What Not to do when Soliciting for SEO Work

Posted by admin on Nov 23, 2009 in Blog, SEO | 21 comments

I have been recently inspired.

“By what,” you might ask? I’ll tell you. It’s the story of what not to do when you are looking for new clients or SEO jobs. I wanted to post this just to give you some simple rules of thumb to follow when writing a solicitation letter to a new potential client.

The Example

I received this email by the worst SEO company after putting an ad on craigslist looking for entry level assistant/SEO. It reads as follows:

“Why am I the best? It’s simple. EXPERIENCE.

I promote your website correctly from the start. I don’t just build a beautiful website I help you market it. Increasing revenues, clients and branding.

“Most businesses could be doubling their revenues and exposure, but they just don’t know how to leverage the internet to get more clients and grow their business! They waste time and money doing it the wrong way, or they just don’t understand the landscape. Either way, they are losing out.” President – (insert moron’s name)

Please take a moment to browse through my vast portfolio. I personally have built over 490 websites. All of my work is custom and done in here in the USA.

…I can prove NATIONAL RANKINGS on high quality keywords. I also GUARENTEE FIRST PAGE GOOGLE RANKINGS…”

What Went Wrong

First, let’s start with the obvious. DON’T QUOTE YOURSELF! …I repeat, DON’T QUOTE YOURSELF! I know…it’s so stupid that you wouldn’t think it would happen. But apparently it does.

If I was reading this with the intent to shop for SEO services, I would have stopped reading this immediately. Online solicitations have the same rules as an in person sales call. Would you walk into a room and say, “Hi, My name is . You don’t know me, but here’s what an expert, myself, has to say about me.”

…You get the point. It’s just plain dumb.

The Most Awful of all SEO Crimes

Never guarantee rankings. That’s it. Simple as that.

Aside from being misleading, it makes you look like a hack to anyone with even the slightest of SEO knowledge.

Here’s a great post on why guaranteeing ranking is a shady business tactic from seomoz.

Find Business with Integrity

This email was sent to me with an auto replier that crawls craigslist and sends irrelevant emails to people looking for SEO’s to hire.

This is extremely bad for the image of your business. 9 times out of 10, you’re generic email will not have anything to do with what the person was actually posting about.

Take the time to make real contacts and sell your services with integrity and relevance, and new business will follow.