Yes, we are a top-rated company that focuses on search engine optimization services for moving companies. And what better perspective than that to advise you how to properly avoid SEO spam emails? After all, this is what we do. We reach out to high-quality movers such as yourself and offer them the chance to be better. As the name says, we deal with the development of professional moving companies such as yours. However, since we are pretty much sure that ours is not the only offer you will be receiving, the least we can do is help you identify false ones. This way, you can save yourself time and energy when you skim through your inbox.
When you are involved in search engine optimization as much as we are, it annoys you when you see SEO spam emails with zero effort invested. And you see it all the time, especially when you own a company. They are those unrealistic “we will make your company great overnight” proposals. Let me tell you right from the start – there is no such thing as an overnight success in SEO.
Proper SEO for movers (as well as others) takes time to establish and witness. And the false offers “digital marketing gurus” tend to promise will have you believe that it’s like going to the store and buying success. The emails themselves are usually lacking in creative content and filled with unethical promises of greatness. And the worst part is that clients often tend to lose interest and focus on the aspects of SEO that truly matter for the improvement of your rankings and conversion rate.
If SEO is new to you, don’t worry – we’ll break these items down into more detail as I run through the top 5 signs you just received SEO spam email.
#1: The bold guarantee of 50+ backlinks per month
If you’re getting a cold email from an SEO company that says they guarantee 50 or more backlinks per month and it has no idea what your business or industry is about, that’s a huge red flag right there. Small moving businesses, for example, aren’t able to add 50 do-follow links a month. It just wouldn’t be possible without an unnaturally extensive budget.
However, natural link building during an SEO campaign is important. Links still range anywhere from 20% – 40% of Google’s algorithm. This part of SEO marketing for movers includes:
- hand-crafted guest blog outreach,
- networking with people in your field on social media, and
- sharing custom-designed infographics about your product, service, or customer demographic.
When you receive an SEO spam email that promises such an irrational amount of links, you should know that it is not legit. The person or company that sends you such an email usually does not find the time to research the market and the industry. And if you don’t do the research, there is no way for you to know how many links per month are applicable to the moving industry.
#2: Lack of mentioning new blog posts or web pages
If the email proposal you receive does not mention any type of new content, you can bet that it lacks professionalism. Such SEO spam email will usually focus on either of two things:
- Unethical link-building strategy – which usually results in harsh penalties from Google.
- Guarantee to have all your existing content indexed – which Google does on its own most of the time.
What you should know is that the foundation for any success in the realm of SEO comes from 1000+ word articles/blog posts. These usually focus on top-rated keywords relevant to your industry and are shared as much as possible on social media platforms. And as long as your articles or web pages follow certain SEO standards, Google’s algorithm will favor them.
If you have a lot of different keywords you want to rank for, you basically need a web page or blog to target each one. You can update existing content, but SEO service providers should always have a plan to create new content for you that will be search-optimized.
#3: The “SEO expert” requests to charge you for redundant services
SEO spam emails will often contain proposals in the manner of:
- We submit your site to all major search engines
- We’ll provide weekly rankings checkups
- We can make 5 updates to your site each month
- We’ll remove any robots.txt files blocking your website
It all sounds sort of good, right? But weekly rankings checkups are just that – where is the work to actually improve rankings? And 5 website updates each month? We do that many on a weekly basis. In addition, all major search engines will index your site on their own. And I’ve never met a company that had a robots.txt file blocking their website from Google. Unless the web designer left that in there after the job was done, it’s just not something you should worry about. So, don’t let this type of SEO jargon confuse you – none of it adds much value or is even totally necessary.
#4: SEO spam emails that start with “Greetings of the day!”
I know this is something that sounds absolutely ridiculous. However, it’s also something that I’ve had the chance to see on many occasions. This weirdly constructed intro to SEO spam emails: “Greeting of the day!“. And it leaves me speechless every single time. I just can’t believe how unimaginative people tend to be.
And these emails are usually easy to identify simply by analyzing the poor vocabulary and sentence constructions within them. So, if the email proposal is written by someone who lacks a basic understanding of grammar or spelling, something is off. You can count that they’re probably being paid by a company doing a lot of overseas outsourcing.
When you work with an SEO company, it’s nice to know they have a bunch of experts in-house and are not managing your website and entire SEO work through a team of Upworkers.
#5: The SEO proposal you received is from someone unknown to you
The reality of the situation is that 90% of proposals you receive are SEO spam emails. And it is perfectly natural to be suspicious of any proposal you receive from a company that you have no connection to, nor have you heard of them before.
If they mention you by your first name and mention specific SEO items on your website that could be improved, then it might be legitimate. For example, we provide potential clients with the opportunity to identify potential issues with their website through our free website audit. That’s essential to creating a good SEO plan. Every website and business is a little different and has different resources available. So, any true SEO expert should be well-aware of the industry they operate within. They should know the keywords, services requested, target customer groups, and marketing assets before they contact you.
So, I hope this article helps people navigate through all those annoying SEO spam emails. And I hope it helps businesses weed out false SEO proposals.
