It's late at night and I'm finishing a presentation for tomorrow, and my email tells me I just got 7 new emails. Four of them are leads from our website (cool!), one is from Brian, one from Dharmesh (we work late at HubSpot [grin]) and one from someone I don't know with the subject "Suggestion re: blog.hubspot.com". I've been meeting a lot of folks through this blog, and figured this was someone with a comment or an idea about a new article. Wrong. It's an SEO consultant pitching me on why I need their help. For your reading pleasure I have placed his email below, with what I was thinking when I read it in italics, and my email reply back to him. Some info has been deleted to protect the guilty. Enjoy.
The Email a Spammy SEO Consultant Sent Me
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 1:17 AM
To:mvolpe
Subject:Suggestion re: blog.hubspot.com
Dear Website Owner, [I should have deleted it when I saw this.]
If I could get you five times the RELEVANT traffic at a substantially reduced cost would you be interested? [Duh. Nice Sales 101 tactic of asking a question with a "yes" answer.] We can place your website on top of the Natural Listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN. [Then place your own site there and stop emailing me.] Our Search Engine Optimization team delivers more top rankings than anyone else and we can prove it. [How can you prove you deliver more SEO results than anyone else? This is not possible.] We do not use "link farms" or "black hat" methods that Google and the other search engines frown upon and can use to de-list or ban your site. The techniques are proprietary, involving some valuable closely held trade secrets. [If you can't explain it to me, then it is probably black hat, or so simple I should not pay you for it.] Our prices are less than half of what other companies charge. [Oh good. I was ready to pay double what others charge.]
I would be happy to send you a proposal using the top search phrases for your area of expertise. [If you spent 1 minute on my website you would know this.] Please contact me at your convenience so I can start saving you some money. Please do not hesitate to email or call me if you would like further information. [Really? I was going to call, but then got worried you didn't want me to call. Thanks for clarifying you actually do want me to call you.]
Sincerely,
(Name)
Executive Vice President [What's with the title inflation in sales these days?]
(Address)
(Phone)
My Response to the Spam SEO Consultant
I would be happy to hire you if you knew what you were doing, but it is clear you do not.
1) You have a broken link on your homepage
2) Your website does not have a 301 permanent redirect
3) You are using meta keyword stuffing on your homepage
4) You have no inbound links to your website
5) Your Website Grade is a 7/100. Run a report at www.WebsiteGrader.com
Maybe this is why you need to send spam emails to get new clients instead of getting them through SEO.
Please remove me from your list.
Thanks,
Mike
-----------------------
Mike Volpe
www.hubspot.com
Was I too harsh? How many spam emails do you get from SEO consultants who have no idea what they are doing? Leave a comment below and let's discuss.
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