The Side Effects of Success

Here’s the text of an actual e-mail received through the contact form of a site I’ve been working on:

“What am I doing wrong on my site? When will my site get more links? Why are other sites ranking higher than mine? How do I target the right keywords? If so, we have a Huge Deal on Internet Marketing/SEO/SEM services for you! Please reply to this email to know more.”

Unsolicited e-mails and phone calls from “SEO Professionals” are something my customers see a lot of as they move up in the organic search engine rankings, especially after you hit the second or third page of Google for a target keyword.

A good question might be: “Why didn’t they contact me when I was on page 12 of search engine rankings? Why now that my site is moving up?”. The reason is, your site is now on the verge of getting to page one and in many cases you might only need a little push to get you over the edge and land squarely on page one of Google. Companies like this would love nothing more than to provide that push and get paid handsomely for doing it.

I’m not saying they can’t do what’s promised, but you have to be careful. How are they going to achieve the success they’re promising? Will they use “black hat” techniques? Will they use sneaky redirects to take backlinks away from you if you don’t keep sending them money? Is this really a reputable SEO company or some guy in a sweatshop style room in the Philippines?

I don’t worry about this type of solicitation stealing business away from already established customers, as they’ll never reach the service I can provide, but companies who have yet to hire an internet marketing company should be aware of what’s out there and what they’re getting into.