Complaint Review: Dave Adamson SEO Juice Australia

In an email to Dave sent on 14th February 2013, I said the following:

"Could you let me know the time span for when you usually expect traffic to start increasing to a website and when you think the keywords may start to settle down on Google?  I’m curious because with two months approaching around the 20^th, I haven’t yet seen any increase in traffic at all and would like to have an idea when I could expect to see some kind of increase.  I think probably around the three month market something should begin to happen but maybe you could confirm that?"

On 17th February, he replied:

"Regarding the 3 month projection, that is a globally recognised timeframe to judge how an SEO campaign is progressing.  Traffic and rankings typically start improving from the 2nd month onwards but in some cases this will vary depending on a number of factors out of our control.  From what I can see so far in your rankings some keywords have moved up and some down, so we are yet to see a strong and consistent rise in your rankings.

As I can see that our links are now being picked up by the search engines and indexed I would anticipate that you will start to see some strong improvements over the next couple of weeks at the most."

On 22nd February in a response to Dave, I stated:

"As well as no significant traffic to this point in time which I have already mentioned, I’m also concerned that the bounce rate has remained unchanged and time being spent on the site has actually dropped slightly."

On 14th March I sent yet another email in which I stated:

"On the 15^th March you would have been doing SEO for Stone Mania for three months.  Although there has been no significant increase in traffic during this time, I have noticed that the flow of traffic on a daily basis has started to even out a little bit and does not fluctuate up and down as much as it did before.  Also the keywords which are being used to find my site are starting to become more relevant but those that you are promoting are making absolutely no impact at all and seem to be very static in their positions on Google.  ‘Gemstone jewellery’ has been in the same place on page 2 for the last two months and ‘Jewellery Online’ has not moved higher than page 18 during that same time.  With regards to sales, as yet I have seen absolutely no increase and according to analytics, bounce rate has gone up and the time being spent on the site is down.

So far I am a little disappointed and hope that I will start to see some real significant improvements over the next couple of months."

It was the 7th April before I received a reply from Dave Adamson at SEO Juice and in his email he said:

"Sorry for the late response, I wanted to review your progress thoroughly before responding.
After reviewing your Google analytics I can see the rather steady traffic flow with not too much improvement so I am definitely keen to improve this for you before June.

Also, after reviewing your keyword positioning it does seem like the keywords are pretty consistent with slight up/down fluctuations. Another thing is that the majority of your rankings are sitting close to the top page but mostly on page 2 which is not ideal.

What we will do to boost your rankings throughout April is create an additional layer of backlinks for you which should create some potency in the search engines and have you getting first page rankings for the majority of your keywords by June."

On 7th May I emailed again and said:

"Have you managed to find any reason for the volume of traffic to my site remaining so low?  Although there is the odd spike every few days, the number of hits remains pretty consistent with how it’s been for the last few years.  What I am finding is that more relevant keywords are being used by people who land on my site and these also seem to change quite regularly which is good news, but time spent on the site and bounce rate has not really changed at all as is the case with the volume of orders that I’m receiving and if anything, I’ve noticed a considerable drop in online purchases compared with this time last year."

He replied:

"Although your keyword positioning is certainly improving over each month, traffic can be low for a number of reasons. The traffic spikes are usually a good sign though so hopefully these spikes in traffic start to become more consistent and then permanent.  To speed up the keyword process I would recommend that we start targeting some additional lucrative keywords.

Attached are some additional keywords that I recommend we work with.  These should rank quite quickly and hopefully give you a significant boost in traffic within the next month or so."

In an email sent a few days later, Dave said:

"I definitely agree with you that rankings have not been as good as they good have been in terms of monthly improvements. They have been steadily rising but not at a speedy rate.  I would suggest that this is due to the nature of the keywords we are working on. They are quite broad and the competition is quite high so this would explain the jumping around.  If we actually start to mix the keywords up with longer tail more exact keywords such as "gemstone pendants online" or "buy gemstone pendants" instead of simply "gemstone pendants" there is no doubt that the rankings will improve much faster and stronger.

You may have heard about Googles next major update "Penguin 2.0" which is just around the corner. I am very excited to see the results from this on your campaign as we have been travelling in the same direction as Google in terms of link quality for some time now."

On 28th May I sent another of my regular emails:

"Whilst business remains as quite as ever, I’m extremely concerned to see today that the keyword gemstone jewellery which has been stuck on page two of Google since January has now dropped to page 9 and the other keywords that are being promoted are still nowhere in sight"

The following the I receive an email back in which he said:

"I can see the drop for "gemstone jewellery" which seems quite concerning, as well as a few other drops so I can definitely understand your concern.  I have again looked deeply into your website to find out the reasons why your site continues to do so poorly despite the high quality SEO and website content and aside from the site getting a very low load speed score (57%, when it should be above 70%) I believe it ultimately comes down to the sluggish code that your website is written in.  Have you ever thought about moving to a more modern CMS such as Wordpress for this website?

I honestly think that in order to save your online business the last straw would be to convert your website to Wordpress and have all onsite SEO configured to the highest quality. This will dramatically improve loading speed, the ease of the search engine bots to crawl the website, plus many more benefits.

Another idea is if we move your budget from the consistent monthly backlinks to a higher level of content concentration for just a month or two we should see some decent improvements which could potentially save your online business."

Dave also agreed to start writing some articles to support my SEO campaign and he stated that a total of 15 would be written over the next few months.  In his next email to me, he stated:

"We are just busy writing all the high quality articles and buying images to create some excellent feeder sites to use for the backlinking efforts, here are a few live ones so far:

(3 url's were given here to articles which had been written)

These are going to dramatically help your rankings once all 15 are complete and we send links to them.  In fact they are already helping significantly, and that's just with 3 of them.  I look forward to reporting on some further positive progress for you shortly!"

Having read the three articles, I replied:

"Thanks for your prompt reply.  Glad to see the articles have been written, two of the three read pretty well, the second one on hub pages however is saying it is no longer published."

On 20th June I advised Dave at SEO Juice:

"So I have finally discovered the reason for my site running so slowly.  Deep in the back end was a tool which automatically converted my images from JPEG to GIF and these type of files take up about 4 times as much space as JPEGS.   Considering I have about 2500 images in total on my site, that’s no wonder it has been running slowly.  This has now been removed and I have converted and uploaded about 1000 images as JPEGS so the site should already be running considerably faster.  I have about 1500 still to do but will get this completed over the next week or so. 

This really should dramatically improve the way my site is performing and along with the work that you’re doing, things really should start to take off now, finally"

On 20th June, Dave replied:

"Sounds good. I am sure this will definitely make a huge improvement."

By 20th July, there had still been little or no improvement in traffic or ranking of my gemstone jewellery website Stone Mania so I once again emailed Dave:

"We are still creating the high quality article links which are definitely making an impact but what we will be doing now is creating another layer of high traffic links from participating in more highly relevant forums and blogs and getting your links and anchors in there wherever we naturally can.

This should start having a major impact in about 2 weeks so fingers crossed this pushes you back to page 1 for the majority of your keywords, and as always we will be keeping a close eye on rankings for you. All onpage factors are excellent so it is just a matter of pumping out enough power and authority through link building."

To this I replied:

"Thanks for your email.  Well I have to say that I’m really not convinced that the links and articles that are being created for my website are really making the slightest bit of difference.  As mentioned in my earlier email, it has been 7 months now since you’ve been doing SEO for Stone Mania and my business is certainly not receiving anything like the volume of traffic that I was getting during the latter part of last year before I started using SEO Juice.  There has been a significant drop and with an average of 25 hits a day at the moment, this seems unlikely to change anytime soon so in effect I’m not even back to the level that I was at before the drop away in business in January.

I have expressed my concerns to you about this each month since the end of March.  Although on some days there has been a very small improvement in traffic and time spent on site, it’s almost unnoticeable and certainly hasn’t brought me any significant level of new business. 

I also need to correct you when you say my keywords are all stuck on pages 2, 3 and 4 of Google because from what I can see, Gemstone Jewellery and Gemstone Rings have both been on page 5 for many weeks now, Jewellery Online is nowhere to be seen and the same with Rose Quartz and my other two keywords. 

Although I remain positive especially following each of your comments, nothing is really changing and I now have to make a decision to stick with it or to move on once again.  I cannot afford to still be having this level of traffic in November and December and by then, I would have been having SEO with you for 12 months.  Generally 3 months is the expected time period to see some kind of improvement, so I think you’ll agree that to see so little after 7 is extremely disappointing.  My website is not blacklisted by Google, nor does it have any major issues that could be causing such poor results, the speed issue has now been resolved so how can it still be getting so little traffic even after 7 months of good quality SEO?"

Having heard absolutely nothing at all from Dave by the end of July, on the 1st August I said the following:

"I’m very disappointed to see that after seven months of SEO with you, my monthly traffic has dropped yet again and as you’ll see from the attached document, since January only one month showed a slight improvement in traffic.  Also since January, my online business has virtually come to a standstill with hardly any orders coming in from new customers and no new orders at all for over two months which is a first in all 9 years that I’ve been trading online.   “Gemstone Jewellery” which has always been the quickest keyword to reach page one of Google when I’ve been having SEO hasn’t even got to page two this time and now it has dropped to page six.  As for the other keywords they haven’t made any significant impact either.   The results of having SEO with SEO Juice are possibly the worst that I’ve ever had and I actually stayed with you longer than I’ve ever stayed with any other SEO company.  I really can’t wait any longer because at this rate, I’ll have no traffic at all in a few months time.  

I appreciate that Google doesn’t make it easy with the updates they keep releasing, but when you pay good money to someone who specialises in a particular field only to receive minimal results in return, it’s extremely frustrating and considering I’ve had virtually no new business at all over the last 7 months and traffic has dropped to an all time low, the figures clearly show that this really wasn’t a good investment for me, in fact it was a disastrous one.    Furthermore I think the statements that you use on your website and in other forums online are very misleading and offer hope which as in my case lead to absolutely nothing at all especially the term “Guaranteed Traffic Improvements” and "Moneyback Guarantee".  I’m also very disappointed that my last email to you wasn’t even worthy of a reply. 

I think I’ve made it clear how disappointed I am with the results that you’ve achieved over the last 7 months and therefore would like to terminate all SEO work with immediate effect.  Please arrange a refund of any monies that are left over for the remainder of this month following my last payment in July." 

I received a reply on 2nd August in which Dave said:

"Thanks for your email. Although it is disapointing, I definitely see your point of view in terminating the SEO plan due to the results just not picking up despite our efforts and extra work."

Whilst shopping around for a new SEO company, I kept coming back to Dave Adamson's promo thread in the Warrior Forum and I became more and more frustrated at what I was reading.  He had not offered me a refund when I terminated business with him nor had he offered to keep working for me for free until things improved.  As I read through the replies on this thread, I began to realise there was something very wrong here.  On 2nd April 2012 he replied to someone:

"You are GUARANTEED a minimum ranking IMPROVEMENT percentage each 3 months or we work for free".

In another dated 18th September 2013, he said: 

"Yes, this is our guarantee, so if we don't achieve the desired rankings we continue working for up to another 3 months or until rankings are achieved for free.  If after the total six months we do not achieve the ranking (very rare!) we provide a full refund.

-Dave"

The most important thing at this time was for me to find someone who could really promote my website well and to put Dave Adamson and SEO Juice behind me.  Before long I found another company and they began work almost immediately.  However within a few days, I received a troubling email from them in which they advised me that they had started to find a few links in a variety of forums which featured the same snippet of text from my own home page and this would be extremely damaging in the eyes of Google so it would be best if I removed them which they couldn't do as they didn't have the forum passwords.  I certainly had not built these links so I assumed SEO Juice had, so I emailed Dave to ask him to remove them.

On 23rd September I sent the following in an email:

"Is it possible for you to delete this comment that was placed in a q&a forum whilst you were doing SEO on my website as it had been copied and pasted from an article on my website so is not seen in a positive light by Google."

To this he replied:

"Unfortunately we do not have the details anymore but within the backlink reports that we sent you on a monthly basis they inclue the usernames and passwords of each forum profile so you can go in and remove/edit any of the articles.

I am also not sure how the comment has been copy/pasted from your website as that is not the process we use."

As I started checking the backlink reports from SEO Juice, I began finding many links which had been built using the same snippet of text which had been copied and pasted from my website.  So in a further email on the same day, I said:

"I find it extremely difficult to believe that both the above postings were not made by the same person or company.  One of the links pasted above is the offending comment that I asked you to remove, the other is a link from the report that you sent me in June.  The person who wrote that comment has posted in the same forum, they are a new member who has only posted once and they are also very obviously not a native English speaker.  With those facts all being the same, I think it's too coincidental!  Also I notice that one of these is an Australian forum so I think that further confirms that someone from Australia has been posting links to my website and you’re the only person I have ever done business with in that part of the world in relation to SEO.  

I hope we can get to the bottom of this, during the time you were doing SEO on my company, NO OTHER SEO was being done at all so nobody would have posted such a comment on this forum other than someone working for you.   Both articles use MY keywords and both link to my website.  So to tell me that both posts were not submitted by you is just ridiculous!!

I hope you can sort this out otherwise I’ll have to delve into this further to have it investigated as the offending comment is causing harm to my site in the eyes of Google.  I have sent all other reports that you sent to me to my current SEO Co and they are going through to check there are no other comments which have been taken from pages on my website." 

In reply, Dave once again denied it was him who created these links.  In a subsequent email I said:

"Just to jog your memory, thes two screen names your guys used to post these comments are the same.  A few more similarities in the profiles so please don’t say both of these postings were not made by you.  And looking back through all the reports you sent me, you posted something every month in this forum using the keywords we discussed and linking back to my site yet in July, you claim the offending comment copied and pasted from my site wasn’t posted by you?  Even though like all the other comments, it links back to my site?"

It was starting to become frighteningly clear exactly why my website rankings had dropped during the time I was with SEO Juice instead of having improved.  In an email dated 23rd September, I said:

And I think this attachment finally confirms you are not telling the truth!

"Attached is the same comment that I have asked you to remove, but this one WAS posted by you as it’s on my March report that you sent to me, the only difference is, the keyword is Rose Quartz instead of silver and gemstone jewellery and the user name, is different although all other similarities in the profile remain the same.  Now I am beginning to understand why SEO with your company was not successful and I am absolutely furious not only at your dishonesty but also the way in which you do business."  

To this he replied:

"While we have tried to do our best in ranking your website, both through our link building and through onpage SEO guidance, I am deeply sorry you feel this way about our service.  It was never our intention to purposely provide a service which you deem as low quality, nor should any of the content from your website have been copied and pasted into the forum links.

Needless to say we have fired that supplier due to the quality standards of their service slipping over time. When we first started using them we were assured that they were using only native English writers, and the quality was more than acceptable, and at first they were above and beyond our expectations.

Please be aware though, these suppliers were only handling the Forum and Profile links part of the service, all other links were either handled by ourselves manually, or other 3rd party sources here in Aus.

We have now brought all link building sources back within Australia to maintain quality and reliability of our service, and will definitely be keeping a close eye on quality going forward.

Honestly, as some of the forum links may not be providing any benefit to your rankings, they would certainly not be hurting your rankings in any way.

That is because any of your competitors could in theory create negative links and even post these in blackhat link farms or explicit websites in the effort to ruin your rankings. - This is known as negative SEO and the fact that anyone can do this to any website means that it does not carry much (if any) negative weight.

There are plenty of articles online in regards to negative SEO and whether it exists or not. The best course of action for you to take would be to  simply disavow the low quality links and this will release any connection between Stonemania and these links."
 

So having spent a total of $2628 with SEO Juice over 7 months, I was now being told I should just remove all the links that had been built during this time.  I had now been through every link in every report and found many hundreds of links not only with snips of text copied from my own website, but also many disjointed statements and sentences written in poor English all of which linked back to my website using my keywords.  

Now I really was ready to fight to get my money back from Dave Adamson.

I sent him some strongly worded emails in which I stated the facts and submitted quotes from his promo threads in the Warrior Forum and from email communication that had taken place between us.  In his reply dated 26th September, he said:

"Yes, we did start a guarantee on our service which was in effect to plans ordered through the Warrior Forum earlier this year, well after you signed up with us when we did not offer ranking guarantees.

I signed up with SEO Juice in December 2012, the promo threads in the Warrior Forum were dated 19th May 2011, 4th July 2012 and 30th August 2013 and all of these were followed by many enquiries from interested forum members who asked many questions and to all, Dave confirmed the offer was still valid and all parts of it were applicable. 

He went on to say:

"The guarantee includes a refund of the initial 3 months after a total of 6 months work. That said, I am willing to go back 6 months on your subscription and refund the total USD$ of the last 6 months of your subscription, which would total USD$2100."

In response to a question posted on this thread on 20th June 2013, Dave wrote:

"So it's a monthly fee and if we don't achieve top five ranking within three months then we continue to work for free for the next three months.  If we don't rank you in top five after the total six months, we refund all money.  We have never need to provide this refund due to us always reaching minimum goal."

So I wanted my full $2628 refunded, not just the $2100 that he was offering but when I asked for this, Dave advised me:

"Please take note of our Term & Conditions." (In these they basically state they cannot be held liable for links built by third parties).

"Please note that you did not sign up through the Warrior Forum offer, you signed up through our homepage at the time. I have the old website files of the homepage on my computer where you would have needed to accept our terms and conditions before continuing and there is no mention of a ranking guarantee at the time. - This is a very different offer than what was at the Warrior Forum and anything I mentioned on the Warrior Forum is simply not relevant to you."
 

Although I had not contacted Dave through the Warrior Forum, I had read his posts and contacted him directly through his own website on which he DOES offer money back guarantees and guaranteed traffic improvements.  I have screenshots of all these banners and flash screens.  

Dave clearly had no intention of offering me a full refund and since sending him subsequent emails, no money back at all, hence I started posting in the Warroir Forum in his threads in an attempt to ensure that nobody else would be conned by him in the way I had been.  Sadly he is well protected by the forum moderators and despite offering many, many, many facts relating to the work that had been done on my website for seven months and quotes of email communication that took place between us, my comments were all and continue to be, deleted.  I also found sparkling reviews written by someone who I subsequently discovered was the operations manager at SEO Juice and in fact, she sent me two of my monthly reports.  Both of these sparkling reviews were posted in the Warrior Forum but the moderators concluded that it could not be proven that she was working for SEO Juice at the time they were written/posted.

Dave Adamson of SEO Juice continues to post promo campaigns in this and other forums making the same guarantees as he has done for the last two years.  He also still features on his own website SEO Juice.net top five placement guarantees on Google and GUARANTEED traffic improvements.