We’ve looked at your website, and there are some problems we can fix…

Every business owner has received this unsolicited spammy email. We see them all the time. We get them too. Yes, even us.

If you don’t have access to your junk email folder right now, here’s what that email looks like. We’ve corrected spelling, punctuation and grammar issues, but the gist is still there.

Not sure if you knew this but your website InsertYourSiteName.com has some problems that you might want to consider looking into. I spent 2-3 minutes looking around and found:

– It doesn’t work properly on mobile phones, at all (which is how people browse the web these days).
– It doesn’t adjust properly when you resize the screen (Google recommends RESPONSIVE websites rather than ADAPTIVE).
– It’s hard to read on larger displays.
– The design looks really, really dated compared to some of your competitors.

Let’s break that down.

We can go through it point by point to refute it – and we’ve had to in some cases. Rest assured, if we’ve built your site, we know it looks great on a mobile device. All standard mobile devices, in fact.  So yes, it’s a responsive design. Hard to read on a larger display? Didn’t you just say you were more concerned with small screens? And a dated design? Really? How dare you use fear like that, you jerk.

These spam messages are often sent in bulk to a giant list from providers that aren’t in your backyard. They hope you’ll respond so they can actually take 2-3 minutes to look at your site and provide a case for hiring them.

The unsolicited template isn’t always accurate.

The example above was an actual email sent to a client where all four of the points were incorrect in every way. This solicitor no more looked at the website than paused to consider the name of the company.

The tools they use aren’t always accurate.

We use many of the same tools these solicitors use to do a quick look at sites. And we take them with a grain of salt. A big grain of salt. In fact… one time, we used one of the tools on our own site to answer a quick question and the results were waaaaaaaaay off. It caused our digital product manager to lose his mind defending his fine work. And he was right. The reality is, many of those tools are great at a glance, but don’t always have access to the real data. For that, we dive deeper.

Your SEO goals are your SEO goals.

When the unsolicited email is about search engine optimization, it’s often comparing apples and Toyotas. The tools these enterprising solicitors use are the same as the ones we use to determine great keyword volume and strategic keyword targets. The difference is we know which keywords you’re actually going for, and which ones balance difficulty with cost and return on investment, because we’ve already had that conversation.

It’s okay to pass these along.

If we’ve built your site, we’ve considered all of the points in the unsolicited emails. But if you have any concerns, do pass those messages along. If for no other reason, it gives us an opportunity to reassure you that we’ve thought through every element there.

If you’ve gotten an email like this and need a second opinion, Let’s Talk.