Thu 4 Oct 2007
UK SEO Company? You Sure?
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)I just received this email:
Hi I’m a uk seo company, how could I get a link from your site to my site from a high page ranking page please p*id or free, not interested in banners etc just a simple text link to my site thanks.
Hmmm. No offence, but if you were a UK seo company of any merit, one look at our hobo site and you should have realised:
- We do not b*y or s*ll links, on any site we operate on, including this Hobo site as this is against Google TOS. All links are editorially approved.
- Although I do admit I’ve chased high PR pages in the past, today I’d actually want a link on an important page that has a decent amount of visitors and links to it. If a lot of people are linking to a page on a site, this is probably a good sign of the quality of that page, depending on the number of outbounds on that page. It probably means the page is one of the most visited pages on the site, and naturally, will have a higher Real PR. Google probably likes that page. So i would like it.
- If you’d had looked at our site you’d have realised you could get a free link if you became one of our blog commentators and join in a discussion on one of our hundreds of posts.
- An SEO would have discovered we Do-follow links, meaning… well if you’re a search engine optimization company in the UK, you’ll know what this means.
- Didn’t you hear, some people think PR is not as important as it used to be.
- Didn’t you also hear that for a long time professional seos in the UK have questioned the relevance of Google Pagerank (PR) to today’s seo industry?
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not criticising just for the sake of it. If you sent this email, please, take part in the blog, get a link. If your site isn’t a bad neighbourhood (we do try and determine this) you can have a free editorially approved, search engine friendly link in exchange for intelligent contribution on this site.
On the whole, I don’t link to just anybody.
Perhaps I’m just not used to answering emails looking for links or I think it’s just not creative enough to interest me. Creativity is a big part of seo for me. If you’re sending emails like this I’d question how you’re promoting yourself within the seo community, and if you cant do it properly in your own industry, what hope have you got doing it in other industries for clients?
Ho-hum, at least it wasn’t a real spammy unsolicited email and you at least had relevance and citation in mind, unlike other seo companies i won’t mention…. today.
It’s been a long day. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh….
Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)
Your response seems perfectly rational. Is this not the price of SEO fame :p – the higher you rise the more leeches try to attach themselves to you.
I suppose its better than the one liners that you get on blog posts stating either “Nice Post!” or “Thanks for that.” to sponge a link back to there site.
Oh, before I forget – Nice Post, Shaun.
You’re spot on about this method showing a lack of creativity… this kind of SEO is on the way out as search becomes more intuitive.
Creativity is indeed the key and what makes the job interesting.
I recently showed a friend of mine quite a lot of what can be done for free to help him out with his own site. He hasn’t done it because he thinks its repetitive and boring – I think he missed the point somewhere and I’m going to end up having to help him out.
I’m getting these begging emails all the time now and they all make me a little nausous. I can just imagine the SEO arrogantly promising his client the world and selling the dream, and then he’s emailing the first seo company he can find and cowtowing for a link. tccch.