Get To You First Page of Google
Yes, we know, that heading isn’t using correct grammar. We purposely wrote that heading in a way that demonstrates one of the warning flags that can alert you to a scam email or a shady marketing company trying to lure you into a service contract. Some of these companies are very lazy, while others are backed by actual companies with smart-looking websites to cover their backstory.
Caorda is a marketing agency with a foundation in website design and development. You’d think that a company cold calling us or emailing us in an effort to sell us web design services would do their research? They generally don’t. This is because they’re fishing for other details like a credit card number or other private information that they can sell or exploit in some way.
Below we have several examples of these scam emails as well as some extremely helpful tips on how to avoid getting trapped in a contract or inadvertently handing over important information.
Your Website Has Bugs and Errors!
Here is a common boilerplate email that many of our clients receive. Note that the only personalized part is the domain. Any misspellings and grammatical errors are left in place. Note that there are several egregious grammatical errors in the first two sentences. This is an immediate warning sign. We’re going to list the entire email so you can see the extent (or lack) of their attention to detail. Imagine handing over the optimization of your business and livelihood to a company that writes content like this? On the surface it may seem like this is above board, but digging into the nooks will paint a different picture.
Here’s an example of an email you might receive. We have left any spelling and grammar errors intact.
Hi,
I hope you are doing good.
As you have shown your interest in SEO services along with website focus. I would be glad to offer you our services.
I checked your website <domain removed> In my analysis, I found several bugs and errors on your website that need to be fixed. Going further into the analysis I found your current ranking is very low as a matter of fact your competitors are getting much more effective output through their organic traffic.
As Google is constantly rolling out updates to its search engine algorithm and while SEO fundamentals will never change, it is important to use the updated tactics to get your website rank higher in the search results. To increase the ranking, we do optimization of the entire website as per Google SEO guidelines to boost up the performance over the search engines.
Thereafter, we start the off-site activities aggressively & strategically to increase ranking, drive traffic. And we believe that when relevant visitors will start coming on the website then orders will generate automatically. We can help you further promote your business online, which would make you rank high on search engines on relevant keywords, but we will also help you uplift your brand in the market.
Going further we need to understand “What is your current or essential requirements?”
As you know about your business better than anyone.
So, we need to work accordingly as per your needs and requirements such as:
Your business model
Potential growth of your website
The requirements of your website
The area that you are targeting.
Please suggest a suitable date and schedule a call that will allow me to explain our services to you and discuss further.
You can schedule a meeting by pressing the button given below under my signature line. “Click Here to Schedule a Meeting”.
Herein I’m enclosing the Audit Reports of your website please find the attachments given below.
Here’s another one that a client sent to us. Once again, we have left all of the grammatical horrors intact.
To: Subject: First Page on Google
Hello Sir & Madam,
My name is <removed>, and I was Reviewing your website and noticed that the website has a good design and it looks good.
But it is not Ranking on GOOGLE for Relevant Keywords.
I couldn’t find your website on the first page with your business keywords/ phrases.
We can help you do better in all search engines by Achieving top page Rankings.
We Provides SEO services at a minimal cost, May I send you quote? If interested.
Don’t Provide Your Email Address to Free SEO Tools
This is the type of email that you’ll receive by using a ‘free SEO Report’ tool online. Unless the company you see is a well-known authority in the market, you want to avoid leaving your email address in any free online tool. This is how they begin the process. We examined the ‘Audit Reports’ (which was a single report) and there were some viable checks and a lot of others that simply said good work, this is present, that’s present and a lot more boilerplate content.
Some of these companies will get rather impatient with you if you stop replying to them as with this last email from that same company:
Hello,
As it has been impossible to get in touch with you via emails or phone calls, hence, we are closing the SEO Audit of your website at our end. Please consider this as a notification for the same.
The technical errors on the website still remain and the organic rankings will fall further. We have tried our best to notify you of these issues for the past one month, but to no avail.
Have a good day ahead.
Notice the doom and gloom reference to “your organic rankings will fall further”, along with the other passive-aggressive tones. We had a good giggle reading this.
How to Spot a Suspect Marketing Company?
Some of these companies are quite sophisticated and have teams of salespeople whose only job is to sell you into a contract. Since SEO is a long-term strategy, it can take you months and thousands of dollars before you start to notice that things aren’t working out. If you are at all concened, please just ask us what we think. We’ve seen it all so we’d be happy to put your mind at ease. A lot of these companies want to scare you into giving them money. Don’t do it.
- Check the email. If the email is from a free email company like Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com, etc…, delete!
- Check the ‘reply email’. Notice the email of the person sending, then press ‘reply’ (but DON’T reply), you’re just looking to see if the email address changed as it’s very easy to spoof the original email which might look like a real company.
- Check the domain of the email. If the email looks like a real company, go to the domain. For instance, our email is @caorda.com. You’d type in caorda.com into your browser and make sure a legit company website is on the other end. If it doesn’t resolve or the website gives you the creeps, close the browser and delete the email.
- Delete the email. This should be the first tip. Just delete the email. You didn’t ask for it and you already work with an amazing marketing company. :)
- Use your gut. This is similar to the last item if you don’t recognize the sender, didn’t engage with a free tool, are put off by the aggressive tone of the email, and it just doesn’t feel right, delete!
Contact Caorda With Any Concerns
As we stated when we kicked off this article, we’ve seen it all. We get these emails ourselves. We’re here to help and we understand that the concept of SEO can be intimidating and that’s what these companies are counting on. Let us dispel any misinformation about what they might be telling you.