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 time the email came in from an ‘Edward’ who was using an @urbantechweb.com email address.
The subject of the spam was “Re : Website redesign: Choosing a front end framework” (although I’ve never been in contact with them before, so the ‘re’ is a trick to try and make people think they might have) and went:
Hello whychristmas.com,
Greetings!
My name is Edward [name removed for privacy although I’m sure it’s fake] and I design great looking websites for small and medium business owners. I was just browsing your whychristmas.com and came up with your whychristmas.com design and plan to redesign Website to get better the look and feel of your website and find better success.
A re-designed website will provide you with a fast loading, high converting, and professional website optimised for both user conversions and search engines.
Do let me know if you are interested in it.
I am waiting for your reply.
Best Regards,
Edward [name removed for privacy although I’m sure it’s fake]Business Development Consultant.
Note: – Reply me with “Quote”, if you are interest
Within minutes of this email arriving, I’d also had an identical email come through with my Easter site (whyeaster.com) on it instead.
But I replied to the whychristmas.com email one as that’s my ‘big’ site that’s also VERY well ranked on search engines.
Quote
Why do you think my site needs a redesign?
Thanks
Less than an hour later (speedy spammer!) I got this reply…
Hello James,
Hope you are doing good.
Thanks for your mail.
Proposal for Redesigning
Project scope:The scope of work involves redesigning existing website with a better, modern look and feel, user interactive features and latest technology to increase conversion rate. Here are our suggested deliverable / pages for new redesigned website:
Design of layout with a clean , modern look and feel
Mobile Responsive structure
Cross browser compatibility
Search Bar on Header
Appointment Page
Menus navigation on header
Home page
-Image slider / rotating banners
-About company
-Display of Customers Testimonials in rotating format
-Details About all the products
We will redesign all the category pages and individual products in a more structured way.
Contact US page- Contact form with Captcha integrated
External websites link on footer and contact us link with address and contact details and social media share link.
Testimonials Page
Newsletter sign up
SEO friendly design structure
Backend CMSTechnology:
Frontend: HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQueryDatabase: MySQL
Price- $600 USD
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards
Edward [name removed for privacy although I’m sure it’s fake]
Senior Business Development Manager
Well, that was quick! It’s also obviously a ‘copy and paste’ reply as many of the items they’d ‘do’ are either already on my site or are completely irrelevant to my site (as you could tell from being on my site for more than 30 seconds).
It also seems that Edward is now the ‘Senior Business Development Manager’ as well as being a ‘Business Development Consultant’. He must be a busy guy.
But Edward also didn’t answered my (very simple) question, so I asked again:
Hi Edward,
Thanks for this. However, please can answer these questions.
Why do you think my site needs a redesign?
What’s wrong with it now?
Thanks.
There was no reply after a few days, so I emailed again. I won’t put it in here, as it’s basically the same as I said above…
Then five days later, I got an email from Edward. But not a reply to my email asking some basic questions.
This, instead, was a follow/chase up (which seem to be a thing with SEO spammers now) for my whyeaster.com site! So I replied to that, saying I was waiting to hear back from him about my whychristmas.com site and please could he answer those questions…!
It’s been a week since I sent that and I’ve not heard back from Edwards about any of those emails. It seems that he’s yet another SEO spammer that doesn’t like answering the most basic of questions…
Their Report & Recommendations
As Edward doesn’t actually seem to want to answer my very simple questions, I can’t tell you why he thinks my site actually needs to be redesigned. But what I can do is look at the copy and paste email and see what they said they’d do – without knowing anything about my site or my needs…
Design of layout with a clean , modern look and feel
Erm, like it’s got already…
Mobile Responsive structure
Erm, like it’s got already…
Cross browser compatibility
Erm, like it’s got already…
Search Bar on Header
Erm, like it’s got already…
Appointment Page
If you’ve been on the site for more than 30 seconds you’d know this would be irrelevant.
Menus navigation on header
Erm, like it’s got already…
Home page-Image slider / rotating banners
NO. Carousels are generally a BAD idea. For why see: https://shouldiuseacarousel.com/
Home page-About company
Erm, like it’s got already…
Home page-Display of Customers Testimonials in rotating format
If you’ve been on the site for more than 30 seconds you’d know this would be irrelevant.
Details About all the products
If you’ve been on the site for more than 30 seconds you’d know this would be irrelevant.
We will redesign all the category pages and individual products in a more structured way.
If you’ve been on the site for more than 30 seconds you’d know this would be irrelevant.
Contact US page- Contact form with Captcha integrated
Erm, like it’s got already..
External websites link on footer and contact us link with address and contact details and social media share link.
Erm, like it’s got already..
Testimonials Page
If you’ve been on the site for more than 30 seconds you’d know this would be irrelevant.
Newsletter sign up
I don’t want or need a newsletter on my site. So irrelevant.
SEO friendly design structure
Erm, like it’s got already…
Backend CMS
I could use a CMS (a Content Management System, would have been helpful if they’d said that…) for my site and I do for many of my clients (and on this site). However, not every site needs one and my Christmas site, doesn’t need one!
So, all of those items are things that are already on my site or would be irrelevant. Oh. Dear.
Now let’s look at their site and see what it looks like…!
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.urbantechweb.com/
For HTML Validation, my Christmas site has no errors. Their site has 10 errors and 1 warning.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 27 errors and 39 contrast errors. That’s not great. My Christmas site has no errors of either kind!
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:
Performance: 3 (I ran the test again and it got to 17 but either way, that’s not good!)
Accessibility: 87
Best Practices: 77
SEO: 83
My site gets:
Performance: 96
Accessibility: 100
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 100
So my site is MUCH better across the board, and especially in ‘Performance’.
That is the LOWEST performance score I’ve EVER SEEN. (3 actually equals DMOONS…)
If you don’t fancy reading all of the below, just read this:
Their site is the WORST and MOST LAZILY put together site I’ve yet seen from an SEO Spammer – and that’s some going.
They’ve basically not bothered to do anything on their site other than install a theme and the demo pages/filler content that comes with it.
About all they have actually done is put a new logo in and changed the phone numbers and email address.
The theme they’re using is an off the shelf one called ‘Kenyray’. The alt text on the site’s logo is still ‘Kenray’. It still says ‘Copyright Kenray’ in the footer.
All the of the menu items, pages, posts, EVERYTHING is the same as the demo content that comes with the theme. Down to the fake staff name/photos, testimonials, the fake address for the company, the lot. (Even the HTML errors are the same!)
As I said above, only an email address and a couple of phone numbers are different. The demo address with the theme is for Coachella in California.
On the Urban Web Tech site, there are two phone numbers, one in the USA and one in India.
The area code for the USA number is in East Pennsylvania. However, as their domain was registered in India, I’d bet that Urban Web Tech are in India…
I can’t actually find out anything about them online. Not on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Doing a search for ‘Urban Web Tech’, I did find four sites with ‘Created by Urban Web Tech’ in their footers.
However, all of these sites had some issues and there are plenty of basic HTML errors.
Only one of the four had a meta description tag – that’s an SEO basic.
Only two of the four had an Heading 1 on their home page – also an SEO basic.
There were also things like supposed links to a Privacy Policy, only it wasn’t a link and social media icons that don’t go anywhere.
One site did have social media icons that were linked. However, it was headed ‘Our Social Links’ – only they weren’t. They were set to SHARE the page you’re on. That’s a VERY DIFFERENT thing from being ‘Our Social Links’.
Basically, I wouldn’t let my client’s sites go live with basic errors like these – yet Urban Web Tech want to redesign your site for you…
Conclusion
Urban Web Tech are SEO spammers. They don’t like answering the most basic of questions as to why you should actually use them!
They’ve not been bothered to do ANYTHING on their own site. And although it’s using a decent off the shelf theme, it’s got some of the WORST speed scores I’ve EVER SEEN.
The sites they have made are full of the most basic errors.
So if Urban Web Tech say your site needs a redesign, the delete button is probably a much better option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…