Today, M35 Design received an unsolicited email regarding one of our own websites. The email was typical of the kind of 'spammy' approach that so many unethical SEO companies use to try to obtain new business.
The unsolicited message purported to be from someone called David Charlton, from a company he says is called "The Web Clinic" (www.seo-clinic.net).
Amongst other untruths, the email said that our website was a Google PageRank 3. It's actually 4 - which is higher, although it's not a good idea to focus too much on PageRank nowadays. David Charlton also said that the site only has 29 Google backlinks (incoming links to a website, or web page) when, in fact, it has over 900. He reports that the site has 1250 pages indexed in Google, yet it actually has 1350.
Apparently there are, "issues with site content and structure" and the website is "underperforming in at least one of the major search engines such as - Google, Yahoo, and Bing." He continues, "You probably are aware that most people don't look past the first page of search results. I struggled to find you in the first couple of pages for highly relevant keyphrases, which means that you could be losing out on a significant amount of business." Well we struggled to find his site in Google at all, despite his claims of being on page 1 for two terms - "Website Marketing Company" and "internet marketing companies." That is presumably why he spams people - because his site cannot be found!
In fact, we are number 1 or 2 on page 1 of virtually all search engines for our top search term, and on the first or second pages for many other terms. These are organic listings, not something we have paid for. The site has been carefully 'nurtured' and has gained its ranking over a decade or more.
We tried to reply to David Charlton to set the record straight, but his email address and other common variations that usually work (webmaster@, info@, sales@, admin@ etc.) were all "refused" by their server. No surprise there!
This SEO company have recently changed their domain name from 'The SEO Doctors' to 'The SEO Clinic' - presumably due to negative publicity. Will they be changing it again in the near future? Probably, given their mode of operating and the contunuing bad press (see links at the end of this article).
At best, they and the many other SEO companies that use these tactics are just ignorant and send out a blanket email without actually researching any individual sites, hoping for the best. At worst they are scammers relying on that one person in a few hundred believing what they say about their site and paying them to 'put it right.'
Read more complaints about seo-clinic.net here and here.
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