“We were running what we call a scrub on your website and noticed that you weren’t ranking well for some of the keywords in your site,” drolls the telemarker from a web marketing company in New York that I’d never heard of.
Me: “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, we do a scrub that lets us know if you’re ranking well for your keywords.”
Me: “And I should hire you to ‘fix’ that while we focus on helping our own clients rank well?”
“Yeah, we’re running a special right now. For just $19.99 a month you can …”
(I never have patience with telemarkers … please forgive me for my rudeness) “So what do you think my clients will say when I tell them that the reason we rank so well isn’t a demonstration of how well we can apply our skills but is because of some outsource SEO … ”
“We work with a number of marketing companies like yours.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
If you haven’t received an SEO sales call for your business website, then you’ve probably received the SEO emails:
I was browsing through your website and discovered that you didn’t rank well for your most important keywords. Let me submit your website to a million search engines and add your link to every questionable website I network with. In turn, all you have to do is entrust the reputation of your website to me, and I guarantee you I’ll get rich while you wonder where all your marketing bucks have gone. My payment plans are simple–just $9.99/day for 90 days. And boy will you get traffic once I buy one of those pop under banners–I’ll be able to send you 10 million robot hits within just 2 weeks! Sure hope your servers can handle that converting traffic. You’ll be richer than ever and so will I. Just call me now because good things like these surely don’t last. Signed, the SEO Quacker @ hotmail.com
Perhaps it’s just my cynical nature, but why should an SEO company be annoyingly aggressive like this? Because they aren’t getting referrals from disatisfied customers? Because their own website doesn’t rank well? Because their business strategy consists of making a fast buck from as many people as possible?
Just the fact that the SEO sales calls are all so similarly alike … as are the emails … makes the whole thing smell of rancid fish (I don’t eat most seafood, btw). And so the moral of the story is, don’t fall for this junk. Just because a company is being “proactive” and bugging you to death is no telltale sign that they’ll give you your money’s worth. Do your homework, ask around. See what marketing companies others recommend. And tell the telemarketers to find a more promising, meaningful job, because half of them have no clue what they are really even talking about.
Leave a Reply