Dennis Yu

Joshua Crouch of Relentless Digital Took $25,000 from Matt Howard of Travis and Sons Plumbing (and then threatened me)

We just got the green light from Joshua Crouch of Relentless Digital to publish the audit of the $25,000 he took from Travis and Sons, a plumbing company.

The client is filing a chargeback, which is hopefully within the timeframe allowed.

Note that scammers usually threaten legal action, like Joshua Crouch did here, or in some cases, they attempt to take control of everything, as Tristan Parmley did.

But this only backfires, since this only brings them more attention. And they can’t argue the facts of a digital audit.

Other agency owners have said this guy is “arrogant AF”.

Are you ready to see another proud scammer get taken down?

NOTE: if he simply would have done the work promised (to rank on plumbing terms in Gilbert or Fountain Valley) or refunded the money, everything would be alright.

But instead, he decided to send me this, which was authored by Katya Lancero, who appears to be an Indian and tribal relations lawyer…?

Anyways:

Travis and Sons Website Audit

The site’s Domain Rating (DR) is at 11—a clear sign it’s lacking strong links and shows no traffic or keyword presence. Essentially, there’s been no real SEO effort here.

This is the most powerful page on their website.

The term ‘Fountain Hills’ appears 16 times. Picture someone repeating ‘Fountain Hills’ over and over in a conversation—it would sound robotic, wouldn’t it? While such tactics might have worked previously, nowadays, Google not only flags this as spam but may even penalize the website.

Buying backlinks is a big no-no. It’s not just ineffective it’s downright shady, and Google sees right through it.

Look at this the top link is ‘Chicken Rate in Hyderabad,’ linked from the anchor text ‘plumber in Mesa’ on the website. Put yourself in Google’s shoes. Does that link look legitimate? Absolutely not. It screams ‘spam’ because it’s totally irrelevant.

Google won’t be fooled by these tactics. It’s all about relevance and using such methods can actually harm your rankings.

If you ask Josh Crouch, he’ll deny everything. He’ll deny buying links, outsourcing tasks and all sorts of other things.

Someone bought low-quality links. Given the specific anchor text, such as “plumber in Mesa,” it’s clear these links were intended to manipulate search rankings.

To Josh’s credit these strategies were effective for years until Google cracked down on these tactics.

Some of these links lead to directory listings, where you pay about $10 a month or shell out a few hundred dollars to be listed in a local roofing network.

However, these listings don’t carry much weight because none of them have page traffic.

Google values relevance. Make sure your listings accurately describe your services like plumbing in Gilbert or Fountain Hills. Include links to local blogs and real photos of your work to strengthen your connection.

The main problem with these listings is their irrelevance—they’re just spam tactics. Agencies like Joshua Crouch spam home service businesses such as Howard’s into low-authority listings that lack relevancy. If you were to do it, hire someone from Fiverr or similar platforms for under $100 to do it correctly.

They listed Howard for this fine catering listing. So, Josh created a fake listing here.

Buffalo Wild Wings, Ben Jerry’s, Cooper’s BBQ. This listing on ‘Find Local Catering’ isn’t showing up in searches, and the site itself has a low Domain Rating (DR3).

It seems someone, maybe from some random country or elsewhere, was paid to get backlinks for the business.

However, Google easily identifies these links as low-quality, and as a result, they don’t actually contribute positively to improving the website’s visibility in search results. It’s not doing anything good for the overall online performance. And therefore it doesn’t show up. And that’s why the phone is not ringing.

And people like Josh Crouch, he’s not trying to do evil. He’s trying to make money. Just like Roger said, bad plumbers became bad plumbers because they were taught by bad plumbers, so they don’t know any better.

Josh Crouch may suspect, there’s this one Client, Matt, who’s unhappy. But there’s all the, I was taught by so and so how to make money using the internet, so he doesn’t feel like he’s a scammer.

Imagine you have a heart condition, and someone comes to you claiming they attended a weekend training on heart surgery. However, their attempts consistently result in deaths. That’s what happened here.

See here– zero keyword difficulty, and the traffic is pretty low. The traffic is nearly zero, and this page’s position has dropped from 13–16. We are not showing high enough to get any traffic and the reason why – look at this page Tempe plumber.

But let’s look at it from a very simple standpoint. If you are Google and you’re looking at this location page for Tempe, how much proof can you see if there is a real plumber in Tempe and who’s actually doing work there, versus something that anybody could just auto-generate?

Is there anything here that shows you that this page abides by Google’s standards of E-E-A-T, of showing real experience in Tempe, other than unclogging drains and fixing broken toilets?

Now I will ask ChatGPT to analyze this page by copy-pasting everything from the page

“My buddy, Matt, is a plumber in the Phoenix area, serving many neighborhoods. His company is Travis and Sons, which has been around a long time and a company he bought. Here is his location service page for Tempe. Please critique it for PAA and EEAT.”

Now by giving ChatGPT context, it can easily analyze what’s wrong with this page.

ChatGPT will examine the page to pinpoint any necessary fixes or improvements.

The solution to this problem is quite simple. Compile a folder showcasing your plumbing services in Fountain Hills, including videos of you visiting local landmarks such as McDonald’s and other favorite spots in the area.
This content will emphasize your affiliation with Fountain Hills, which in turn builds trust. After gathering these videos, proceed to step 2 of the Content Factory process, which involves transforming them into articles, blog posts, and videos. Finally, distribute this content across your social media channels and website.

But some people like Grant Lira offer PR that’s questionable, claiming to be experts without genuine experience or expertise, which leads to what we call ‘Fake PR’ because it takes real experience to build authentic PR.


Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.
I'm a member of Blitzmetrics Academy and a friend of Dennis to boot. Not only is Dennis highly intelligent and full of great and creative ideas, he's also incredibly generous with both his knowledge and his time. Success couldn't come to a better guy. Thank you for all that you do for the world, Dennis! 🙏

Michael Pacheco

Marketer

Thanks 🙏 for being shining light in this industry. Love what your building for works overseas too network for jobs so innovative. Dennis helped me navigate having bad experiences with marketing agencies and doing dollar a day marketing which has helped my personal brand tremendously. Highly recommend.

Eric Skeldon

Founder at Kingdom Broker

Working with Dennis has been a delightful experience. After meeting him in 2015 I got to collaborate with him on countless occasions. His understanding for state-of-the-art marketing, his implementation, and his leadership put him into the top 0.01% of marketers and mentors.

Jan Koch

Ihr kompetenter Partner für innovative KI-Strategien.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dennis for my podcast in 2021 and since then we have maintained a friendship that grows with each interaction. I have seen Dennis' devotion to his friends and clients firsthand, and our conversations often result in us talking about how we can provide more value to the people around us. He is someone whom I can ask questions on a technical level, and look to on a personal level. If you have any hesitancy about hiring him, get over yourself and do it!

Isaac Mashman

Help scaling personal brands.

Geez, where do I start recommending Dennis? First, he is an absolutely brilliant marketer who understands where marketing is today and where it's going tomorrow. He also has an incredible passion for the International Worker community. The lessons he has taught me from his almost 20 years of experience hiring International Workers have been immense. Most importantly though. Dennis Yu is someone who wants the absolute best for you and is willing to tell you the truth. Dennis sat with me at a point in my business where I was floundering but did not want to admit it. He asked some very straight forward questions to get me to admit my issues, highlighted the issues, and then helped me create a roadmap to success.

Atiba de Souza

International Keynote Speaker | Video Content Superman | Superconnector |

Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will notr regret Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will not regret

Nixon Lee

The PR Whisperer

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