OH NO! WE’RE NOT TOP RANKED FOR “FLORISTS IN FLORENCE”…
OH NO! WE’RE NOT TOP RANKED FOR “FLORISTS IN FLORENCE”…Rarely a day goes by that we don’t receive emails from so-called “seo pros” about how much they love our website – but also just how badly it’s doing on the search engines. We work with more than 1100 websites and because of that and the fact that we own hundreds more – we receive emails every day from people soliciting us about how they can help get us that top Google ranking that “we don’t have”.We’ve written about this before so I won’t belabor that today. Our clients receive these kinds of emails all of the time – which creates extra work for us because they don’t know who to trust … so they forward these emails to us looking for more answers and input.If you’ve owned a website more than three months old you’ve certainly got more than your share of these solicitations. You know – they read something like:”Hi, I was browsing around and came to your website and I really enjoyed it. However I also noticed that it isn’t ranking for important search terms that would be valuable for getting you vastly more traffic. I can help with that and would like the opportunity to speak with you about options.”These emails seem harmless enough. What you should know about these emailers is that they are sending those emails out to EVERY email address on every domain name that they can spider and they RARELY, if ever actually perform any research to see where and IF a website is ranking. They simply know that 113% of business owners WANT more traffic and so they burn up the internet emailing these kinds of solicitations.Everyone wants more traffic, so TENS OF THOUSANDS of people fall prey to these scams and spam and spend money and NOTHING in the way of improvement comes from the money spent.ANYWAY – I personally received THIS ONE BELOW today and I had to share it. It looks innocent enough as the young “lady” actually provided her name – Clarissa Griffin. It APPEARS that she even included her domain name – ClarissaGriffin.com.
She wrote:My name is Clarissa G. and I was browsing around and came over to your site www.skisoutheast.com. I see you have some great work done on your site but there are some problems which are spoiling your Google search rankings and resulting in lower traffic then it could get.I see you have 0 errors but according to W3C validator which needs to be solved right away if you want to index your site on the search engines properly. Currently your site is listed at 3rd position of 32nd page for keyword florists in florence which can easily be improved just by fixing those W3C validator reported errors.I can send you a complete list of changes and fixes we will do for you to improve your site traffic and revenue. Kindly let me know if you want me to prepare the list and best possible price to do the tasks.Regards,Clarissa G.NOW HERE’S THE FUNNY PART…First, if you ever REPLY to any of these kinds of emails you’re most often actually NOT replying to the email address that you THINK you are. In this case there IS NO ClarissaGriffin.com as a reply email address. It SPOOFS or goes elsewhere. Chances are her real name is “Peggy” and “she’s” from Va Duz, Liechtenstein where she’s also known as Leonhard or Bohdan.Translation, NEVER reply to these kinds of emails because if they’re not willing to actually send them from a legit address, then they’re probably NO TO BE TRUSTED with your CREDIT CARD, right?Okay…but for the comedy in this particular solicitation.I’ve received thousands of these kinds of emails before and I’d had some odd ones from time to time. I love it when these emailers tell me that we’re NOT ranked well, when we’re NUMBER ONE for many important search terms.However the emailer above “Clarissa” emailed us on one of our SKI RESORT websites. It ranks at the top of Google for thousands of search terms that are related to SNOW and SKIING and other winter sports related terms.Clarissa really did her homework on this one though as she alludes to “some problems which are spoiling your Google search rankings and resulting in lower traffic then it could get.”She then goes on to tell me that we don’t have any “errors” but then shares, “Currently your site is listed at 3rd position of 32nd page for keyword florists in florence which can easily be improved just by fixing those W3C validator reported errors.”OH BABY! We’re ranked 323rd for “FLORISTS IN FLORENCE” on a ski website!I won’t be able to sleep tonight!Until next time…avoid these emails like the plague that they are!
