We all get them, the offers of free SEO audits, of thousands of backlinks from “DA 40 and above” sites for just $10 and the “helpful” list of spurious SEO issues with your website.
Checking your junk folder every morning reveals another round of emails offering the SEO-moon-on-a-stick for a low, low price. As an SEO working for a search marketing agency I used to find receiving these emails misplaced but amusing.
Email received listing questionable SEO issues with the Avenue Digital website
I no longer laugh at these emails. These annoyances, although easily ignored through the press of the “delete” key, reveal something more sinister about the SEO industry – really anyone can offer SEO services. What the SEO-literate might discard as part of their daily email purge others will read, digest and panic over. Receiving an email claiming you could be losing hundreds of dollars a day through the poor optimization of your website is enough to make anyone outside of the industry sit-up and take notice. Small businesses appear to be particularly vulnerable, and it’s not just emails that they are subjected to. During my time working as an in-house marketer, I became aware of just how often businesses are pestered over the phone by people claiming to work for Google, who, in reality, wanted to sell links or directory listings. I’ve also seen the regret of local businesses who have taken them up on their offer and then needed to turn to a legitimate SEO to fix their sites after they’ve accrued manual actions or dropped off the SERPs for their core, revenue-driving terms.
The problem, as I see it, is that “legitimate SEO” is a subjective term. Within our industry, there