David Leonhardt’s SEO and Social Media Marketing

I just have to share this email with you as an example of how not to sell SEO.

Hello and Good Day! OK, so it’s not a bad start.
 
I am [name withheld], SEO Manager

I was surfing through your website and realized that despite having a good design; it was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain. Let’s get one thing straight: the site in question was designed to practce HTML several years ago and certainly does not have a good design. On the other hand, despite a certain amount of neglect over the past couple years, it does retain good rankings for major search terms.
 
I was wondering if you would be interested in getting the SEO done for your website. Did he do any research on me?  Come on!
 
There is a simple equation that is applicable to the online world.
 
Ethical SEO -> Better Traffic -> Higher Sales. Ethical SEO? Spam is ethical? Hopefully that is a big enough clue for the newbiest of newbie website owners to delete this email.
 
We are an ISO Certified, SEMPO registered Online Marketing firm and have over 5 years of working experience. All the techniques used are ethical and proprietary. If this is true, ISO and SEMPO have some explaining to do.
 
In case you require any additional information, it shall be our pleasure to furnish the same.
 
I look forward to your mail.

Basically, this was a bulk mail sent to a mailing list scraped somewhere on the Web. Given that SEO is more like a sport than a science, every website needs its own custom approach. A cookie-cutter email will not make the sale, because it will never address the particulars of my website.

Well, maybe it will make the sale in some cases, where the website owner falls for such a pitch. Such is the law of the jungle, I suppose, where the lions pick off the weakest members of the herd and enjoy a tasty dinner. Just make sure you are not the one they pick off.

 

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under SEO scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.