Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-06T16:07:22+0100 2010-09-06T16:07:22+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/yet-more-seo-spammers-dont-trust-them-theyre-not-doctors-365/ It's that time again - yet more SEO jokers approaching our clients and making ridiculous claims about not only what they can do for our client, but also about the work I-COM has been doing. This month it's the turn of SEO Doctors (with a name like that, they've got to be reputable, right?), which approached our client The Smile Centre via e-mail, and used false information in an attempt to win new SEO business. Before I even start on debunking the information they claimed to have gathered about www.thesmilecentreuk.co.uk, allow me to highlight the inconsistencies within the actual sales e-mail (great way to impress potential new clients by the way). Early in the e-mail, SEO Doctors' 'Malcolm Wright' claims that  www.thesmilecentreuk.co.uk "has 7 back-links, meaning it's not very popular." Then later in the same e-mail, he says this: "So, here's a recap of my findings on your site: You have 3 back-links." This inconsistency is no doubt due to the fact that this long, spammy e-mail was not actually researched and written by a human being; in actual fact these types of emails are often auto generated with basic SEO information scraped and inserted into the email. In this case, the SEO information wasn't even correct. For example: Right now, your site has only 53 pages indexed by Google, which is quite low. Not only is this incorrect (the site has 39), it's not low at all - there aren't even 53 pages in the site in total! The back links claim (7 or 3? Malcolm couldn't make up his mind) is also preposterous - see below (click the image to open in a new window):www.thesmilecentreuk.co.uk actually has 224 back links. Malcolm's e-mail also claims that he "struggled to find you (The Smile Centre) in the first couple of pages of Google, meaning that you could be losing out on a significant amount of business." Malcolm doesn't actually let us know what he was searching for, and to be fair he's right, if he was searching for 'car rental in Huddersfield' or 'pet shop in South Shields', he would have struggled to find The Smile Centre.However, had he searched for the keywords related to The Smile Centre, he would have found organic page one listings; for example, 'dentures', 'false teeth' and 'cosmetic dentures' are all on page one of Google (see below).It would seem therefore that SEO Doctors don't even know what keywords The Smile Centre should be ranking for, and what does that tell you about their marketing ability?These e-mails are designed to prey on unsuspecting businesses which perhaps don't know a great deal about online marketing, but are hoping to start taking advantage of the fantastic returns available. They are designed to scare and intimidate, and are only used by businesses which aren't good enough or can't be bothered to win clients using the normal channels. The only truths we can glean from SEO Doctors' e-mail are a) they're not doctors, b) they're not SEOs (Search Engine Optimisers), c) OK, the Page Rank is 3, they got one piece of information right (albeit on the second attempt). Please, if you receive one of these e-mails, just delete it and get in touch with a decent SEO company. For advice see our blog post on How to Choose a Good SEO Company or invest in a little SEO Training and avoid spammers in the future! Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-23 12:13:24 http://www.i-com.net/blog/yet-more-seo-spammers-dont-trust-them-theyre-not-doctors-365/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/guaranteed-page-1-listing-google-affiliated-company-349/ Today I've been provided with yet more proof that the SEO industry desperately needs a governing body, capable of protecting clients from unscrupulous scammers who make ridiculous and misleading claims. One of I-COM's clients, The Smile Centre, has been contacted by a company whose salesperson firstly claimed to be a 'Google Affiliate' internet marketer with the ability to GUARANTEE a first page listing for the firm's website, and secondly claimed to be able to get The Smile Centre on page one of Google for the keyword 'dentures' for just 149 a month. To debunk the first claim, I'll simply quote Google's webmaster guidelines: 'Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, (or) allege a "special relationship" with Google'. Google does not associate itself with SEO or PPC firms, nor does it promote individual firms. The second claim, that a first page listing for the keyword 'dentures' can be achieved for 149 a month, is laughable. I-COM is currently managing a PPC campaign for The Smile Centre for this keyword, and even with a high quality score, the cost can be in excess of 4,000 a month! On its website, the online marketing company in question goes out of its way to mislead potential clients, including a logo that is closely modelled on Google's own and a website that talks about organic SEO when the only way you can guarantee a 1st page listing within 48 hours is through use of PPC techniques. Even then it would have to be a very uncompetitive keyword (meaning no-one is searching for it) to only cost 149 a month. Businesses are constantly being scammed out of their hard-earned cash by just this kind of 'online marketing' firm, which go out of their way to present the internet as a fast, easy and cheap way to increase profits. The fact is, internet marketing is hard work - but done properly it can present businesses with a fantastic ROI. If an offline marketing company rang you up and told you that they could guarantee you an advert on the front page of every newspaper in the country for 149 a month, would you believe them? Absolutely not, so don't believe idiots like this. Google is aware of the dubious claims being made by this company's sales team, and is looking in to the matter. In the meantime - beware unscrupulous marketing online marketing companies! If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-05-07 09:39:44 http://www.i-com.net/blog/guaranteed-page-1-listing-google-affiliated-company-349/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/death-of-a-copywriter-the-rise-of-the-automated-content-spinners-310/ As automated content spinners become more and more advanced, an SEO copywriter could be forgiven for starting to worry about his or her future job prospects. I'm not going to disclose too much personal information here, but I'm sure you won't be surprised to discover that my annual wage is significantly larger than $47 a year. Just this morning, I've been shown a content spinner with a user-updatable database of synonyms. The software identifies all words in a document for which a synonym exists in its database, and allows users to choose an appropriate word from a list of suggestions. This is a far cry from the standard free spinners, which turn sentences like this: "With a particular focus on getting you good results in Google, our SEO consultants offer you the full complement of SEO services." Into sentences like this: "By means of a fastidious spotlight on understanding you first-rate marks in Google, our SEO consultants tender you the jam-packed balance of SEO armed forces."Can a Content Spinner Replace an SEO Copywriter? No. Absolutely not. I know what you're thinking, "you would say that," so I'll not only make this assertion, I'll jolly well prove it. Whilst I would never advocate such spammy tactics, I can see how online content spinners could be useful for SEO consultants interested in submitting 'unique' content to article sites for the purpose of securing links. However, when it comes to the bread and butter of an SEO copywriter's day, and by this I mean blogging, creating content for client's websites, press releases and so on, your average (even your above-average) spinner would be completely useless. As a client, you can't give a content spinner a brand brief; you can't make revisions to its work; you can't ask it to think again, because it didnt think in the first place. Crucially, to actually take advantage of the time-saving nature of a content spinner, you need the raw materials to spin in the first place. For instance, if your business employed no copywriter, but had a content spinner, and you needed to create a new page of content for a solicitor's homepage, first of all you would have to find a page of content online from a solicitor advertising exactly the same services as your client. You would then have to use the software to create a page of copy that matched the tone and quality your client had specified and submit it to them for approval. If they weren't happy with the results, you would have to make further revisions in light of their comments - by which time you may as well have written the content yourself. Any benefit of the content spinning software you have purchased would be completely lost.We Will Soldier On As is true of many situations in life, there's no substitute for a human being (if you've ever used a robot cashier in a supermarket, you'll know what I'm talking about). Unless content spinners become infinitely more advanced (we're talking A.I.), they're no substitute for a copywriter. Copywriting 2010-02-08 09:06:34 http://www.i-com.net/blog/death-of-a-copywriter-the-rise-of-the-automated-content-spinners-310/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/how-not-to-tweet-267/ I was checking out my new followers and spotted this profile: Enlarge image in a new window It's not rocket science, but does anyone else spot the problem? This begs the questions: Do people really think that it's worth autogenerating Twitter accounts? Do people think that having these autogenerated Twitter accounts tweeting garbage about software to autogenerate Twitter accounts at NOBODY is really worth the effort? Do people really think that nobody will realise they're following and then immediately unfollowing? Especially when they follow nobody.... Long live Twitter spam. So, what are the chances that I can engage this guy if I follow him and start tweeting questions at him? Social Media Marketing 2009-11-12 08:38:08 http://www.i-com.net/blog/how-not-to-tweet-267/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/email-marketing-at-its-most-risible-260/ We've been the target of one of the most badly gauged email marketing campaigns I've seen in a long while today. This morning the blog inbox had the following awaiting me in the "spam folder." Enlarge image in a new window There was a logo for the product and text telling me I'll be a beacon of light. That's nice. What a waste of 10 seconds. Did it spark my interest? Not really. It sparked my laughter. I forwarded it on to a colleague as an example of some of the amusing spam we get. He laughed. Out of idle curiosity he clicked the link and laughed some more.  Then we got on with our day. Just now I got a second email from the same company. It turns out they're an email marketing company offering an email marketing product. How do I know? They sent me this: Enlarge in a new window A few points on this: The first sentence is grammatically incorrect. This makes me think the company is unprofessional. I don't want to be hassled via email by them, if I were interested I'd phone so now I won't be clicking any more links on their spam emails (I won't even be opening them, TBH). We offer email marketing here at I-COM, which these guys would have seen had they looked at our site and chosen to email targeted leads rather than every email address they could scrape. Good email marketers don't email market to businesses that offer the same services being offered in their e-shot. The moral? A decent email marketing campaign needs to give you a genuine reason to click and needs to target the people who might actually care - and it shouldn't be so pushy that it encourages those same people to block you. Internet Marketing 2009-10-29 14:43:06 http://www.i-com.net/blog/email-marketing-at-its-most-risible-260/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/website-testimonials-what-we-can-learn-from-spammers-about-trust-250/ I spend a lot of time asking clients to provide testimonials and telling them to add case studies to their websites. Why? Well, by associating yourself with real people and real actions, it helps your business look trustworthy.It's such a proven tactic that even the pyramid scheme email spammers use it:Take the above screenshot - if you got an email from some random guy named Joel telling you to trust him that he was telling the truth about his marketing genius and his surefire way to make money, well, you'd never believe him. But, if his client Phil goes out of his way to tell you about the scheme, explaining that not only has Joel helped him, but he's also helped all these other people - and he gives you their names - doesn't that add a hint of credibility?Names = real life people = happy customers.Surely providing real stories about how your products or services have benefitted others, backed up with their thoughts on how great you are in their own words is the best form of marketing there is. There is absolutely no substitute for receiving a recommendation from a satisfied customer.So, take it from the spammers - testimonials work. They don't send those emails out to you for fun because they like the idea of filling your junk folder. They do it because it makes them money. Internet Marketing 2009-10-09 08:35:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/website-testimonials-what-we-can-learn-from-spammers-about-trust-250/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/harry-potter-and-the-twitter-search-trending-topics-222/ Social networking phenomenon site Twitter has done nothing to quell the talk, debate and blogs about their service with the unveiling of the sites new homepage. Whilst there can be little argument about the success of Twitter, the popularity of which has grown by an exponential rate over the past 12 months,  Im not sure Twitter has got this update 100% right. The aforementioned new homepage has been completely remodelled to focus on search encouraging tweeple, and even visitors who are not signed up to use the service, to See what people are saying about particular keywords. The debate on whether Twitter is to be considered a threat to Google and traditional search engines is a future post, which Im sure another of the I-COM bloggers will take the challenge to write about, Im more interested in the prominence of trending topics as now displayed on the site. The homepage of Twitter now shows popular keywords being tweeted by the minute, day and week allowing you to click on these to see what people are saying. Whilst trending topics have been available to view for a few months now, they were only available to view on a user's homepage after they have logged in. And even then, it was only displayed as a short list. The updated version of the site now displays c. 24 trending topics as soon as you hit the homepage. Rather than having any real use for private users (are we really interested in what Twitter users around the world have to say about Goodnight??!) surely all this feature does is leave the service open to abuse by spammers and people trying to promote spurious products and services. For example, if you look at the results for popular topic of the minute, day and week AT&T, the top 4 results are tweets from the same spammer If you read @Shela4118s tweets, they all link to spurious urls and shamelessly include AT&T harry potter at the end of each post. Whilst tweeple around the world are undoubtedly posting interesting reviews on the latest Harry Potter film and excited comments about the return of Michael Schumacher to F1, the tweets as those from@Shela4118 are enough to make me want to avoid what people are saying about trending topics. And its the best argument as far as Im concerned to keep the character limit of Twitter to 140. Otherwise, this post could have been Harry Potter and the #iran election Adrian Lambert, Jay-Z and Michael Schumacher follow Friday music monday as Apple claims new mercury blue M&Ms. Goodnight. Yawn. Social Media Marketing 2009-07-31 16:19:59 http://www.i-com.net/blog/harry-potter-and-the-twitter-search-trending-topics-222/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-twitter-follow-unfollow-follow-unfollow-social-media-spam-trick-218/ Quite a mouthful that title. But to be fair, the latest form of Twitter spam is producing a lot more email in my junk folder than I can digest. The latest trick of the ever-present social media spam kings appears to be following you on Twitter and if you don't follow back, unfollowing you a day or two later so they can follow you again, thereby ensuring you get another notification email. When you ignore that email they repeat the same thing. Ad nauseum. Our @searchdesigndev Twitter account has received since Mid-May, well over 90 such requests from the same network of clueless marketeers under the various names of @DazPeters, @GilesBounty, my personal favourite - @RayDollarBill, @cashmarketing, @marketingcodes, @seodirection, @carefreecash, @webdesignbournemouth, @sailor_james and more. For example we have @dazpeters on May 26: Again on May 30: Again on June 5:   Then on June 13: There's more from June 17th, 25th and 28th, July 7th, 10th, 16th 19th and 21st - I won't overload you with the screen shots. Interestingly all these accounts appear to be linked as they're all very short on content (with follower numbers in direct opposition to the minimal number of tweets) and all seemingly looking to drive traffic to @imsucks, @smokefreetips and @theseogod. For example, from @dazpeters: From @marketingcodes: @theseogod and @imsucks may know SEO*, but they don't know social media. If they did they wouldn't be using a bunch of junk shell accounts to promote themselves and their clients. What they would be doing is encouraging their clients to create their own accounts and to use those accounts to engage with people, to discuss the actual issues relating to their businesses and listening to find out what customers and potential customers really want. Social media will only help your business if you use it the right way. Driving volumes of traffic from followers is meaningless if they leave straight away and having masses of followers is pointless if you don't engage with them. Social media is a real opportunity for businesses to bring the shop floor online and develop and cultivate those personal relationships with clients that disappeared when the shop floor turned into a website and face to face selling and customer relationships turned into website content and contact forms. When it comes to social media, don't take advice from just anyone - make sure the person helping you actually knows how to use social media before they damage your business by misusing it. *Or they may not, we haven't checked. Social Media Marketing 2009-07-23 17:15:09 http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-twitter-follow-unfollow-follow-unfollow-social-media-spam-trick-218/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-bad-site-in-a-good-google-serp-210/ So I was doing a bit of research this morning in Google under the query "affordable health insurance." I got the following result: Enlarge image in a new window Now, bearing in mind that I'm searching on google.co.uk, I've been given 3 American sites in the top 5 - although on the whole the results are for relevant websites (even though I don't really need American health insurance). The most interesting, however, is site #4, Rochester Gentle Dental. The name alone confused me as that sounds like the name of a dental clinic, not a health insurance provider, but it could be a small health insurance company offering dental insurance. There's even an address with the result, for a place in Rochester, NY, so I was expecting a clinic. I wasn't expecting a website, associated with an address in Google Maps for what appears to be a legitimate business, to actually be a cookie cutter spam site designed to push link juice to a bunch of other insurance sites. Enlarge image in a new window Ok, it looks nice enough on first landing but the site has no logo, no footer with Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions and no proper About Us page - yet they want you to submit your details for insurance, which frankly, seems a bit dangerous. I wouldn't entrust money for something that important with a site I know nothing about. Enlarge image in a new window As you scroll down the page, there's a single footer link to "insurance companies" which goes to an entirely different site, and a link to "old version" which takes you to a page of, quite frankly, gibberish: Enlarge in a new window Seriously, would a legitimate business actually put a site live that says "Health insurance napoleon and the prince with a lot of camellias are to have my dear!" about cheap health insurance? If you had (maybe by accident, or because your web developer had a weird sense of humour) and you did get some decent copy produced after the fact, would you leave that page online? No, you wouldn't. Not unless you were using the page to push link juice, via keyword-rich text links, to a different site -  hence the footer link. But this site gets even better when you look at the links to the other pages - some of which take you off site. All these links are wrapped in JavaScript so they don't pass linkjuice out anywhere - except to the site in the footer link. Enlarge image in a new window Someone's working hard to make that one link have weight because the home page has a PR of 3 - although they aren't being particularly choosy about the links they pursue. Yahoo delivers the following backlink profile: Enlarge image in a new window So it's foreign language sites, sex sites, and general garbage. In fact, running Link Diagnosis on the site reveals just how bad the backlinks are - a huge proportion are .ru sites, yet this is a dental clinic in New York state? From the WHOIS data it looks like the domain was originally purchased in 2005 and was renewed in February 2009 and has had 2 registrars. I can only assume that the current owner must have bought an expired domain from the actual Rochester Gentle Dental clinic and has now registered a trusted domain by proxy using the following information: Enlarge image in a new window This goes to show the power that domain age and trust must have, even months after a domain has changed hands and content. It also goes to show the power links - even incredibly poor links from bad neighborhoods - still have within Google. What confounds me is that the SERP has 102 million results, which is competitive in any industry, and the insurance industry is one of the most competitive you'll find in organic search outside of porn, gambling, travel or real estate. So Google, any chance that you're going to sort that particular SERP out, please? And businesses...don't lose your branded domain name because if you do, it could spell a horrific reputation management issue if the wrong person gets hold of your expired URL. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-06-25 14:51:17 http://www.i-com.net/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-bad-site-in-a-good-google-serp-210/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-its-time-for-seo-companies-to-get-an-industry-governing-body-189/ I know that I have ranted about this in the past and even my Operations Director Mike Blackburn has recently blogged about the same company and their email approaches! Another "Senior Search Consultant" from the same comapny has now sent an email to our client  The Smile Centre detailing the same spurious rubbish about PR, Pages Indexed and he expects Barrie from The Smile Centre to employ him because The Smile Centre "doesn't appear on the first page of Google" (he doesn't say what for even though we have lots of first page listings) and he can help Barrie "blow his online revenue off the charts". Due to Barrie's relationship with I-COM he can see right through this - but there may be many businesses that don't! I called the Jersey number given in the email, only for the phone to be re-directed and eventually answered and put down! At I-COM, frankly, we've had it up to here with these sorts of spurious businesses claiming to be experts in search engine optimisation who are taking advantage of the fact that ours is a fledgling industry and small businesses don't know what to look for when choosing an SEO consultant, which is why I ask: Out there in the SEO World who would like to see a governing body with teeth that can close these idiots down!? Search Engine Optimisation 2009-05-06 11:52:24 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-its-time-for-seo-companies-to-get-an-industry-governing-body-189/