Like most website owners i get a fair few emails each week from companies trying to sell me SEO services. These emails usually go straight into the trash but this one that i received today stunned me. I thought it deserved a bit of attention so im going to share it with you.

SEO Services

All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.
Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal

There are so many things wrong with this but let me start by stating that im not being kind by not mentioning the company name. They simply didn’t give one. Not sure how they would expect someone to buy services from a company they didn’t know the name of. Odd…

The first thing that is apparent from the email is that it is a generic email that has been sent out to a database of email addresses. I suspect it is probably a paid one too. Personalising an approach by email is essential and these guys have made no attempt what so ever.

Moving to the detail…

I guess my main problem with the content is that so little thought has been put into it. It doesn’t give any information on what they would like to do for you and the mention of penalisation puts a negative slant on things. Theres no real need to mention this. A better approach might be to show where improvements could be made to the site and highlight what benefits they will try and bring to your business.

The most telling thing about the whole approach is that they have not even bothered to check the recipients site. If they had they would know it is already being optimised by someone.

They are not the only company out there who use such approaches but the frustration is that these people give our industry a bad name.

Rant over….

I don’t use Ebay all that often but after recently purchasing a new Macbook Pro (which is awesome by the way) i decided to put my old Macbook up for sale on Ebay. The listing process is all very easy and monitoring an auction is pretty straight forward but there is one thing that really pisses me off with the whole setup. That is dispute times.

Why do Ebay enforce such long dispute times. After an auction a buyer can lodge a dispute 45 days after a purchase. It essentially means that anyone selling anything of any significant value has to wait 45 days before they can transfer the money from PayPal to there bank account. I mean do people really want to run the risk of spending that money during the 45 day period. I certainly don’t.

Info about disputes on the Ebay website:
* You’ll need to wait at least 3 days after the estimated delivery date or 7 days after payment if you weren’t given an estimated delivery date.
* You have up to 45 days after you paid to file a case.
* The seller has up to 10 days to respond to your case.

I could also go on about the crazy selling fees put on tech items but i will leave that for another time. All i can say is roll on January.

Also when searching for Orange mobile broadband in Google many results list how it tops many customer satisfaction polls however i can’t imagine this to be true as many other providers are providing much faster speeds and higher usage limits at either the same price or less. If you look at Vodafone for example they offer double the speed at 7.2mb at the same price or even 3 offering a 5gb usage limit for the same price.

The other major problem is the cut out rates and quite frankly the disgusting looking dongle that i have to walk around with. Did they design the thing back in the 1960’s. The huge black box makes my MacBook look very sexy. I rarely manage to get an hour out of the thing without it cutting out. I’m certainly not sending it back as that will probably be more hassle than its worth so i will inevitably trundle along with the beast.

One of my main reasons for going with Orange was the fact that they already provide my mobile contract and did such a great job. They are usually pretty easy to get hold of and sorting things out nicely. In fact they recently rang me to offer me free home broadband however i am hoping they will upgrade my mobile broadband package in the coming months. Hopefully something will come of it.

In this blog i intend to bring you some of the latest internet marketing tips based on my experiences. I will also update you on my works and share my views on things that have been happening in the world of SEO. I occasionally come up with some crazy ideas so will probably share them with you and get your thoughts.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog! I better get off and write my first blog now i suppose.