I wrote back in March last year about the latest emails from snake oil salesmen trying to sell the unsuspecting ‘some SEO’. Like its something you can buy a bit of. Well, they are back again.
In my inbox this morning a very similar email to last year, even recycling some of the same crap lines. Here’s what I got;
Hi,
Hope you are well.
My name is George Snyder, Marketing Manager with a reputed online marketing company. While studying your website I noticed that it lacked any significant ranking in Google. As you already suspect, this means your site is virtually invisible to potential customers searching for a supplier in your field.
It’s like you’d made an expensive TV Ad and then forgotten to buy any airtime for people to see it.
My company can solve this problem for you. We are an official An ISO 9001:2008 Certified, with over 7 years of experience in the field of Search Engine Optimization. We have the expertise to send hundreds, of customers to your website. We can tell you quickly.
Make your website visible on Search Engines!!
Improve your business website ranking!!
What this would cost!!
The detailed analysis of your site would be FREE and no obligation. If you’d like to know this information, you’re welcome to write back and ask.
We look forward to a successful, long term business relationship with you.
Best Regards,
George Snyder
Marketing Manager
Note: If you’re not interested in this service, please reply with a simple \”NO\” and we will not contact you again
Well George, there are a couple of problems with your wonderful offer and perhaps I could take this opportunity to outline them;
- Starting at the top, if you work for such a reputable ‘online marketing company’ then why is your email being sent from a gibberish aol account?
- Secondly, you haven’t studied my website at all. If you had you would have spotted that we are an SEO company.
- Despite your claim that our website ‘lacked any significant ranking in Google’ when I checked this morning we are still ranking for the keywords we want. As we were in 2014.
- My site is definitely NOT invisible to potential customers.
- “We are an official An ISO 9001:2008 Certified”. Certified what George? Did you miss a word? And where did this accreditation come from? It’s certainly an improvement on your last email where you had six years experience and no accreditation.
- “We have the expertise to send hundreds, of customers to your website. We can tell you quickly.” Tell me what quickly? Now I’m intrigued. Is it that you simply have no idea what you are doing? I do hope so. Oh and hundreds of customers would be an unwelcome event. We simply can’t handle “hundreds, of customers”, with or without the poor punctuation.
- “you’re welcome to write back and ask.” Really? A proper address would be nice. You know, somewhere I can send an envelope with a stamp on it. Even if it is on another continent I’d be happy to write to you.
- “If you’re not interested in this service, please reply with a simple \”NO\” and we will not contact you again”. I don’t think so. Confirming my email address to a spammer is probably an unwise move as I know you will plague me for ever more with your wonderful offers once you know I exist.
Tempting though your offer is George, (by the way, I know that’s not your real name….) I’m going to pass on it this time. For some strange reason and I can’t quite put my finger on it right now, your offer doesn’t seem like something that I would want to subject our website to.
Call me old fashioned but I like the people I deal with to be real and preferably not with a pocket of snake oil that they are trying to sell me.
