"SteveLehto" (stevelehto)
05/29/2015 at 11:00 • Filed to: None
6
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"SteveLehto" (stevelehto)
05/29/2015 at 11:00 • Filed to: None | 6
| 27 |
I have a website which has been online since 1996 and for most of those 19 years I’ve been bombarded with emails from Search Engine Optimizers. Guys who claim they can get me massive increases in my business if I will only send them a few thousand dollars. Does anyone really fall for that?
With any new technology comes a flurry of people who will try and exploit it. “Exploit” is not necessarily a bad word. I am exploiting the internet by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and telling people they can call me for certain kinds of legal help. But part of my website contains my contact information. These SEO guys apparently buy email lists (I get emails offering me those lists too) and then bombard the subjects with silly emails filled with lies. They are following up “on our phone call the other day,” responding to a request I sent them for “more information,” or passing along “the report we talked about.”
Other classics include: “Your website is missing 74% of all potential clients in your area.” “Your website is full of plagiarized material which causes Google to lower you in its search results.” “We can show you a simple trick to triple your sales leads.”
Since the spammers have no idea about the “potential clients” in my “area,” my website contains no “plagiarized material” and I am not looking for “sales leads,” these emails are just stupid and misleading. I usually just hit delete.
But once in a while I write a few words in return and hit send. The other day I hit a nerve when I told a guy that he had no idea about how many “potential clients” I had. He immediately sent me an email back and said, “I just tried calling you to discuss this but your phone is disconnected.”
I know. I know. It was a scam to see if I would call him. But I did anyway. I called him and said, “This phone is obviously not disconnected and I know you just did this to get me to call.”
“Oh, I may have misdialed then. But while I have you on the phone . . . “
I cut him off. Before I had called him, I looked up his website and found out how many distinct visitors he gets per week. I then looked up my stats for the same week. My site got more than four tines the number of visitors than his. Remember: My site is just a website aimed at lemon law clients in one state. His is an SEO website seeking clients nationwide. And he claims to be an expert in SEO!
I asked him why I would want to hire a spammer who can’t get decent results for his own website. He started SCREAMING at me. “I am not a SPAMMER!.” He hung up on me.
Ummm. Someone who sends spam to someone is a spammer. And someone who is trying to sell SEO off of a website with bad SEO is an amateur.
Which reminds me of the poor Fuller Brush Man. Back in the day, this old man went door to door selling brushes and cleaning supplies in my neighborhood. He did it for years and we’d see him coming down the street. Like Old Gil off of the Simpsons. Still, he’d knock on every door on the block. I remember opening the door on a day my mom wasn’t home and turning him away. An hour later, he was coming down the other side of the street. He’d be back in a few months, brushes in hand, knocking on every single door. Some people never bought from him, ever. He’d be back in a few months and knock again.
Got a website? Fill it full of relevant information and make it useful. Eventually, you’ll get traffic. Considering hiring an SEO guy to game the system for you? Don’t hire the one who spammed you. Go find one with a good website full of relevant information. Like I tell people about cold sales calls: If you needed what they were offering to sell you, you would have gone out looking for them. Not the other way around.
Follow me on Twitter: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Hear my podcast on iTunes: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
Steve Lehto has been practicing law for 23 years, almost exclusively in consumer protection and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! He wrote !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
This website may supply general information about the law but it is for informational purposes only. This does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not meant to constitute legal advice, so the good news is we’re not billing you by the hour for reading this. The bad news is that you shouldn’t act upon any of the information without consulting a qualified professional attorney who will, probably, bill you by the hour.
Nibbles
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:04 |
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Honestly glad I got out of the SEO game early
Sure I made grips of cash, but I felt so empty inside
As Du Volant
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:08 |
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I wish I had a dollar for every SEO seller who tried to get my money. I get calls from them daily. It’s gotten to the point where I gave our receptionist instructions: If they mispronounce my name or ask for “the person in charge of online marketing” just send them straight to my voicemail.
Funny thing... the auto manufacturers give us free money to be spent only on certain online marketing services, some of which include SEO... SEO companies carefully vetted by the manufacturers themselves, supposedly legit. Why the hell would I actually spend our money on bullshit spammers if I’m already getting free money to use with legit companies? Yet they keep calling.
LongbowMkII
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:09 |
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Cold sales are the worst. Can I speak to your owner or HR manager? (avoid saying insurance) That was a short lived job.
505Turbeaux
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:10 |
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Do not throw us all in with the unsolicited SEO’s out there. They are a scam at best, and crooks at worst. They are in the same league as Nigerian royalty and Viagra salesmen.
As an SEO and digital marketing director for 10 years, and one who has done much for Tier 3 auto dealers and auto rental to help get exposure for businesses and online properties, it is a viable marketing channel.
However, today is way beyond the craft of keyword selection and optimization and link farming, and plugs into social, traffic and relevance - along with site age to work the algorithm. Some say SEO is dead, and it is as we have known it. But the concept of it still solid. Now there are numerous other channels to work. It isn’t just relevant information on your site that gets traffic anymore
Edit: I was so steamed I missed your last paragraph where you kind of give us some cred
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SteveLehto
> As Du Volant
05/29/2015 at 11:10 |
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That is also an indication of a vocation in distress. They do not have actual business or clients so they have to go out and do scummy things to get try and get business.
The problem is that the barrier to entry is too low. As in, nonexistent. Anyone with an internet connection and an email account can claim to be one and from what I gather, many of them have zero skills beyond sending out emails.
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SteveLehto
> LongbowMkII
05/29/2015 at 11:12 |
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I answer my own phones. I love it when the jerk off - I mean “salesman” - asks for me or for the “person in charge of [].” I just hang up.
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SteveLehto
> 505Turbeaux
05/29/2015 at 11:14 |
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There ARE legitimate people out there doing good work. But the people doing the spam and the cold calls and so on are giving you a bad name. Just like any other profession, I suppose. But its the SEO guys who dump emails in my inbox and call me. So, I had to vent.
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505Turbeaux
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:27 |
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you know how funny it is to be an SEO and get these same emails day after day? I think anyone who webmasters or catches the info@ emails gets about 100 a day. So terrible. I do the same thing if I am bored and check up on them and the sites they represent. Hilarious
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SteveLehto
> 505Turbeaux
05/29/2015 at 11:29 |
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Explain to me how my site has 4X the traffic of his?! I also checked his twitter account. Surprise, surprise. I have almost 10X the number of followers. Although, to be fair, he did not promise to help me with that.
Stef Schrader
> 505Turbeaux
05/29/2015 at 11:32 |
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This this this. I know several really talented SEO types—gaming Google is a bit of an art.
None of them fall into the SEO spam category, though. Spamming me is the #1 flag that you’re a worthless pile of turds.
DrScientist
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:33 |
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not sure its a vocation in distress, rather just a specific business in distress.
the search engines are continually updating their algorithms, and most online publishers (not just people marketing themselves online) are looking for web hits. i do know the large multinational corps. spends lots and lots on seo. whether or not its successful i’m not sure.
crowmolly
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:36 |
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I get hit with these all the time. Some of them are very persistent, but they are still easy to ignore. I guess that’s the beauty of email rules and filters.
I get phone calls with some frequency as well, which are worse because I have to make a judgement call regarding answering a number I don’t recognize. Usually I don’t pick up and let it ring to voice mail.
One call that sticks in my mind wasn’t really “SEO”, it was somebody claiming to do “online commercial reputation management”. When I answered he started quickly running through his script about what his company can do for me, and how the silver is 500 for 500, gold 1000 for 1250, and platinum is 1500 for 2000.
I asked him what those numbers mean, and he said it’s the number of dollars per yelp/google/etc reviews I want. He guaranteed native English speakers and verified/checked email accounts for perfect validation.
I forget exactly what I told him at that point, basically something like I’m in the business of building things up not tearing them down, and I could never in good conscience use a service like he was offering. Might have also asked him how the fuck he can sleep at night, I don’t recall exactly. I was still a bit stunned about the whole thing.
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SteveLehto
> DrScientist
05/29/2015 at 11:40 |
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It’s a game of cat and mouse. The SEO guys try and figure out what the latest tweak is and, theoretically, the search engines are trying to simply make the results more relevant (and trying to make it so the system cannot be gamed).
I think it’s a lot like day traders v long-term investors. If you don’t want to watch the markets by the hour, you could just invest in sound businesses and think long-term. But Hey, that’s just me. It might just be that I’m put off by the ridiculous cold calls.
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SteveLehto
> crowmolly
05/29/2015 at 11:43 |
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There are people out there who sell everything. I know that for a while there was a guy openly advertising that he would sell you good book review on Amazon. Amazon shut him down but I know others are doing it.
There are also those who buy and sell twitter followers. Sadly, the media used to fall for it. One of those famous reality families got a ton of attention when they started because they had SO MANY twitter followers. Later turned out they had bought a ton of them. But the media loves to print stuff and - when it turns out to be hype - then just walk away from it.
Tom McParland
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:47 |
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Oh man...I get about 3-4 emails from these people per day. On another note, speaking of the Fuller Brush man, have you read To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink? Good book.
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SteveLehto
> Tom McParland
05/29/2015 at 11:49 |
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No, I haven’t. I’ll have to check that out.
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505Turbeaux
> Stef Schrader
05/29/2015 at 11:53 |
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oh yeah, it is an ever evolving art that takes an analytical brain to pull off and persistence, and always learning or figuring out the best techniques. Spammers in this niche I look at like this. You can buy Viagra off some dude sending you emails, or you can go to a doctor for your ED. Your choice.
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505Turbeaux
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 11:55 |
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because you are a real person with real things to say #1. The only people going to those shell sites are people that got the email and are inquisitive, or ready to get rooked. Lemon law is a much more targeted thing. Truth be told I am surprised the SEO get’s that much traffic.
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SteveLehto
> 505Turbeaux
05/29/2015 at 12:07 |
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A friend of mine wanted to hire an SEO guy so he ran a search “Best SEO in [State]”
Figured that would get him the best, right? Guy charged him a few thousand, made some tweaks to his site and his rankings crashed.
What works for one industry will not necessarily work for another.
More than once I have had them tell me that my site is doing “poorly.” When I ask them what search terms/phrases they used, it is usually something idiotic (which a potential client of mine would probably not be using). It is clear that some of these guys who harass me put about ten seconds of thought into their pitch before asking me for thousands of dollars.
If they learned to TARGET their pitches, they’d do better. Hmmmmmm.
Tohru
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 16:38 |
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But Steve, think about the missed revenue potential you’re missing out on by not allowing these industry professionals to leverage their core competencies in a holistic, brand-centered approach to improve your synergy in... *gag* *ralf*
Sorry about that, had to throw up - buzzword poisoning.
TahoeSTi
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 16:48 |
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It started with SEO now they are always trying to sell Social Media crap, claiming they can get you 100,000 fans or followers in a few months, They are all fake. I don’t get how people can even sell this stuff. I tried to sell my services as a legit SEO consultant but what i offered was too much work or cost to much...i guess people just want to buy the snake oil and hope for the best vs putting in the work.
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SteveLehto
> Tohru
05/29/2015 at 17:35 |
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That was the only app I recall from my Palm Pilot that I miss. It had a buzzword-phrase generator. Someone probably has made one more recently. I’ll go look.
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SteveLehto
> TahoeSTi
05/29/2015 at 17:36 |
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I had someone call me and offer to “fix” my reviews on a certain site. When I told him I had never been reviewed there, he hinted that a bad review might pop up if I didn’t hire him.
Ummm. No one checks those sites before they hire an attorney.
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Tohru
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 17:45 |
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When I was in high school our Cisco Certified Networking Academy class (all 8 of us) were issued Palm m125s. They were supposed to be for notes and homework. Instead they were used for Dope Wars, greyscale porn, and NES emulators.
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SteveLehto
> Tohru
05/29/2015 at 17:51 |
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The Palm Pilot was one of the worst-timed devices ever. Right there in the short window between small cell phones and smart phones. I remember all the things they said it was going to do - which were then done by smart phones.
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Tohru
> SteveLehto
05/29/2015 at 18:05 |
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There was a time when the aspirational dream of middle managers across America was a paperless corner office with a Motorola StarTac, a Palm Pilot, and a work laptop with 32 megs of RAM.
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SteveLehto
> Tohru
05/29/2015 at 18:17 |
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I so wish I had not thrown away my old Star Tac. I still love that design, just from a “looking at something cool” standpoint.