What you are about to read is true, and that is why it is so disturbing.
First a little background. Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is a skill that takes time and energy to master. Professional SEO’s invest a great amount of time into learning the craft, and after achieving a bit of ranking success will have a valuable service worth selling to clients.
Unfortunately, just as in web design, everyone including their slow in the head brother thinks they can do SEO and jump on the selling SEO train in hopes of making a quick buck. Below is an email I received this morning.
Gerald Gerbrone Here,
We recently started our blog here http://blog.yourseoconsulting.com and linked to your website hoping you would notice us and maybe link back. To be honest we don’t know what the fuck we are doing and are desperate god help us we arn’t even ranking for anything in msn , yahoo or google and need your help. And link would be of great help thanks again, Gerald.
Sincerely,
Gerald Gerbrone CEO
A-Built Computer Systems and Consulting
14781 Memorial Drive
Office 2464
Houston, TX
77079-5210
If it is not apparent why this is so disturbing, lets look closer.
- This is a wannabe SEO company, charging money for their services. Clearly they do not have the slightest clue as to what is going on.
- This is the kind of thing that gives the whole seo industry a bad rap. (Snake Oil)
- Visit the website: http://blog.yourseoconsulting.com Here is a short list of no’no’s that are probably keeping him from getting the rankings he so desires
- Site is in Frames
- Title Tag?
- What do Digital Camera’s and Dr Suess have to do with SEO (Relevancy)
- Looks like the posts may be scraped (duplicate content)
So the moral of the story is; buyer beware. Not all SEO is created equal. Ask to see verifiable ranking results, ask to speak to a few of their past clients, and most importantly just trust you gut. You could probably smell this guy coming.
I was going to link to him in this post.. but thought better of it.
I received the same email this morning. I was taken back by the unprofessional verbiage and immediately deleted the message. If you want to swear, that is up to you, but not when you are coming to me for help. This guy is a turkey.
Maybe you should obscure the offender’s URL? The last thing you would want would be to inadvertently help them out any 🙂
Man, that’s why I never read those SEO tutorials that you get on every tutorial site. There’s so many all claiming to be the best way to have a high ranking.
Preface: My credentials are false because I’m not trying to gain link-backs from here (especially not this post).
Honestly, don’t you think it’s equally as unprofessional to blog about this person? Posting the message publicly is like a running a political smear campaign. I got the impression that you wanted to pat your own back more than provide us with real information. I clicked this article because I thought you might offer a laundry list of SEO mistakes that people commonly make. It’s a little disturbing and childish.
You cannot learn grace.
@scotttttttttt It just so happens we are putting togther a website dedicated specifically to SEO myths, process, how-to guide etc. Look for it soon.
This post was made for educational purposes, perhaps helping the next guy looking for SEO services clue in as to what to look for.
Thanks for your comments.
I got the same email recently and agree with Matt. I deleted the email as soon as I read the vulgarity. I did show it to our graphic designer because I couldn’t believe it and thought it was some type of hoax, scam, or spam. If it is for real, don’t expect the business to last long.
Anyway these reciprocal link exchanges do not really work, most of the link exchanges that are done is by Indian companies, and they will artificially increase the ranking of link pages and after start to exchange links with other web sites.
After they exchanged a couple of links they will block the pages by spiders and remove the back links. Rather go for some sponsor, paid links or off course honest webmasters!