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 Elina who was using a gmail.com email, although a subsequent reply came from James (a good name that!) using a krtechsolution.com email.
Hi Team,
Your website whychristmas.com is not ranking top in Google organic searches for many competitive keyword phrases.
· Your company is not doing well in most of the Social Media Websites.
· Your website having less number of index page and Google back-link.
· Your website requires a lot of additional Up-gradations.
Please find the below benefits of the campaign:
• Top page on search engine.(Google, Yahoo, Bing)
• Increase your website traffic and sales
• Create a brand name of your website
• Increase your website online visibilityWe have good expert team Which is providing a good service for Web-testing /GUI testing with quality Web-site designing, SEO and SMO etc..
We have dedicated expert team with having 7-10 Years real time experience for web application testing and software testing and website testing for Static and dynamic/e-commerce etc.
If my proposal sounds interesting for your business goal, please feel free to email me, it is ensured hereby that we promise with our technical team will contact you in very shortly and pursue as per your business requirement.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
ElinaPS: I am not spamming. I have studied your website, prepared an audit report and believe I can help with your business promotion. If you still want us to not contact you, you can ignore this email or ask to remove and I will not contact again.
The email was a mess, with different formatting styles which look like it had been copied and pasted together from a number of different spam templates!
So I replied to Elina and got a reply from James. This SEO spam was for my big Christmas information site (www.whychristmas.com). During each December it gets millions and millions of visits and is #1 on the whole of Google for a huge number of Christmas searches – so any SEO advice about the site is always ‘interesting’…
Their Report & Recommendations
Below is James’s first email to me:
Hi James,
Thank you so much for your interested in KRTECH SOLUTION SEO Service,
Q: It sounds like you think you can do a lot for my site. I would be interested to see what your report says!
Re: Yes, We have deeply analyzed your website www.whychristmas.com, your website is very Good fit for SEO marketing service, But there is little bit technical errors on your website, which are not properly updated on your website as per Google algorithm and webmaster tools like keywords, meta, tags, heading, titles, Description etc.. nothing to worry, when we will start the campaign, First we will fix all technical errors and set-up all of those things as per SEO requirements.
Our primary focus is that, how everybody knows your company and how your company will reach the visitors, that’s our main focus and significant part for the SEO background. So when we start the campaign for SEO, First we will analyze your website, then start the SEO service on your chosen keywords if we found any mistakes on your website that we will solve and set up for the SEO campaign.
If you really to promote your business and keywords, Please let me know, We are providing a completely online digital marketing services, Which including like SEO, SMO, Link building, Back-link posting, On-page optimization and Off-page activities etc.. By these services, Every one will know about your business and services through online process and you can get new visitors/customers by this services, Because we will promote your selected keywords/products in the all search engines and all social sites, In which result, You can get more number of new traffic and sales in locally and Globally. Our SEO service will help to increase your new traffic and it can help your business brand and reputation with your all keywords can found on the top page ranking in the Google, yahoo and bing etc.As per your business requirements, Our technical team have suggest you 2 price offers, Please find the below:
[There was then a big price list with their services ranging from $99 to $249 a month…]
Fixing all technical errors and set-up all of those things as per SEO requirements
To know more deliverable please visit @ http://www.krtechsolution.com
Please choose, which price offer is a suitable budget for your campaign, please update, which we can move for the next step to start the campaign.
Please feel free to write if you have any further question, Which we can move for the next step.
I look forward to your response on the same.
Thank you
Have a Nice day
BEST REGARDS
James [surname removed for privacy, even though I’m sure it’s not his real name..!] (Sales Manager )
As James’s first email was rather vague as a ‘why’ my site really needed their help, and just what the ‘little bit technical errors’ were, I emailed back asking. And here’s he’s email about that: (In the email were several screen shots obviously taken from an automated SEO service; rather than include those, I’ve added what they said in [square brackets] after the items…)
Hello James,
Thank you so much for your reply,
Q: Please can you tell me what the errors are on my site?Re: Little bit errors like
Title is not ok (Error) [The automated tool said it was too long]
meta description, is not ok (error) [The automated tool said it was too long]
site-map , Need to update. [The automated tool said there was no sitemap referenced in the robots.txt file]
Underscores url, Errors [The automated tool said that there were four pages which had underscores ‘_’ in the url of the pages]
Open Graph Protocol (Errors) [The automated tool said there was no ‘type’ on the pages]
Tap Targets (Error) [The automated tool said that three ‘links’ were too small]
Backlinks Score (Not good) etc… [There was no screenshot – or other evidence for this!]
Q:I’d like to know what you would fix/change on my site!
Re: Your website looking so good, if you want to re-design your website in a new look and word-press style, we’ll submit more demo sites to redesign and look like brand websites. If you are not interested in re-designing on your website, just ready to start the online marketing service then all these things will be fixed and set up as per the specifications of the SEO.
Please let me know if you want to promote your company, we will start work on SEO and SMO promotions. Hopefully, with the result that you can get more new traffic and sales, any of you will hit your market.
If you have any query and question for me, Please let me know without any hesitation.
We are waiting for your earliest reply.
Thank you
Have a nice dayBEST REGARDS
James [surname removed for privacy, even though I’m sure it’s not his real name..!] (Sales Manager )
So let’s look, in some more details, at the issues they say (or their automated tool says!) the site has…
Title is not ok (Error) [The automated tool said it was too long]
The current title tag is 104 characters long. The recommendation from Google is that about 80 is about as long as you should go. However, the length shown [on search engines] is now normally based on the size of the screen (maxing out on 600px with Google) so I’m actually happy with what I’ve got and this error isn’t actually applicable to my site (and being longer won’t actually hurt you, it’s just that not all of it will be displayed)…
meta description, is not ok (error) [The automated tool said it was too long]
The current meta description is 160 characters long and this is the ideal number which Google recommends! And like the above issue, it’s also related to a pixel length. Also like the issue above, I’m happy with the length it is! (Oh and at least my site has a meta description, which is more than there site does! Having a meta description is one of the very basic things of SEO; so for an SEO company NOT to have one is rather laughable!)
site-map , Need to update. [The automated tool said there was no sitemap referenced in the robots.txt file]
The robots.txt file is a special file which can help some search engines. Referencing a special sitemap file (called an XML sitemap) in it is an extra ‘nice’ of SEO but not vital (I’ve now added it it though!). What’s more important is having an XML sitemap, in the place where search engines expect (in the root of the site with the file called sitemap.xml) and then you can add it within Google and Bing’s ‘Search Consoles’ to help them know about your site. My site has an XML sitemap and it’s called the right thing, it’s in the right place, and it’s registered in the search consoles! If your sitemap isn’t called sitemap.xml in the root, then referencing it in the robots.txt site is helpful as it helps point search engines in the right direction! (Again looking at KR Tech Solution’s site, they also don’t have a sitemap referenced in their robots file – and that’s because they appear not to even have an XML sitemap, at least there’s no sitemap.xml in the root! Again for an SEO company not to have one is laughable.)
Underscores url, Errors [The automated tool said that there were four pages which had underscores ‘_’ in the url of the pages]
Google officially says that it’s better to use dashes-to-seperate-words-in-links rather than using_underscores_to_do_so. Doing so helps Google treat each word as a separate item. (But back when I built the site, 19 years ago, the SEO advice of the day was actually the opposite!!!) However, URL punctuation is not used as a ranking tool, so it’s by no means vital. Wikipedia uses underscores in ALL of its entry URLs and they rank pretty well! And likewise, two of the four links the automated tool said has ‘issues’ because of having underscores are for my page for Christmas Jokes and The Christmas Story. Both of those are #1 on Google for search for ‘christmas jokes’ (out of over 121 MILLION) and ‘the christmas story’ (out of over 1 BILLION results); so I’d say they were doing just fine even with having underscores in them!
Open Graph Protocol (Errors) [The automated tool said there was no ‘type’ on the pages]
Open Graph items are things which help things like Facebook and Twitter know more about your site when they’re shared. And… this is true – oops. I’ve missed this and have now added it! Interestingly, most ‘SEO’ places will say that the ‘type’ tag is ‘required’. However, Facebook (who invented Open Graph tags) call it an ‘additional’ tag. They also default to the ‘website’ type if you don’t have the tag, so as my site is a general website, not having one wasn’t the end of the world… (But again, looking at their site, they have NO Open Graph tags on their site AT ALL. Again, for an SEO site not to have these really inspire confidence.)
Tap Targets (Error) [The automated tool said that two ‘links’ were too small and two ‘overlapped’]
Well… the two ‘small’ links are ‘skip links’, they are used by screen readers and so by default don’t have a ‘click size’. The others are normal links and I don’t see how they can overlap – very very odd (and something they would have seen if they’d actually visited the site…).
Backlinks Score (Not good) etc… [There was no screenshot – or other evidence for this!]
Hmmmm, this seems like a typical SEO spammer scare tactic to me as it’s something that pretty much all SEO spammers use in their emails… Also them simply saying this with no ‘evidence’ for it makes me rather suspicious. A top backlinks checker says that my site has over 37,000 backlinks and a ‘domain score’ of 73/100. Comparing that with KR Tech Solution’s site, it’s got 86 backlinks with a domain score of 0! Again, they’re an SEO company with a laughable SEO score… So this is just WRONG.
So as we can see they seem to have more ‘little bit errors’, than my site does! (But it was nice of James to say that my site looked good!)
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://krtechsolution.com/
For HTML Validation, their site has 12 errors & 63 warnings. My site has no errors or warnings!
On Google Pagespeed their site gets:
Desktop: 23/100
Mobile: 5/100 – that’s amazingly BAD!!!
My site gets:
Desktop: 100/100
Mobile: 99/100 – so both considerably better using Google’s own speed testing tool!
On GTMetrix their site gets:
F(46%) / E(54%) – again amazingly bad…
On GTMetrix my site gets:
A 94% / A (91%) – so again much better!
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 21 errors and 15 alerts that’s REALLY not good… My site has no errors or warnings!
Their site takes over 5 seconds to load – my site takes less than 1/3 second to load – so it’s over 13x faster!
Their site DOES NOT use HTTPS/SSL. For a ‘leading organic SEO Company in India’ (as they claim they are on their site) not to use this is simply terrible. HTTPS is now a ranking signal used by Google – which you would think they would know…
They DO NOT have any privacy policy on the site. This is not good.
The copyright date on their site is ‘2014’ – oops…
They’ve got social icons in their site’s heading and footer for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. The Twitter and Facebook links work ok. But the LinkedIn link goes nowhere and Google+ closed at least six months ago. Again you’d hope that a ‘leading’ SEO company would know that…
You’d also hope that a ‘leading’ SEO company would have some very basic SEO things on their site like meta descriptions, open graph tags and an XML sitemap, but apparently not!
Elina’s initial spam said my site “is not ranking top in Google organic searches for many competitive keyword phrases”; well I’d love to know how she can tell that considering she appears to know nothing about what I’m trying to rank for…! This again are typical SEO spam scare tactics.
Elina’s initial spam also said that they could get my site into a “Top page on search engine” (it is already…). But also remember…
Conclusion
KR Tech Solution are yet another SEO spammer that hide behind a generic Gmail account to spam you.
Their automated tool did find a couple of (small) issues with my site – oops – and I’ve fixed those now!
However, their site has a whole lot more issues than my one. It’s full of HTML and accessibility errors as well as missing several very very basic SEO things.
So if you get an email from KR Tech Solution wanting to help you with your site, I’d wonder what sort of work they’d do for your site, when they can’t even get the basics right on their own one…
But the choice, as ever, is yours.