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 a Saroj who was using an @gmail.com email address with his name and some numbers in it (a favourite type of email address for SEO spammers).
The subject of the spam was “Solve your whychristmas.com error fixations.” and went:
Dear Business owner of whychristmas.com,
I hope you are the right person to discuss the Optimization of your company’s Website.
I am an SEO strategist from a leading SEO Company and want to share a few things about your website that can improve your search engine visibility. Furthermore, I want to discuss why you are not getting more organic Search Engine traffic for whychristmas.com that I observed while visiting.
Let me know your best time to schedule a call.
Thanks & Regards,
Saroj
Business Development Manager
Caution: This is our marketing strategy that we use Gmail. If you want to receive detailed plan of action, please feel free to reply Proposal, We will get back to you with Details.
Note: If you find this email unsolicited, please reply with “REMOVE” in the subject line and we will take care that you don’t receive any further promotional mail.
Fairly standard SEO spam. But it always amuses me (in a sad way) when there’s a “we’re using Gmail as our marketing strategy” bit. I mean, that’s what any trustworthy company does right? Spams people from random Gmail accounts…
Anyway, I replied:
Hi,
That sounds interesting. Please send over your proposal. I can’t do a call at the moment, but I would be interested to see your plan of action for my site!
James
I didn’t get a reply for a while and so I thought this was going to go no further, but THIRTEEN DAYS LATER(!) I got a reply, from a ‘Mark’ using an @seolisys.com email:
Hello James,
Thank you for your email. I am glad that you went through our previous email and wrote back to us.Here is brief info on what we actually propose in terms of your website online presence and productivity;
Our focus is to drive more prospective customers to your website so that you can get more business. So, we will use popular search terms related to your business or keyword combinations to get your website ranked on the 1st page of Google.
The complete work process will be as follows;
Initial Analysis and Road Map Preparation.
Technical error fixation – To make your website Google friendly.
Keyword selection – To find out the best productive keywords.
On-page optimization – To make it ready for promotion.
Off-page optimization –Back end activities for Google ranking.
Social media optimization –To enhance your online reputation and to get traffic.
Monthly Reports – To keep you updated with the work.
Above was a brief info to get you an idea. If you still need a detailed proposal then I can share one with you. Please let me know.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind Regards,
Mark [Name removed for privacy although it’s probably fake] | Business Analyst
[Contacts removed for privacy]
More standard “we’ll do the moon” stuff but it’s also so vague that it’s useless. Quite why it took 13 days for a copy and paste reply like this to be sent I don’t know.
Oh, and we also get a claim that they can get you on the first page of Google. Only Google has something to say about that…
Beware of SEO companies that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.
from Google’s “Do you need an SEO?”
Anyway, as they basically didn’t tell me anything, I asked again.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for all this. However, Saroj said, in his first email, that there were things on my site that could be improved SEO wise.
Can you tell me what they are?
What’s wrong with my site?
Thanks!
It’s been well over a week now I’ve not heard back after that one… But we know that Seolisys don’t seem the speediest of responders. Or it could of course be that Seolisys are yet another SEO spammer that doesn’t like answering questions…
I’ll post an update if I ever do get a reply.
Their Report & Recommendations
As Seolisys hasn’t yet answered my very simple questions, I can’t tell you why they think my site actually needs SEO help!
But 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://seolisys.com/
For HTML Validation, my Christmas site has no errors. Their site has 10 errors and 27 warnings.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 17 errors and 28 contrast errors. My Christmas site has no errors of either kind!
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:
Performance: 68
Accessibility: 70
Best Practices: 92
SEO: 86
(Those are pretty good as SEO spammer sites go.)
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’.
There’s no Heading 1 on their home page. That’s a basic SEO problem. It really is odd how many SEO spammers seem to forget to have one of these!
There are email addresses in the footer – only they aren’t linked – making them kind of useless. There’s also an extra bar in the header on the home page which contains an email as well. Guess what, it’s not linked either!
In this same bar on the home page it says “Office Hours, 8 hours per day” but further down the home page it says “Our dedicated support team provides 24/7 support through emails, skype and online calls to our clients.”
And then in the footer (and on the contact page) it says “Monday-Friday: 24 Hours, Saturday-Sunday: Closed” – so do Seolisys Digital Solution actually know when they’re open?!
Also in the footer are some social media icons for Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Only the Facebook one goes anywhere and Google+ closed YEARS AGO. So it seems that Seolisys Digital Solution don’t know how to remove a couple of icons. Not exactly encouraging.
On their about page, there are four paragraphs of text. Only the 3rd and 4th paras are repeats of the 1st and 2nd ones. Oops.
There are three blog posts on their site – dating from February and July 2019. However, a google of the contents of these blogs show that all three have been ‘borrowed’ (cough cough) from other sites! That really isn’t good.
The meta title on their home page is “Professional Digital Marketing Company in Florida,USA” and there’s an address in Lakeland, Florida in the footer. This address is also on the contact page, as well as one for their ‘Corporate Office’ in Bhubaneswar, India.
If we look at the Florida address on Google Maps, it’s for a rather nice suburban house in rural-ish Florida (Lakeland is about 25km inland from Tampa).
There’s also a US phone number on the site and it is for the right area – which is unusual for SEO spammers!
BUT I also found a LinkedIn profile for Seolisys and it says they’re in Puri, which is a city about 534km south of Bhubaneswar. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
There are two Google reviews for Seolisys. One reviewer only has one review (hmmm) and the other has two. And the other review was for an interior design company in Bhubaneswar!!!
Who knows if Seolisys really have any connection to Florida, but even if they do, I’m guessing all the actual work is being done in Bhubaneswar, which is the home to many an SEO spammer.
If Seolisys Digital Solution are actually ‘based’ is some way in the USA, well, then they’re very much in breach of the US CAN-SPAM act – on a number of points. And CAN-SPAM also says that if a third party (like Saroj) sends spam on their behalf, then they are jointly responsible…
Conclusion
Seolisys Digital Solution are SEO spammers. They’re happy to spam from behind random Gmails and somehow think that using those in their ‘marketing strategy’ makes any kind of sense.
They claim they can get you on the 1st page of Google. But Google say not to trust claims like that!
It seems that they don’t like answering the most basic of questions as to why you should actually use their services!
So if Seolisys Digital Solution say your site needs SEO help, taking Google’s advise and not trusting such claims might be the better option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…