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 a Rohit who was using an websollutions.com email, although a subsequent reply came from Arpit from Webxplore Technologies Pvt Ltd. (websollutions.com isn’t a real site).
Hello Sir/Madam,
I’ve been tracking the success of your company while doing some research on your industry—I’m very impressed with your company, but there are some real opportunities for growth that you currently are missing.
While browsing through your website I couldn’t help noticing that it lacked any significant rankings in Google. As you already suspect, this means your site is virtually invisible to potential customers searching for a product/service that you provide.
Our company can resolve this problem for you. We are an ISO 9001 and Google Accredited Company, with over 7 years experience in the field of Search Engine Optimization. We have the expertise to send hundreds, or even thousands, of customers to your website.
Make your website visible on Search Engines!!
Improve your business website ranking!!
Provide you with details on how we do it!!
I would like to request you for an opportunity to work and AMAZE you with our service.
If you have any query, we will be more than happy to provide you our quick assistance.
Reply Awaited
Best Regards,
Rohit,
Manager (Marketing Department)
So I replied to Rohit and got a reply from Arpit. (I’ve run my Church’s site www.minehead-baptist.com) for about 15 years. It is VERY well ranked on Google and has even been a finalist in a ‘Church website of the year’ award in the past!
Their Report & Recommendations
The report/audit I received from them was in the form an email, which is shown (truncated) below.
Hello Mr. James,
I am contacting you on behalf of our SEO consultant “Rohit” and I will be your first point of contact for all further conversation.
My Name is Arpit Gupta, Director of “Webxplore Technologies Pvt Ltd” and would be happy to provide you more information about our SEO services. We are an Online Marketing Company based in New Delhi, India. Our company website: http://www.webxploretechnologies.com/
We have checked your website (www.minehead-baptist.com) thoroughly and found following areas of concern, please See below:
Your website attracts limited visitors traffic, which affects potential growth.
Your keywords don’t feature in Google first page, which affects visibility.
Your back links are not good enough, which affects link popularity.
Your site google indexing is very less which affects popularity of website among the users.
Your website is not properly optimized, which affects the overall SEO score.
We can surely overcome the above mentioned points and bring your website up in Google page 1 within 3 to 4-month duration to many potential keywords related to your website subject, Once your website is up in Google top searches then you will get huge traffic automatically.
Our best rate for SEO is $125 per month
Note: this is our Bronze package for which original cost is $225 per month, however, we are offering it just in $125 per month as discounted offer.
{There was then a big long list of all the things they said that would do for that amazingly discounted price…}
We’ll send you 1st report in 15 days from the starting and 2nd report in 30 days. Each report contains the 1/2 monthly work and ranking change status.
You can also contact me over Skype: webxploretechnologies to discuss more of your questions and concerns.
Awaiting for your valuable response.
Warm Regards,
Arpit [surname removed for privacy]
Director (Webxplore Technologies Pvt. Ltd)
So let’s look, in some more details, at the issues they say the site has…
Your website attracts limited visitors traffic, which affects potential growth – This statement is so vague that it’s basically meaningless!
Your keywords don’t feature in Google first page, which affects visibility –
This is WRONG! If you do a search for ‘church in Minehead’ and/or ‘Minehead church’ (which are searches which people wanting to find a church in Minehead are likely to to do!), then the site is #2 on the ‘Google Local’ listings and #3 on Google listings (it’s the first ‘real’ church site after a church directory site and the town council’s site!). For another search ‘christmas services in minehead’ (another ‘seasonal’ search which might well be searched for), the site’s Christmas page is #1! [I’d also really like to know what keywords that Webxeplore think aren’t working as they don’t know anything about what keywords the site is targeting!]
Your back links are not good enough, which affects link popularity. –
This is WRONG! Using a backlink checker, there are 910 backlinks to the site. (I ran a backlink check on the Webxplore site – it has 2 backlinks…)
Your site google indexing is very less which affects popularity of website among the users. – This is WRONG! According to Google’s Search Console, there are 270 indexed pages & posts for the site. This is about right for all the pages on the site and the posts (mostly sermons on the sermons podcast).
Your website is not properly optimized, which affects the overall SEO score. –
Again, this is WRONG! The site is VERY optimised. [And with the state of their own site, I very much doubt that they would know an optimised site if they saw one – more on that below!]
So out of their five recommendations, four are simply wrong and one is 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: http://www.webxploretechnologies.com/
For HTML Validation, their site has 32 errors & 5 warnings (that’s pretty terrible). My church’s site has 2 errors and 2 warnings (that annoys me but one of the errors is for code that Facebook needs to share the site properly and one is for a stray tag that’s not hurting anything!)
On Google Pagespeed their site gets:
Desktop: 78/100
Mobile: 72/100
My church’s site gets:
Desktop: 100/100
Mobile: 93/100 – so both considerably better using Google’s own speed testing tool!
On GTMetrix their site gets:
D(64%) / C(71%)
On GTMetrix my church’s site gets:
A 97% / B (80%) – so again much better!
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 43 errors and 41 alerts that’s REALLY not good… My church’s site has 6 errors (all for empty buttons which aren’t empty when a lightbox is used – so nothing serious) and 4 warnings (again nothing serious)!
Their site takes over 3.5 seconds to load – my church’s site takes about 1.5 – so over 2x faster!
Also looking on their site, they DO NOT currently use SSL/HTTPS – which is now a ranking factor, as well as being a security issue. A good SEO company should really be using SSL – there is no good excuse not to these days.
They also DO NOT have any privacy policy on the site. They track full IPs of site visitors but don’t tell you (this is illegal under GDPR).
There’s also several bad code practices. Their logo has NO ALT tag on their main ‘logo’. That’s terrible – it should ‘Webxplore Technologies’. They have several <H1> tags one their home page; best practice is to have one with other sub headings tags as appropriate. They also don’t have any ‘OpenGraph’ tags in the code (which search engines and places like Facebook can use to display information about your site) which of course my site does!
Another ‘interesting’ thing is the copy on the last testimonial on their home page. It says: “Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text search Download Free Digital Agency One Page Template PSD file. Simple and clean single page website template for company portfolio. feel free to use it. Enjoy!” – So they have never bothered to finish setting up their own site properly!
Oh and they still have a link to a Google+ Social Media profile in their site’s footer – only Google+ closed several months ago. You’d think an SEO company would know that and would have done something about it…
On Rohit’s first email he said “We are an ISO 9001 and Google Accredited Company”. ISO 9001 is an international Quality Assurance standard (my Dad was a quality assurance engineer and was also an ISO 9001 Certified Quality Assurance Auditor, so I know about these things…). There is NOTHING on their site about having ISO 9001 Accreditation. Normally sites/companies which have ISO 9001 Accreditation have logos on their site as it’s quite a big deal. If they are claiming to have ISO 9001 Accreditation, but actually don’t, that would be a big deal…
Conclusion
I always find it rather disconcerting when companies use a fake domain without a site to spam you, rather than using their actual company name.
I also find it disconcerting when basically all of their recommendations are either wrong or meaningless, their site has a huge number HTML and accessibility errors; bad code practices and that they can’t even be bothered to finishing setting up their own site properly.
So if you get an email from a websollutions.com or webxploretechnologies.com email address, the delete button might be a good option.
But the choice, as ever, is yours.
Hi, I just sent a payment to this very same company to help boost my website in SEO rankings. It was 60 Pound Sterling for a “discounted” SEO package. I also gave them the credentials to my wordpress site. Are they scammers and completely unworthy or just a bad service you think? How should I proceed? Thank you
Hi Arthur,
Hmmmm, the choice is yours, but I wouldn’t let them anywhere near my sites! I don’t think they’re a scam as such, I just don’t think they’re much good at making sites! Their own site is a complete mess, in design and code, It’s got links for social media companies that closed well over a year ago and the copyright date on their site is still 2017!
You could try asking for your money back.
To stop them accessing your site: if given them a ‘new’ login for the site, I would delete that user; or if you’ve only got one login and you gave them that, I would change the password…
I hope that’s of some help.