I Got Spammed By an SEO Consultant!
By Anna Johnson on November 8th, 2008I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I got spammed by an SEO consulting company yesterday. I get hundreds of spam emails per day, but this particular email stood out because it was sent by an Australian company based in my own city. A company that should have known better. (I’m tempted to name and shame them, but I really don’t want to give them any link value!)
Since we offer Internet marketing services, seeing this email made me MAD. It’s actions like this that give our industry a bad name. But I’m even more stunned at how DUMB this company is to send out generic emails offering its SEO services. There are so many things wrong with this picture, I couldn’t possibly list them all in this email, but let’s discuss three aspects that should have been obvious:
1. Sending out spam is against the law. I believe sending unsolicited commercial email is illegal in the United States and other countries. It certainly is in Australia, and has been for many years now. As a prospective client: could I really trust a company that so blatantly breaks the law?
2. Sending out spam is wrong from an Internet marketing point of view. It shows disrespect to Internet users and also makes me wonder: what would this company do regarding SEO if I did engage them? What kind of black or grey hat tactics would they use that might jeopardize my business?
3. The email itself was not personally addressed to anyone at our firm, and was a generic offer to provide SEO services. Had the sender bothered to look at our website they would have noticed that we were a COMPETITOR. One operating in the same city and country at that!
Actually, there’s a fourth issue worth mentioning…
4. Out of curiosity I visited the company’s website. The headline read: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Web Marketing & SEO”. Now, maybe there is a market for “cheap” web marketing and search engine optimization services. But to me, that’s a bit like a law firm advertising itself with the same line: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Legal Advice.”
Um… do you want the cheapest legal advice around… or do you want the best, most cost-effective legal advice that delivers the results you want? The same principle applies to Internet marketing services – especially SEO. Do you want to pay the cheapest prices… or do you want to get the best results for your money?
Cost-effective… value for money… affordable. They’re all terms that may be appropriate. But “Guaranteed Lowest Prices” sounds like their running a discount store. Not the kind of company I would want as my trusted SEO advisor…
November 8th, 2008 at 6:35 am
That’s hilarious Anna.
You and other readers may find this experience with them interesting.
I received the same emails a couple of months ago.
If it’s the same one they started off by saying, “we noticed your site isn’t fully optimized for the search engines, would you like us to help you with our cheap services?”
I knew it was just spam but decided to play along with them and see what they would say.
So I hit the reply button and said, “Thank you for your concern about my site not being fully optimized for the search engines. Before I ask you more about what your services can do for my site, as I own several sites,
would you mind telling me which site you noticed needed the optimizing? Thank you. Eagerly awaiting your reply. Please advise,”
The next email I received from them was yet another one talking about they noticed my site.
I replied and said, “I sent you an email to the address you asked me to contact you by and asked which site you had noticed needing the seo and still haven’t received an answer. Please advise.”
Needless to say, they couldn’t respond with the link to any site as what they hope to do is find an email
address that matches with the site and hope that those they spam do not notice or call them out on it.
Neither of those were the case with me and they no longer contact me anymore.
Hope you may have received a nice little chuckle out of that experience and not just because it proves I need to get a life. Lol.
Best wishes,
Doug
November 8th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
this caught my eye as we also got spammed by an Australian SEO company just today in blog comments.
the commenter (Indian IP) left a generic comment (and an attempted, but broken) deep link to one of this SEO company’s many many inner doorway landing pages.
still trying to work out whether to dig deeper and then out them or just let it go.