SEO Spam Revisited

I was surfing through your Website and realized that despite having a great design; it was not ranking on any of the search engines (Google, AOL and Bing) for most of the keywords relating to your business.

Oh my God. If I had a buck for every email that I have received that uses EXACTLY this same line. The lack of creativity. The cut and paste laziness. The sheer audacity of pretending to know what ANYONE is actually trying to rank.  SEO is NOT for lazy people. Some people must bite on this though or this particular email would STOP ending up in my email on a daily basis. I keep asking myself “Why?” To me, I see a copy/paste bit of blather indicating someone that has never visited my site is trying to act like they know what they’re doing. Of course, when you try to sell SEO TO an SEO company, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that they have never visited your site.

“Yes, sir. How are you doing today?”
“Great! What can I get for you?”
“Well, I’m actually here to bring you a DELICIOUS bite of our brand new Whopper™!”
“You DO realize you’re at the McDonalds™ drive-thru window, right?”

That said, I AM an SEO company and I personally have been playing in the world that would become the internet since back in 1983. At that time, I first connected to the CANDE Burroughs 3600 at East Carolina University through a 300 baud modem jacked into a Commodore 64 computer from the Village Green Apartments in Greenville NC. It was so slow that you could easily out-type the screen – tap a whole sentence in and it would take several seconds to send to the university and then come back to the screen. Long live COBOL. But I digress…

The ploys of online SEO companies – both solid/legit and your average spammer types – have evolved and changed.  Something that still remains is that someone is looking to get business from you in a so many ways.  I so love ruining a script reading person’s day.

“How about I put $100 per day in YOUR pocket next week?” (And of course, they are expecting an immediate “Yes!”)
“Oh man. Do you know the tax implications of that? I don’t think so. No thanks.”
and crickets ensue…

You can tell people that know what they’re actually talking about when it comes to legit search engine techniques when you throw them something like that. They have enough wherewithal to break out of the pitch and legitimately address the problem. The doofuses will just repeat themselves with absolutely no comprehension of what was just said. Sure, it’s probably evil on my part, but so is the amount of time in my day that gets wasted dealing with that crap either directly or indirectly.

Client: Eric, I’m not ranking real well.
Me: You’re in the maps. You’re #1 for several keywords like on your last report you got 4 days ago. #2 for another bunch. We have you on front page for EVERY keyword you’ve indicated.
Client: Well, this guy just called and said that he couldn’t find me when he searched for me.
Me: What did he search for? Tibetan llamas in Australia? We have you covering over the entire front page with your website, Google My Business, your Facebook page, your Twitter account, some misc other posts from other social sites, have a few references from the press releases we have done in the last few months. How could he POSSIBLY have not found you?
Client: Oh. Okay. Well, he said…
Me: No worries. It is what it is.

I, unfortunately, can’t say that this is a one off conversation with a client. Most of the time after a client has been ON the front page for a while, they get used to these calls and emails promising the world and ignore them. Usually people on the front page for search results are already spending money on SEO. If you can convince them that you can keep up those rankings or improve them – and save them money – then you might break them away from their current provider. It can be short-lived when the rankings drop and the true expertise of the original company shows. I actually had an old client who went price shopping on me a couple years ago standing on my back porch a few days ago and acknowledged that he had made a mistake and would I take him back. We had to straighten a few things out, but told him I would. When someone can drive you TO the top, get you in the maps (or keep you on the front and in the maps) solidly, is it worth the risk of finding out the grass is ALREADY greenest right where you were at?

It is a nice feeling though getting a new monthly search engine optimization client that is already paying too much for their SEO, lingering on page 2 and 3, getting a song and a dance from their current company, and busting them up to page one and getting those Google maps in play for them. It can make a HUGE difference for a small business. We’re about to bust loose on a website for a plumber in Selma that I suspect is going to see exactly that in a few weeks.

Want to know if the SEO Expert is legit?

So, when they tell you that you’re not ranking for the keywords you should be or they couldn’t find you when they did a search – “Then how did you end up calling me?” That is always a great one. Then there’s the ever-popular, “So what keywords did you actually search for me with?” If they were all that and a legit “I was just surfing around…”, then they would quickly know the answers to those questions.

Most likely, you will get the repeat of the statement, “You are not ranking for the keywords..” or some similar variant. Now don’t take this as throwing rocks at salespeople because we ALL need salespeople, but if someone’s going to take time out of MY day, they better darned well have a solid reason to do such.

If WE call you?

We actually will have looked at your site. We likely will poke around it legitimately and see that there is a problem. WE often even give you some ideas when we’re talking to you. “Hey, if you actually reworded the title on your home page to , you will very likely see an improvement pretty quickly for your website!” If you’re #1 or sitting above the fold on page 1 already for something relevant, then your SEO company or webmaster is already doing a good job. If you’re on page 2 or 3 for everything, then it might be something that we might call on. We realize that sales is a game of numbers for companies. The thing that’s always annoying is having to talk to people that know nothing about what they are selling.

And SEO is no different. When you need a real company, with real experience, talk to us at Lizardwebs. We’d say “wait until we call you…” but, we don’t really do much of that – could be a bit of a wait

Want to learn more about what DOES make your website good or bad? What can I do to improve my website?