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
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.
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….
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I hate these kinds of email, it stinks of desperation and makes the job so much harder for real SEO professionals to shake the shady snake oil salesman stereotype!
I’ve never got one this bad they usually auto generate the form with the website URL … Dear http://my website … Did you know http://my website could be penalised
Makes me really angry as not only do you feel like just a number as a consi=umer but as a website owner I know they haven’t looked at the site! Perhaps if they had looked at yours and my site they would realise we know more about SEO than them and would be sharing these rants online lol
grrrr – comment rant over
lol, yeah the not looking at the site bit is the bit that annoys me most. I like it when they try similar approaches by phone as you can make them look very silly.