Hiring Willy-Nilly Is Just Begging For Trouble

I think the debate over whether paid links are against Google’s policies is dead and gone now. Paid links are instant death – especially when the use of them are made public!

As recently reported by WebProNews, JCPenny lost its high Google SERPs via SearchDex, a black hat SEO company. Presumably, JCPenny hired SearchDex without enforcing what could and could not be done in the SEO services it ordered, and as a result, became a victim of Google’s paid links penalty.

According to the report, “A spokeswoman for JCPenney, Darcie Brossart, told the New York Times, ‘JCPenney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies.’”

Someone Didn’t Ask Enough Questions

In our outsourcing book, we explain that hiring contractors can introduce legal, security, and compliance issues. And it’s for this reason, fraud is suspected to most likely occur when contractors are indiscriminately brought aboard. Someone should have vetted SearchDex a bit more thoroughly.

What Went Wrong

I don’t work at JCPenny or SearchDex, so my commentary is limited to speculation. But it seems uncomfortably obvious JCPenny didn’t (1) enforce its company’s policies (or Google’s) within its outsourcing agreement, and (2) monitor SearchDex’s activities.

I can’t imagine a company as well-known as JCPenny wouldn’t care about its online reputation, so for sanity’s sake, let’s assume it did and continues to do so.

Working outside of an employer-employee relationship, which is what JCPenny did with SearchDex, doesn’t permit illegal activity. The minute a service provider decides to break a company’s policy, and the minute the hiring company decides to go along with the activity because it saves money or because it gets the job done faster, that company is at risk for being an accomplice, regardless of what is in or isn’t in a contract. Existing policies must be honored and enforced. And so it is with monitoring.

A simple series of milestone reports could have alerted JCPenny to SearchDex’s unscrupulous behavior, and thus, prompted JCPenny to correct the situation before it went undetected for so long, and unfortunately, caught the media’s attention.

Who’s Responsible Now and For What

Google’s response to JCPenny’s oversight was to drop its SERP from 1.3 to 52. JCPenny’s response was to (appropriately) fire SearchDex. But because JCPenny may incur economic losses from this drop, it could have every legal right to recoup those losses from SearchDex IF:

• The contract between JCPenny and SearchDex specified what activities were allowed and not allowed as appropriate SEO activities.
• The actions of SearchDex demonstrate a breach of said contract.
• The same contract outlined who is responsible for the financial consequences of a contract breach.
• JCPenny is an innocent party.

(That last part is super important.)

Lessons Learned

From this event, I think we can all agree that each and every one of us is responsible for ethical outsourcing practices, no matter how well-known we are. For your own sake, take this as a lesson learned. Outsourcing isn’t to be taken lightly, and there are real consequences when it’s approached as a drive-thru service.

If you haven’t already, register a username for yourself so you can discuss this topic in our Outsourcing Mistakes forum.

Learn who you’re dealing with, and protect yourself with a lawyer-approved contract. Monitor with milestones, and ask questions. Keep a list of who’s responsible for each individual task so they can be held accountable. These are just some of the things that will prevent your business from becoming Twitter’s next embarrassing trending topic!