If you own a business and have a website, it is highly likely that at some point you have received unsolicited emails offering SEO services. The unfortunate truth is that the vast majority of these emails, about 99.8%, are actually scams. However, I will allow for a small margin of 0.2% where you may receive a legitimate email from an SEO professional who has assessed your website and is offering genuine services. It is important not to be deceived by these SEO emails as they are always automated and designed solely to take money from you and redirect it to a Paypal account in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe. In some cases, they may even provide poor quality SEO services that could negatively impact your website and potentially lead to it being blacklisted by Google.
What Do These SEO Scams Look Like?
I’m only going to talk about why you should avoid these ‘offers’, instead of explaining what real SEO is and how it can greatly benefit your business. To cut a long story short, a few years ago, a high-ranking employee at Google Inc received an email that started in a similar way:
I was on your website www.google.com and wanted to shoot you a quick note. I think I can make a few changes (aesthetically and/or SEO – wise) to make your site convert more visitors into leads and to get it placed higher in the organic search results, for a few of the select terms.
Enough said? You would think so, but unfortunately there are business owners out there who are still falling for SEO scams.
Have you ever received an email like this one?
“I have been checking your website quite often. It has seen that the main keywords are still not in top 10 rank. You know things of working; I mean the procedure of working has changed a lot.
So I would like to have opportunity to work for you and this time we will bring the keywords to the top 10 spot with guaranteed period.
There is no wondering that it is possible now cause, I have found out that there are few things need to be done for better performances (Some we Discuss ,in this email). Let me tell you some of them…”
How Do I Know That This Is An SEO Scam?
Unless it is completely obvious to you why this email is a scam, here are the things to look out for that shows that you are the subject of an SEO Scam:
- The email comes from a gmail address. Why is this an issue? Well if this SEO expert is running such an efficient business and can fix your ‘rankings’ then surely they have their own business email address; why use a disposable gmail address?
- The email lands in your inbox and is completely unsolicited.
- The terrible English and awful grammar – “You know things of working” !! If they have no understanding of English grammar, how can they possibly help you with an English website where keywords and latent semantic indexing is so crucial? This is quite often accompanied by a sign off using an exaggerated Anglo Saxon name.
- There is no personalisation whatsoever – for example there are no references to your business name, nor any reference to any keywords appropriate to your business that they are so sure you are not ‘ranking’ for. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if your website address (URL) is actually in the email it must be valid – URL’s are gathered by automated ‘bot scrapers’ that go over the internet looking for URL’s and email addresses.
- The lack of any website address and location/address of the company offering these SEO services – if their service is so effective, surely they would have their own website address and location listed there so you can check them out and do a bit of research.
What Do I Do If I Receive One Of These SEO Scams?
The points above on how to spot an SEO Scam leave us with two questions:
- Why would someone actually respond to such an email, and;
- What should you do with these types of emails in future if you agree they are a major annoyance?
If you are considering or have thought about responding to an email like this, it is likely that you have concerns about the effectiveness of your website and/or online marketing. I understand this and sympathise with your situation. Instead of criticising your website designer, who clearly did not have a good understanding of how to optimise your site for search engines, the best starting point is to re-examine your online marketing strategy. If you don’t currently have one, it is important to develop one as soon as possible! An online marketing strategy is essentially a detailed plan that outlines how each product or service you offer is promoted on your website and distributed online to attract the right kind of visitors who will convert into customers.
How do you respond to such SEO scam emails? Quite simply you don’t. Do not respond in any way to them. Mark them as spam if they are not already, and under no circumstances click on any links in the email – these will simply alert the sender that you are a real person and they may re-focus their efforts to hassle you some more, and tell you more about the ‘things of working..’
If you require an online marketing strategy, contact SEO Australia today for a no-obligation friendly chat.
