I don’t want to make anyone paranoid, but there are more internet marketing companies than you probably imagine who are what I call “SEO spoilers”. That is, providers who want to inflict as much pain as possible on any client who leaves them.

If a client discontinues their relationship with them, they will do everything from removing it from directories to deleting their pay per click accounts. In some instances, they have even removed titles, tags, robots.txt files, redirects, content, etc. from websites. Some of them justify this to themselves in odd ways, while others are actually seeking revenge against anyone who stops writing a monthly check to them.

In some cases, a client may have set themselves up to “lose” certain things at the end of the business relationship. For example, if they didn’t pay to have a ppc account set up or maintained, but entered into some other kind of agreement with the company who did it for them, then maybe they don’t have any rights to it.  If they are walking away from a contract and/or haven’t paid their bills, these consequences may be penalties they have agreed to and they should not come as a surprise.

However, if a client has paid for work on behalf of their online business, IMHO, it is theirs. Period. And any attempts to devalue it are signs of bad business ethics.