We get a lot of clients forward us SEO reports and SEO ‘video’ reports of their websites that are designed to highlight the parts of the website that the report’s creator thinks could be improved / updated. These reports do have some value but generally if they are not used with intelligence they are used as a very blunt ‘sales tool’ designed to frighten website owners.
Recently we had a ‘SEO company’ send this to a client and in the days of GDPR I believe that even the spammy email could be in breach of GDPR regulations, and whenever you receive a cold-call or spam email I always wonder how these companies manage to find the time to do their ‘dodgy’ marketing if they are so good at what they do.
[SEO Company] I just wanted to reach out because I have recorded a video on why your website isn’t ranking as well as it could be, and you’re probably missing out on a lot of leads. I have just highlighted a few things that are holding you back. Are you the right person to send this video? If you are, please reply to this email and I’ll send it over. Otherwise just let me know.
clents sends the report link to us
[Delicious Webdesign] Hi we actually made a few tweaks and updates / improvements on the back of another deep-dive into your website after the video comments highlights a few things that could ‘potentially’ make a very small difference.
These reports always interest me but in general they focus on ‘technical SEO’ and very minor improvements that could be made, especially as we always build search engine friendly, legal and Google Webmaster Guideline friendly designs. The reports are very generic and trying to ‘comply’ with all the aspects they recommend will only give your website a marginal benefit and there is a cost effectiveness benefit to these that is probably making them less viable. The report concentrates on some ‘niche’ minor SEO elements that have no or minor ranking benefits and doesn’t mention or analyse other, for instance there is not one mention of your fantastic content and huge number of unique and relevant pages which is the basis for all user-friendly websites and SEO work.
In general this is ‘scaremongering’ and having spent the last hour on this I can assure you that your site has no major problems and in summary from the video’s points you can conclude that the company are ‘amateurs’ and ‘picking low hanging fruit’ when selecting their ‘problems with the website’. Here is some responses to their ‘points’:
1 They say your 5th for Essex Builders (you are higher than this ) checked using non-personalised results using Google.co.uk
2 They say GTMetrix website load speed report gives you a load speed of 9.4 seconds (it actually takes 4.8 seconds)
3 The use GTMetrix isn’t relevant or appropriate for your website as they use a server in Canada (when you are in the UK with a 100% UK customer user base this is misleading)
4 The actual load time of your website from the UK is under 2.2 seconds
Your ranking can change daily and I would suggest as always we concentrate on visitor numbers not individual keywords
I would go on to critique other aspects of their video and indeed their own website (which isn’t mobile friendly, doesn’t have a SSL certificate with secure content) but will not do so as it’s simply a waste of time, will confirm with you when I see the payment for this months SEO work, which you can be assured will be totally beneficial to your websites ranking, user-numbers, and very useful to your website visitors / customers.
