This is a subject I like to revisit from time to time. I received this email and I’m sure it went out to thousands of businesses.
At SEO Liverpool we’re sick to death of this type of lame marketing exercise. This is potentially the most harmful type of spam, as it can destabilise new campaigns and usually results in lots of phone calls from clients.
Let me know your thoughts.
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Hello,
I hope you’re doing well!
I was surfing through your site where I saw that your site was not ranking on any search engines.
If you are interested we want to increase the number of visitors to your website, it is important that you have a top search engine position.
Our search engine optimization experts will run a ranking report showing you exactly where your website currently stands in all the major search engines. Then we will email you our analysis report along with the recommendations of how we can increase your rankings, and improve your websites traffic dramatically!
We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality links with a proper reporting format for your site as well.
We wish you the best of luck and looking forward to a long and healthy business relationship with you and your company.
Please do let me know if you have any questions.
Kind Regards,
****
Post:- Online Marketing Manager
Reply me:-
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The main issue I have with this type of email, is that it reinforces a certain stereotype. The stereotype that people working within our industry are opportunists, willing to take on any work, and we’ll scare you into it. If you speak with web designers, developers and many other associated industries, they’ll tell you that search engine optimisation SEO has a poor reputation.
Sadly the companies that operate in this manner will promise the earth and very rarely deliver.
The reasons why I feel this type of email is harmful
- It isn’t addressed to anyone (this gives you a clue that they have just spammed an entire network)
- How can they possibly investigate your website and the potential keywords. Especially as we’ve worked out that this email has been sent to thousands of people.
- Good SEO/SEM firms do not advertise in this way and here is why…
- It’s simply not ethical for an SEO company to work with more than one client in a specific industry.
- It’s simply not possible to scale a business to deal with that many prospects and effectively evaluate opportunities.
No Two SEO Strategies Are The Same
Once a business approaches an SEO company, a review (almost a due diligence project) needs to take place for the following reasons…
- Can you work in this area? Do you have the expertise? Is it ethical? Do you already have a client in this space?
- You need to establish a base level of current activities.
- Is it possible with a reasonable budget to get those identified positions
A responsible SEO company will evaluate…
- Competitiveness of keywords.
- Other competing companies.
- A basic breakdown of what need to change or adapt.
- Internal resource and departments involved in the web property.
- Is their potential for a good ROI (return on investment)?
Return on investment is key when dealing with clients
If the level of investment in SEO, website changes and social strategies isn’t proportional to estimated traffic, conversions, profit margins and eventually scale-ability… then it’s a no go!
e.g. The simple economic formula
If you make money by selling in volume ‘stack high and keep it cheap’ and search volumes are low, then it may not make business sense.
Acceptable Prospect
- High Value Product/Service
- Proportionally Good Search Volumes
- Low Or Medium Keyword Competition
Difficult Proposition
- Low Value Product/Service or Poor Margins
- Low Search Volumes
- Medium To High Competition
Most sites fall in-between and therefore a robust research piece should be your first port of call.
Conclusion
The inadequacies in such a poorly researched email wouldn’t fool anyone in the industry. On closer inspection this company hasn’t got a website that relates to the email address sent. Therefore, anybody who conducts a little research won’t be drawn in.
Unfortunately some SME’S will be fooled! Either way, the SEO industries credibility is under-threat as these type of emails are becoming more common.