A few blogs have picked up the story about the paid links allegedly obtained by JC Penney’s former SEO company SearchDex. Vanessa Fox’s detailed article in SearchEngineLand led me to Doug Unplugged, the blog of Doug Pierce, of Blue Fountain Media.
An interesting find by Doug was SearchDex’s client list, which has now been taken offline but might still be in the (Google cache). If you have a paid account at OpenSiteExplorer or MajesticSEO, it might be worth checking out the backlinks.
The discussion at Webmasterworld: Paid Links at JC Penney – Google Takes Manual Action.
Black Hat SEO?!! JC Penny?!! No way!!! I couldn’t believe it when i saw it! If you’re looking for White Hat SEO then the people to call are at [snip]. Thy’re clean, affordable and Transparent!! Check them out at http://www.[example].com. I filled out an estimate form and they got back to me within the hour!!
Rather weak plug and not too transparent.