Have you gotten one of these emails lately?
“My name is xxxxxx and I am a Digital Marketing Specialists for a Creative Agency. I was doing some industry benchmarking for a client of mine when I came across your website. I noticed a few technical errors which correspond with a drop of website traffic over the last 6-8 months which I thought I would bring to your attention. After closer inspection it appears your site is lacking in 4 key criteria. Blah blah blah your meta-tags!! Oooooooooooooo!!! “
I get them too – and I’m IN the SEO industry!
This proves the first thing I usually tell clients about these messages when they forward them to me out of concern: these people have never even been to your website.
It’s really humorous that in many of these messages it says “I FOUND you on Google!”.
Well, if you found me already what do I need to pay you for?! Nothing.
Which is generally what you get out of services that spam people like this even when you pay their outrageous prices – NOTHING.
Now it is true that every domain can use a website tune-up from time to time in order to rank most optimally for its intended audience, but the scare tactics used by some of these so-called seo gurus is so laughable that it’s sad. Sadder still that they wouldn’t continue to do it unless some people were falling for it.
But what is a concerned small business owner or artistic creator to do if they feel like they’re lost online?
It is tough! Everyone seems to have a site and a store and a page living the wild Instagram life; it can seem like there’s no way to catch up. Here are a few quick tips to help you spot the spammers:
Misspellings in the message
Look for spelling errors. It seems minor but most legitimate business will not have such things in their correspondence – even canned emails.
Meta-Data Grandpa
Any SEO person who harps on the small technical details of your site code like meta-tags, and H tags (which do matter in a small way still) is likely reading from a script written in 1997 when these things still played a major role in seo ranking.
Copy/Paste
Take a line from their email message and copy it into a google search with quotes around it. You will likely come up with thousands of results highlighting other people who received the same exact spam message.
Google THEM
Search them out before you even think about contacting them or clicking the links in their email. You will likely not even be able to find them, much less on the glorious PAGE ONE that they promise to elevate your business to somehow.
The PICKWICK Promise
I won’t lie to you. I won’t up-sell services you don’t need to pad my pocket.
Online success is an uphill battle – so is any kind of success – but the good news is you don’t have to go it alone!
I have a long history of digital experience in developing visually compelling websites as well as marketing the services and products they offer. I have the online skills you don’t have the time to learn yourself – and don’t want to! With over 2 decades of experience in the digital marketing world I know not only the things to do for greater results but the things to avoid doing as well.
You want to be running your business or creating your next masterpiece, not punching buttons. Let me help!