There is a reason why you generally should not hire anyone representing themselves as an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional if they send you an unsolicited email. In other words, if they send you an email saying that they can improve your search engine rankings of your website, mark it as spam and then delete it. There are, of course, exceptions to this. For example, if you’ve personally met the person sending the email to you or if you’ve spoken with them in the past or visited their website previously then it might be okay. But in any case, you need evaluate everything that they’re telling you, what services they will provide, and understand everything that they’re going to do. If you do not understand any of it, ask them to explain it to you.
Example of a Spam Email Selling SEO Services
I got such an email (an unsolicited spam email selling SEO services), so I thought that I would go through every service that they’re offering. They didn’t mention a price (sometimes they do in the email), but in this case it will end up costing you MORE than you even realize if you take them up on their offer.
First, here’s the email (a screen capture of it is above):
From: Myra Aleena on behalf of Myra Aleena
Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 11:50 AM
To: Hello
Subject: Money Back Guarantee – SEO Resource!!Hello, >
I am a Marketing Manager.
We have a “SEO Discount offer” going for the following package: –
Monthly Task and responsibilities: – Package For 15 Keywords: –
1. 20 Search Engine Submissions
2. 20 Manually Directory Submissions
3. 4 Article Submissions (4 Unique Articles Written and Submitted)
4. 2 Press Release Distributions (2 Unique Press Release Written and Submitted)
5. 5 Web2.0/Blog postings (Using pre-written articles)
6. 30 Social Book-marking Submissions
7. 5 Forum postings
8. 3 Unique Article writing (400+ words)
9. 1 Press Release writing (350+ words)
10. Keywords Mapping
11. New pages suggestions
12. Keywords research1
13. Competitor Analysis
14. Title Tag changes suggestions
15. Meta tags changes suggestions
16. Alt tag changes suggestions
17. HTML Site Map
18. XML site map setup
19. Anchor text optimization
20. Google webmaster setup
21. Google analytics setup
22. Fortnightly Ranking Report
23. Fortnightly Full Detailed SEO Work Report in ExcelWe use only white hat SEO techniques for each website: –
Give us a try; I am 100% certain you will like us. If you are looking for a reliable partner, you will find it with us.Interested, please reply with your Skype id or phone number to start the chat.
Best Regards,
Myra Aleena
The first red flag here is that the email is sent from an email address. Generally speaking, no one from a legitimate SEO agency is going to send you email via Gmail. It’s going to be from their agency email address, using their company domain name.
Let’s go through each point or “service” they offer:
1. 20 Search Engine Submissions
You don’t have to submit your site to the search engines anymore. If you pay for this, it’s a scam. There aren’t even 20 search engines to “submit to” that are worth submitting to. Google and Bing, the most popular ones, will pick up your website and crawl it.
2. 20 Manually Directory Submissions
This is a least a 10-year-old SEO strategy. Most “directories” worth getting listed on charge an annual fee for a listing. Will they cover that? Most directories’ ‘manual submissions’ are possible on directories that are low quality, spam websites that will possibly hurt search engine rankings, not help them. These listings could actually lead to a possible link penalty by the search engines (such as Google) and you would then have to PAY the directory for removing your website.
3. 4 Article Submissions (4 Unique Articles Written and Submitted)
Article submissions is a 10-year-old strategy or even older than that. Article submissions (submitting an article to get a link) usually leads to links to your website being ignored (form that article directory) or, at worst, leading to a search engine penalty.
4. 2 Press Release Distributions (2 Unique Press Release Written and Submitted)
Same with press releases and article directory submissions. There are only a FEW (about 2-3) press release distribution services that are “legit”. You generally won’t get any press from this, and generally no links to your website that count towards search engine rankings. The legitimate press release distribution services charge hundreds of dollars per submission. There’s no way that this SEO Service is going to pay for that.
5. 5 Web2.0/Blog postings (Using pre-written articles)
These links from web 2.0 and blog postings can generally get your site penalized if there are too many of them. Why would you want even a few of them? They’ll be ignored by search engines anyhow. You’re better off just Tweeting a link on your own company’s Twitter account, and posting on other social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
6. 30 Social Book-marking Submissions
This goes back about 15-20 years as an SEO strategy. Like “Web 2.0 links”, they’re going to be considered low quality links by search engines. They’re ignored. Too many and your site will get penalized potentially. So stay away from them. Not sure why they’re even recommending them.
7. 5 Forum postings
Forum postings, links in signatures, these are again low quality links that will get a site penalized potentially. Stay aware from them.
8. 3 Unique Article writing (400+ words)
Okay, so if they’re going to give you content, you’re better off posting those articles on your own blog or website. That’s only if they’re appropriate and they’re not auto-generated articles.
9. 1 Press Release writing (350+ words)
A legitimate press release can be okay as I mentioned. But to get it distributed, it will cost hundreds of dollars.
10. Keywords Mapping
I have been doing SEO for 20+ years and even I don’t know that this is. Perhaps something to do with listing pages that should target certain keywords? Who knows?
11. New pages suggestions
OK, well yes, that can be appropriate, and if your website isn’t targeting the right topics and you don’t have the pages then you will need more pages on the site.
12. Keywords research1
Probably not extensive keyword research like you will need, but it can be a start if you have no idea which keywords you should be targeting and which topics are appropriate.
13. Competitor Analysis
This is way too vague. What is going to be done? Some good competitive analysis documents can be well over 100 pages in length. So, are they going to provide that? My guess is no.
14. Title Tag changes suggestions
This is basic SEO-related on page optimization, which is good. You DO need to put the appropriate keyword(s) in your title tag of each web page. But, there’s an art to writing a title tag, and it’s not just stuffing keywords in there. It needs to be readable, and convince people to click through to your website from the search results.
15. Meta tags changes suggestions
I’m assuming that they mean the meta description tags, but who knows? If they mention them meta keywords tag, the run. The meta keywords tag hasn’t been supported by search engines in at least 15 years.
16. Alt tag changes suggestions
Yes, it’s appropriate to make sure your image alt tags are optimized.
17. HTML Site Map
This is pretty much useless at this point. No need for it unless you think it’s going to help your users find stuff on your website. It serves little to no SEO purpose.
18. XML site map setup
XML sitemaps are technically not needed on a website to rank well. However, it can help if you have a lot of pages. These are auto generated by your website anyway 99 percent of the time, so not sure why they’re listing it as a service.
19. Anchor text optimization
Anchor text of the links from other websites? Or internal links’ anchor text? This is not specific enough to know what they mean.
20. Google webmaster setup
Google Webmaster Tools actually doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s not called Webmaster Tools anymore. It’s Google Search Console. They should also be setting up Bing Webmaster Tools, as well.
21. Google analytics setup
Make sure they’re setting up the latest version, GA4 and not the old version, which will stop working in 2023. GA4 requires a LOT of setup, so I’m not sure if they’ll even spend the time to set it up properly.
22. Fortnightly Ranking Report
Fortnightly is generally not a word we use in the USA. So, most likely they’re not going to be someone who is from the USA working on your website’s SEO. If you’re okay with that, then OK. In regards to tracking rankings, some SEOs will say that you shouldn’t track rankings, as it doesn’t mean much. Personally, I typically still track rankings for, let’s say, an average number of keywords (50 keywords) for a small-business website. I want to know how the website is doing overall, not because I want to know how a particular keyword is ranking. If that website’s keywords (let’s say 30+ keywords) suddenly go down significantly in rankings, that would be a red flag, and I’d investigate why it happened. That’s why I still track keyword rankings.
23. Fortnightly Full Detailed SEO Work Report in Excel
I’d ask for an example report. It’s most likely going to be auto-generated, and they won’t provide commentary about what the report shows, how you can improve, and what needs to happen in order to improve. That’s what you should be looking for, not just an auto generated report.
Other Examples
Here is another example of a similar email, that offers the same type of services. As I get these emails, I’ll be adding them here as examples.
From:
Reply-To:
Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 8:48 AM
Subject: Search Engine Marketing:Hello
We are an Indian Based SEO & Web Development Company. We are a team of 100+ professionals which includes 55 full-time SEO experts.
We will be performing the following list of activities to improve your website performance in search engines.
On-Page optimization:-
Meta tag updates (Title, Description and Keywords)
Set up Google analytics
Set up Google webmaster tools
Content optimization and update
Upload Sitemap.xml
Upload Robots.txt. Etc…Off-Page optimization:-
Social Bookmarking
Article creation and submission
Press Release creation and submission
Blog creation and posting
Classified submissions (Product based websites)We aim to deliver high quality services at cost effective prices and without compromising on client satisfaction.
I’d be happy to send you our packages and pricing if you’d like to assess our work.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Kinds Regards,
Rohan,
,
Online Marketing Executive.
Final Thoughts
I generally wouldn’t pursue any SEO-related services from someone who has sent me an unsolicited spam email selling their services. If they were to use their real name, their real agency name, and not a Gmail or Outlook email address, then I might look at their website. But honestly I would do my research first. Start with the list of Moz Recommended Companies, for example. Those companies have been vetted and are all truly good companies and individuals to work with.
If anyone mentions any of those services, however, that were mentioned in the email I got above, then I would not do business with them at all: even if you did your research first. Anything that they do that will potentially get you a search engine penalty will cost you even MORE money in the long run. Your website will stop ranking in the search engine results pages if you get such a penalty. That means you won’t get the search engine traffic, you won’t get leads and sales. Then, you’ll probably need to hire someone like myself, and SEO Consultant, to clean up everything that the SEO firm did to get you the penalty. That also includes begging for forgiveness, and telling Google that you won’t ever hire someone like that again.
via Why You Shouldn’t Hire SEOs Based on An Email
