The first casualty of SEO is the truth!

Do you get emails telling you that your website isn’t working properly and that’s why you aren’t ranking well on Google? 

We get them too, even though we know our site ranks well for our targeted search terms.

It’s spam and the worst offenders are easy to dismiss. However, some spammers, know how to push the “worry buttons” of business owners, especially those with limited knowledge of online marketing techniques.

Businesses with an online presence receive these spam emails regularly because SEO is a very competitive landscape and it attracts a lot of cowboys.

I would take any advice from the sender with caution. Here are a few clues that should act as a warning:

• the sender provides no specific information about your business, it’s all very generic. They haven’t visited your site, let alone carried out an assessment. They have sent the same email to thousands of others
• poor language and grammar (which is funny in a way because Google now detects poor grammar and penalises accordingly – if they can’t get it right in a marketing email, what hope is there for a client website?)
• links to their website which doesn’t even exist, or you are pushed to another company’s website – this tips you off that they are being paid a commission for sourcing leads
• the email address is a Gmail account
• the unsubscribe link is a Gmail email address. 

An ethical digital services company won’t ever send you unsolicited spam emails of this sort, as it’s in direct contravention of the Australian Spam Act 2003. 

Other vendors will try to baffle you with generic statements. For example:

• One client with many products was told that each product description should be 300-400 words long. Wrong! If you are publishing blog posts or articles in the hope of improving your SEO, even 400 words is a bit thin – upwards of 450 would be recommended. For product descriptions however, the word count is nowhere near as important as accurately listing features and benefits of that product.
• In another case, a client was advised that the H1 and H2 tags should be the same and both should be the product name, yet that recommendation flies radically in the face of SEO best practice. Using the term “Acme Hotdogs”  as an example, if both headers were the same, then searching for “Acme Hotdogs” would generate a good result, but searching for “fast food” wouldn’t. The H1 tag should describe the product type, and the H2 the actual product itself. Otherwise, unless people are searching for your specific product, they won’t find you. If they are searching for your product specifically, they’ll still find it.

Let us know if you would like to learn more about our ethical SEO process.