This is one in a series of posts reviewing and looking at how some of the SEO companies which use bulk emails/spam with ‘we can help your terrible site’ type emails really can (and actually mostly can’t!) help your site.
Read some simple explanations of some of the SEO terms used on this post…
This email came from an Aatish using an @searchengineoptimization.live email, although subsequent replies have come from an Aditya using an @trueweb.agency email. (searchengineoptimization.live isn’t a real site and going to trueweb.agency sends you to https://www.truewebtechnologies.com/ the ‘real’ site for this company…)
Hi James Cooper,
I was just going through your website and would like to share some observations pertaining to it. Though your website is great and has all the information that prospective customers of your niche will search for, it has a lot of scope for getting optimized in line with Search Engine Guidelines. I’m not just saying this because I must but can back it with facts and relevant information.
We have conducted a meticulous SEO audit of your website and found that it can give you more return than it might be giving you at present. We would be happy to share a free of cost and no obligations audit and keywords recommendation report so that you can have a clear picture of what can be done to optimize your website further.
Once you complete the analysis of the report, you can discuss how we can help you in driving substantial traffic to your website.
If you’re interested, please reply to this email and one of our consultants will share the free audit report.
Regards,
Aatish
So I replied and got a reply from Aditya Roy. This SEO spam was interesting in that it was for my own, business site – rather than my Christmas and Easter site (www.whychristmas.com and www.whyeaster.com) which I normally get SEO spam for. The other unusual thing about this is that I’ve relaunched my own site (this one!) since getting this ‘advice’. However, all the problems with their advice still holds. You can see the old version at: https://web.archive.org/web/20190126222100/https://seospam.xyz/ (although the funky fonts don’t work!)
Their Report & Recommendations
The report I received from them was a Word File (a change from the usual PDFs!) and contained a mix of the usual statements about how many bad things there were on the site and their recommendations of what they’d do to fix them (and a selection of spelling errors as well…).
Here are their “HIgh Priority Recommendaitons” (their spelling):
- Create ALT & Title Attribute To Images – This was WRONG – all the images had alternative text on them and didn’t need ‘titles’ (images very rarely do and they aren’t used for SEO purposes)
- Please add Contact page – This was WRONG – there was already a contact form on the page (it was a single page site then and the phone/email contacts were under the form…)
- Please Add Thank you page – This was WRONG – a thank you page was not required as the ‘thank you’ was displayed once the form had been sent (as it does on this site as well!)
- Add Blog Page – OK, I could have added this – and I have now. But I also guest blog on other sites so to say I really needed a blog wasn’t a ‘must have’.
- Resolve HTML Validation Error – This was WRONG – there were no HTML errors on the page/site!
- Update Title , description and keywords Tag – This was WRONG – the title and meta description tags on the site were great and big search engines have used the ‘keywords’ tags for YEARS!!!
- Overall website optimization is very necessary to get desired output from this website. – that statement is so vague that it could basically mean anything!
So out of all their seven “HIgh Priority Recommendaitons”, five were just wrong, one was possibly helpful and one was basically meaningless.
Looking at Their Site
With SEO spammers, I also like to look at their sites, to see if they practice what they preach (I mean would you trust a plumber who had leaking and rusty pipes all over their own house?!); and also to compare their site with a site they say they can help…
Their site is: https://www.truewebtechnologies.com
For HTML Validation, their site got: 8 errors & 28 warnings – remember, my site had none!
On Google Pagespeed their site got:
Desktop: 60/100
Mobile: 17/100 (THAT’S TERRIBLE!!!)
My site got:
Desktop: 99/100
Mobile: 88/100 – so both considerably better using Google’s own speed testing tool!
On GTMetrix their site got:
F (36%) / C (74%)
On GTMetrix my site got:
B (82%) / C (71%) – so again much better!
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, my site got a clean bill of health – their site wouldn’t even load in it due to having so many scripts! But looking at their code, I could see several semantic and accessibility issues.
They also didn’t have any privacy policy on the site – really not good.
Conclusion
Well, let’s say I won’t be using their services! A ‘report’ that was full of factual and spelling errors and suggestions that wouldn’t help don’t inspire me with confidence.
The choice is yours, but if searchengineoptimization.live, trueweb.agency or truewebtechnologies.com send you an email, I might hit delete.