01/26/2011: THINKING BEHIND THIS POST – If I were an in-house seo and my ignorant-about-seo boss got this email from you I might be out of a job! Luckily I AM the boss – so I thought I would let you have a piece of my mind.
I have decided only to post very infrequently to the newsletter – so I can concentrate on work. So I am publishing this to the blog, but not to the 19,000 emails I have in my newsletter as yet. I will decide that later. I will also change the title if I publish to the newsletter.
Here’s a note of the traffic to the Hobo site over the last month for the purposes of this post
I received this today from a uk seo company – …top10guaranteed.co.uk – as it’s clear you didn’t even look at my site properly or you are purposely trying to mislead me in some matters – I thought I would review and respond here (IN MY HONEST OPINION AS A SEO):
My answers are in bold.
Hi,
My name is xxxxxxxxx (Name Removed I will be nice). I’m a senior search consultant at Top 10 Guaranteed. We are part of an IT Group that has been established for over 10 years as a leading specialist in all aspects of online sales and marketing.
Excuse the unusual approach, however I am writing to inform you that I recently visited your website, hobo-web.co.uk, during a routine survey of web sites which would be capable of achieving higher search engine performance. Obviously resulting in an increase in online sales or the generation of high volumes of additional sales leads.
I am confident that this information will be of use to you, but if I have caused offence in any way through my approach I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. I’m hoping this will arouse your curiosity, since you are obviously attempting to gain new business through your website. (Well, i am offended a bit)
From my initial observations, your website is underperforming in at least one of the major search engines such as – Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You probably are aware that most people don’t look past the first page of search results. I struggled to find you in the first couple of pages for highly relevant keyphrases, which means that you could be losing out on a significant amount of business. As such I did a bit more digging… (What, with a spoon? Anyway – most of my traffic is long-tail)
I ran a back-link check on your website first. Back-links are the number of times your site is linked to through another website. Your website has 76 back-links. Back-links also contribute towards your Google Pagerank score. Pagerank is Google telling us how trustworthy your site is. A higher score = higher search rankings. Right now your website has a Google Pagerank score of 0/10, which, when compared to other high ranking competitor websites, may be restricting your rankings. This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve. (If you had even looked at my site you would see that this is 100% WRONG)
The next check I applied on your website was page indexing. Search engines like Google scan the information on your website and feed it back to their database. The Google formula is then applied to the data to determine where your website should rank. As such the more pages your website has indexed with quality unique content, the higher you can rank with Google. (THIS IS MISLEADING TO SAY THE LEAST – ADDING MORE PAGES TO MY SITE WILL IMPROVE TRAFFIC IF TARGETING MORE UNIQUE KEYPHRASES – NOT NECESSARILY RANKINGS FOR CURRENT TERMS) )Right now, your site has 582 pages indexed with Google, and Google is regarding some of that content as poor. (BOLLOCKS) This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve. (WTF are you on about?) Finally I also identified that there could be a number of structural issues with your website which may be having a negative impact on your search rankings. (INDEED THERE WILL BE I AM TESTING THINGS – YOU CAN MAKE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE STRUCTURE OF NEARLY EVERY SITE)
So, here’s a recap of my findings of hobo-web.co.uk:
- Your Google Pagerank is 0/10 – (WRONG ACTUALLY it is PR5 (Nearly PR 6 as I have quite a few internal PR 5 pages FYI but PR is not something I even chase these days – this site had a PR 7 site 6 months after launching 4 years ago – check out SEOMOZ for proof – WHILE YOU ARE THERE I SUGGEST YOU SIGN UP FOR THEIR TOOLS or visit SEOBOOK, LINK-ASSISISTANT or MAJESTIC SEO as they have obviously got better seo tools than you are using :D)
- You have 76 back-links (WRONG – You must be using Google to check backlinks – which is crazy as Google shows you only a % of the links to Hobo – Yahoo site explorer shows more – in fact over 20,000 back-links which is not bad as we have not engineered link building to this site for years – SO, you are either trying to mislead me, or are incompetant in my review of what you have told me as a professional seo)
- Your website has 582 pages indexed
- There are issues with content and site structure (EVERY SITE HAS ISSUES WITH CONTENT AND SITE STRUCTURE – TELL ME SPECIFICALLY WHAT CONTENT YOU ARE CONCERNED WITH PLEASE – I test a lot of things on this site – where else could I on such a well trafficked site?)Let me expand on that by saying believe me, every page I want indexed on this site is indexed (well apart form one CANONICAL REDIRECT I SCREWED UP LAST MONTH cheers Google lol – I don’t have time to work this site any more I have my client sites to work on)
I have only scratched the surface of the factors impacting on your rankings. (YES – Apparently not even deep enough to get semi accurate data) Unlike some of our competitors, I wanted to do some initial work to identify that it would be worthwhile for you to talk to us before contacting you with my proposal. The best way to deal with any problem is to first apply a thorough diagnosis. It would, therefore, be a sensible next step for us to apply a more thorough diagnosis of why your website may not be ranking well before discussing with you what could be done about it.
THat’s funny – Google tells me there a lot of seo companies out there who do what you have done: “Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:”Dear google.com,I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.”
What we have to offer could prove to be the most value for money investment you could make for your business this year. In an economic climate that is difficult, to say the least, all businesses must invest in areas that will deliver maximum returns with minimal investment. Only strong search engine listings offer real growth opportunities as consumer trends change.
(WOW! YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING! – INVESTING IN SEO IS IN A BUSINESSES INTEREST.)
So what do we have to offer? Many factors now impact on how and where you will appear on the search engines. Unfortunately, most business people overlook the things that prevent them from performing well in the search engines and throw good money behind advertising without understanding what their web site really needs. Good SEO firms assess the needs of sites individually and address these by working on sites month on month. A one off fix just doesn’t work. As such we offer two approaches for you to consider.
We can produce a detailed 30-40 page Diagnostic Report for your site together with a personal telephone consultation with one of our SEO experts. Consultations explain the technicalities in our report in an easy to understand manner. Our normal price for this service is £499.00. If you are prepared to act this week we are prepared to offer this at a reduced one-off fee of £299.00. Following this consultation we can discuss how best to rectify the situation. (BASED ON INITIAL EMAIL CONTACT – I WOULDN’T PAY …top10guaranteed.co.uk/ 10$ for your service)
Alternatively we could provide this detailed Diagnostic Report for your site completely free. For this you would need to commit to take up our 12 month optimisation and consultancy service prior to our work commencing. (EH, NO THANKS MATE) The service is based around promotion of specific agreed keyphrases after discussing how to put right all issues highlighted in our report. We can deliver first page search results in the major search engines. For this we charge as little as £35 per keyphrase, per month, dependent upon the competitiveness of that keyphrase. Furthermore, we guarantee to refund your money should we fail to put you in the first page for the keyphrases once all changes have been implemented. (IS THIS A JOKE?)
The reason why I’m so confident about our capabilities is because we have done it so many times before. To name a few examples: Maternity Clothes, Dubai Properties, Gravel, Health Store, Van Hire, Fire Extinguishers, Financial Advisers UK, Coffee Machines, Swimwear, Limo Hire, Mortgage Advisers UK, and more – all are on the first page of Google and all highly competitive keyphrases. We put them there.
Our own group website is in the first page of Google for Website Marketing Company and Internet marketing companies. (REALLY? – I COULDN’T FIND YOU AT ALL IN GOOGLE LOL - MAYBE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT ANOTHER WEBSITE?) You will see our site listed as The Web Clinic (OH MAYBE I SHOULD USE THAT COMPANY AS THE TITLE OF THIS POST THEN? :D ). To satisfy you even further we can also provide you with comparative existing client’s contact details to serve as references for the quality of our work.
If you are genuinely serious about improving your online revenues and want professional website marketing for a low flat monthly fee or a one-off detailed report, please visit our service website at …top10guaranteed.co.uk which provides more details about our excellent service and a call back form. See a selection of our excellent testimonials and example results achieved recently on behalf of our clients. (NO THANKS)
Alternatively, if you prefer to discuss your requirements over the phone, then please don’t hesitate to contact me on 0844 7404951 and press Option 1
or simply reply to this mail with a convenient time to call you. (CONSIDER THIS MY REPLY)Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
(Name Removed)
Senior Search Consultant
Top 10 Guaranteed
XXXXXX
Providing SEO for clients since 1999
Seriously. OK ….top10guaranteed.co.uk/ – Let us audit my site. HERE. In public, together, to educate my 65,000 expected visitors this month and my near 20,000 email subscribers.
Ate you up for it?
NOTE – The Hobo site is built this way, on the whole, for a reason. Minimum navigation, minimalist structure , experiments with text and titles – but I can assure you we have decent rankings and this site will get a sh*tload more organic traffic from Google this month than your site will be getting in the whole year by the looks of it.
It’s companies like you, in my opinion, who give companies like us, a bad name. We don’t spam email, never have, we don’t cold call, never have – in fact, we have never paid for any search marketing leads – we get all our business from Google free listings, and we show others how to do the same, which we charge a relatively small fee for.
If your seo practices are to the same quality as your spam emails, I will be staying well clear of you.
I have no idea if you are actually a good seo company – though I see others have laughed at you before – a lesson here is to not make an idiot of yourselves with idiot emails to somebody who actually cares about offering a good service and will out you for it and not give a flying f*&^. :)
Enjoy – see you at the top of Google shortly ;)
Shaun, absolutely brilliant once again. I hate these types of emails – take 10 minutes and get accurate data if you are going to contact me out of the blue – although I very rarely get to the data part any more! I do understand that not every business can be referral based but there are ways and means of going about cold calling etc. Dan
Indeed – If you send somebody REALLY USEFUL information – why not call them up afterwards? No harm there!
Fantastic, nicely outed there Shaun! Their email to the “others who laughed at them” is almost word for word what they wrote to you, yet they were calling themselves SEOdoctors then… looks like they got busted but didn’t learn from it, new name, new site, same shite.
They are on twitter as well - If you read xxxxx dot co dot uk “At The xxx xxxx we realise the value of ethical marketing practices.” :-)
I have experience with this sort of thing… ;) I removed the offending name to protect you mate :)
Wow people still trying this spammy probably automated approach. I’d like to think that a large majority of business owners and marketing managers are getting savvy with this sort of stuff! As an in houser myself I still get a lot of this crap… fun to read though.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rishi Lakhani, Andrew Burnett, Shaun Anderson, Matthew Diehl, David Tutin and others. David Tutin said: RT @peteyoung: Absolute diamond – About time on some of this stuff. http://bit.ly/ibE3yO SEO by top10guaranteed.co.uk #seofail [...]
Just went out and checked their site….. came across this statement: “You may have noticed that this webpage does not rank highly in the search engines as this website is purely an online marketing brochure used in connection with a limited email-driven marketing promotion. Therefore, we have asked the search engines to ignore this website for indexing purposes, since this is not the intention behind this site.” LOL
Ya, I’m often tempted (I think I might have, actually) to respond to similar, aggravating emails. I just don’t look at them anymore. It is good to help manage the online reputation of idiots like this though. :)
Class, I get these all the time slagging of my wordpress site that im not trying to rank except for long tail words through content. There are so many idiots out there who need naming and shaming so they stop ruining the seo and internet marketing industry.
People still buy these ‘guarantees’ – a friend and client told me he was going to shell out £500 to one of these and I did my best to discourage him. Still waiting to hear the outcome. People love to hear what they want to hear, even when it is obvious nonsense and they’re being told it is nonsense. I guess that is the purpose of these companies – to teach people sense! Shaun – I thought you were rather restrained. Well done :-) Mark
The cheek of it sending it to you in the first place, but with all those glaring errors. Makes you wonder how they pick their potential customers.
0844 7404951 you say? *grabs telephone*
you and a few others mate no doubt :)
76 backlinks or 20,000? Close enough. So what if his tools have a “slight” margin of error. Cut him some slack Shaun he is just trying to help you succeed ;)
I laughed :)
Cool post as usual – I have Delhi on filter out… I love telling them to FKUC off and filtering the mail David
I ususally ignore them as well but today I thought fcuk it :)
Great post. I tweeted the original tweet via your tweet button, but than decided: this firm isn’t worth a twitter link! I’ve been getting mails from a guy named Michael who guarantees me top 10 positions through directory submissions alone. These guys really screw up the business.
You know the thing that got me about this? Not the content (we get several a day containing smililar rubbish) it was the sheer length of the mail – I skipped a lot of the text and read just your comments so kudos to you for getting through the entire essay! I’ve responded to mails like this in the past to ‘claim my free seo report’ just tosee what’s in it, surprisingly nothing was ever sent through. On another note, I was speaking to someone the other day and he told me they were well sorted for SEO as they are currently “working with someone who works with Google and Rand Fishkin” (interestingly this company don’t have a website…) so it would seem that this type of bull does work!
Of course it works :) Yes, I saw the length of the email and I thought – free content – I am posting that :)