look up the answers in the other window. Obviously having this certification doesnt mean much, and it definitely doesnt mean that Google endorses the practices of WebiMax.
If you really feel you need to use AdWords to show up in the search results, why not save yourself a few thousand dollars and just setup a Google AdWords account yourself? That way youll have more money to put towards your campaign instead of paying the monthly bill on the new car some corporate executive just bought with the money they were able to extort from you. And if you want to learn the basics of real SEO you can download a copy of Googles SEO Starter Guide.
In Conclusion
When someone wants to perform a search theres a 65% chance they will use Google. Yahoo holds the second largest share of Internet searches coming in at around 18%, while Microsofts Bing lands about 12% of the search market. The other 5% of the market goes to all the other less used search engines like Ask, Lycos, Dogpile, etc Based on the current state of Internet searches, Google makes the rules that actually matter and nobody completely knows those rules except for Google.
Sure following basic SEO strategies can still help your website perform better, but other than the basics everything else is just guesses and luck. Youll want to stay clear of any company that tries to claim they know the secret formula needed to rank number one Google.
If you want to hire a company based on the awards and recognition theyve received I recommend checking out either Awwwards, primarily focused on websites built with HTML, or TheFWA, mainly focused on websites built with Flash. I would go with a website built with HTML since its much better from an SEO point of view. There are many other legit award sites you can find if you just do a Google search. Just make sure you do your research before you believe everything you read.
The reason I wrote this blog post is because Im sick of hearing about clients that have been ripped off by SEO companies, and only end up with a damaged reputation and a website in major need of repair. SEO is still a poorly understood concept for many businesses and consumers, and for this reason alone so many scam companies are still able to exist as well as flourish within the industry today. Like they say, Theres a sucker born every minute P.T. Barnum.
Tags: SEO, TopSEOs, WebiMax
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12 Comments
Sergei Voitenko says:
February 27 at 5:14 pm
Thanks for the article. Im a past client of WebiMax and I had to discontinue their services because there were simply no results. I was working with them for about 5 months and paying $1,250 per month. All the links they did were only social bookmarks and directories, and they didnt deliver on any of the keywords that were promised.
Long story short, after 5 months of their services I have no organic search traffic whatsoever. Is there even an SEO company that can deliver results or at least not present directory submissions and crappy social bookmarks as SEO work, but actually build some relevant links?
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R Holmes says:
February 25 at 8:39 pm
I am so glad to have stumbled upon this as I was set to begin a contract with them this upcoming week. My rep isnt pushy and I think thats their play, to have an arrogant aire about themselves to make the clients feel as though its our loss if we dont choose them for the SEO service.
I realize that I first need to understand SEO on my own before dumping thousands of dollars yet again into a too good to be true service, with the promises of climaxing my company to instant million dollar growth overnight. I realize that there are many small tasks we could do in-house to improve our SEO and search ranks, including the fact that we have an amazing storefront software with all that already built into it.
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Buck Perley says:
November 29 at 10:51 pm
Thank you very much for this article. I sincerely hope more of Webimaxs potential clients read this and know and what theyre getting themselves into. Unfortunately, my company was not so lucky and ended up getting stuck with this terrible SEO company.
They charged an incredibly high price for work that we essentially could have outsourced to India for a fraction of the price. They never actually tried to understand our business and consistently misrepresented our company. One month, over 50% of the links they had posted had been removed by the site owners, and no efforts were made to replace these, despite their 60 day link guarantee. Their quality control was terrible. Besides the misrepresentation of our business there would be blatant grammatical and spelling errors in our ads and content copy.
Their Client Center backend is totally incomprehensible and inconsistent and they even admit its out of date. It was startling how poorly done their social media efforts were. Our company provides China Sourcing Services, but for some reason they listed our Facebook page to follow a host of pages from the Home Shopping Network, without once consulting us. Furthermore, every single social link they posted was taken down as spam given the low relevance and poor quality.
The worst part is that their communication was terrible. I would go for weeks without hearing from them as I had questions I wanted to ask, specifically pertaining to the things mentioned above. This was seriously a horrible experience, and I hope we can get more people to see this page before considering using Webimax for their SEO services.
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Ronnie B. Says:
November 21 at 9:17 pm
Nice post on Webimax, I used to work for them, and I have to say I only know of one person that works there out of 100's that knows SEO. We used to loose clients all of the time, I left because I was offered a way better paying job and they counter offered verbally. I said I wanted the counter on paper, they gave it to me on paper and it was a much lower number than I discussed with the manager.
Bottom line is, they are scamming businesses with crappy links in directories (they could just buy online), and people with no SEO skills, except for my buddy that still works there. They suck businesses in with their sales people and businesses lack of knowledge about SEO and online marketing. Their web design skills are horrible! Check out cjsheating.com, they did the site and it sucks for what quality they say they do.
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Jen says:
October 12 at 5:12 pm
We used WebiMax and they did a terrible job. They kept making excuses and after we spent a great deal of money there was no results. They have great sales people and pride themselves on being the #1 SEO company, but after 10 months there was no results to show for it and our rankings have gone down.
I have left comments on the topseos.com website and it was deleted. I have spoke with a few people at WebiMax and they refuse to refund even a fraction of the fees given their poor performance. Its so shocking they can get away with highway robbery and small businesses using a majority of their advertising / marketing dollars are mislead and then screwed.
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M. Edwards says:
October 6 at 10:08 pm
Nice discovery, I wondered if TopSEOs was a pay to be listed site. It seems like a smarmy way to get attention, but maybe its a such a crowded field and tough to get noticed? Has anyone actually used WebiMax that can give a real firsthand account here of how they actually perform? Thanks again for this enlightening post!
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Michael says:
October 3 at 2:16 pm
Great article, as a developer I have had this conundrum when consulting my clients on SEO. The trouble is its hard to see through all the smoke, and thus even harder to know who to trust. A client of mine seems to be committed to going with WebiMax despite this article, but to be honest, Id like to see where it goes, I will do my best to report back.
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Govind Singh says:
September 26 at 3:28 am
Thanks for such an eye-opening post. A number of so-called top SEO firms have gained the advantage by paying huge amounts against the favor. This is very important to make people aware against such bogus companies. Have a nice day!
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Dean Cruddace says:
September 19 at 8:51 am
Thanks for the insight into this company and the detail you have put into this post.
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Ron Krause says:
September 19 at 7:11 am
When I first went to Top SEOs it did not sound so bad so I signed up. After looking into the different offers they had I was shocked and realized they were more like an over priced ad agency. And I totally agree that anybody depending on AdWords as a major portion of their SEO is getting ripped. As I was writing this I went to WebiMax and got your point. Theyre rated No. 1 by none other than TopSEOs. Thanks for the article and have a great day.
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Alan Bleiweiss says:
September 18 at 7:46 am
Thanks for posting this article. I did several articles on the false advertising and bogus claims made by TopSEOs last year. Its really important to help spread the word about the garbage they pass off as legitimate service providers, and WebiMax is right there paying to play.
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Tanya McTavish says:
September 18 at 2:36 am
Thanks for sharing this. Another scheme to look out for my guess is, being in the US, they wont last long with these types of practices. Let the buyer beware
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