SEO, as you will know, stands for Search Engine Optimisation. We do it in-house, and we’re reasonably good at it. Of course, we could be a lot better.
But every hour we get emails from hopefuls who have stumbled across our URL and want to help us improve our rankings. Here’s one which was cooked up earlier:
Please forgive the direct approach. My name is Alan and I work as a Consultant in your market sector. I have been looking at your website today and would like a few minutes of your time to have an informal chat with you.
I really like the site, but you may be curious as to why the site isn’t ranking, and with that in mind I wondered if you would like a free SEO audit of the site looking at keyword density and a detailed analysis of the back link profile.
That should give you an excellent insight, and hopefully allow us to develop a plan for getting the site into some top positions.
The audit is FREE and with no obligation. So do please get in touch.
Kind Regards
Alan
At least it was polite. And it came from Britain. Were I to reply to him, this is what I’d like to say:
Hi Alan
Thanks for your email.
You are not a known consultant in our market sector.
You write: “I really like the site, but you may be curious as to why the site isn’t ranking,”
Well, it is ranking. And it’s ranking exponentially better than yours. Your site’s Alexa ranking is 22,713,269.
Ours is 52,212.
It works in reverse — the lower the number, the higher the ranking. So your site is virtually invisible to the outside world.
And you want to sell us your advice?
But I can’t be bothered. I’m too busy waiting for the fotoLibra RAID 5 array to rebuild and for our very high-ranking site to be fully functional again.
I agree that they are intensely annoying.
I used to design Websites for a living (I’ve pretty much given up now), but one of my sources of pride was my ability to get very good ratings for clients (and thus business) from a one-man-band operation (me!)
It was thus very aggravating to have some clients come to me and ask if they should follow up on such speculative contacts. I would have to patiently explain that the very reason they had received the e-mail was that the site was rating well and thus they could easily be found on a variety of search terms, which such scoundrels would use to build up their database of potential gullibles.
It was even more annoying to realise that even after an intense amount of ongoing backroom work to ensure good ‘white hat’ SEO for a client, that some were so readily taken in by these template e-mails sent out by the million. Luckily, a part of my business ethos was to maintain a good personal relationship with clients built on trust, and so my clients always came to me first to ask advice.
Since starting with fotoLibra, I have been very impressed by the Google image results that my images served by fotoLibra receive. They very frequently rate above other images from many other stock agencies on a range of terms – and very quickly too.
Glad that you didn’t bother replying to this JUNK! and only vented your anger here. Had you replied, it would of course only served to increase the bilge level of your inbox!
BTW – (if I may add a little advert, if not feel free to delete these final paragraphs) – one of my current SEO successes is with a section of my own (now very old, and is desperate need of a makeover) Website. I list ‘artist friendly’ photography competitions: http://www.stickyrice.co.uk/photocompetitions.php.
I check every competition I list, endeavouring to ensure that the photographers rights are not stripped merely by dint of entering the competition. Many photo competition sites exist to make money, pure and simple. They will charge you to enter the competition, then in the T&Cs ensure that they have the right to resell your photos without recompense, etc. etc. I try to ensure that all my listed competitions comply with the Artist Bill of Rights: http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/
In return I get my hosting fees paid by the good folk who click on the Google Ads. on these pages (I just hope that they are taking care of the links that they choose to click on!)
On another (‘always look on the bright side’) note: It’s perhaps fortunate that your server woes occurred when they did, and that the site will be up to it’s old self (or even better?!) shortly. With fotoFringe looming, it would not have been the best advert!
Good luck with the site rebirth and the sales pitch in a couple of weeks.