Don't be conned by SEO companies!

3/2/2017

I regularly get approaches from people representing SEO companies who promise that they can help improve the performance of my website.

I normally send them straight to the spam folder. However they're sneaky and use forms on your website.

This is one such - which came in via a form response on Art Business Info for Artists this morning

Name
Alan Sehwag
Email
[email protected]

Comment
Hi there,

I recently spent some time doing a site review of www.artbusinessinfo.com. (Yes, I do random site reviews for a living.)

Based on what I saw,there are a few things you could implement pretty quickly that would help boost your Google rankings, traffic, social media & conversion. I noticed, few technical errors that are effecting your website’s performance too.

We'll start counting & will keep fixing all bugs, provide you a clean safe website.We are also into website design, development and can redesign your website.

Not sure what your initiatives are in this area, but is this something that’s on your radar?

Alan.
(323) 617-3981

This is the reply I've just sent to Alan.

Dear Alan

I'm assuming this is for free and that your pricing page http://www.ngrwebteam.com/seo-pricing didn't just slip your mind - or the Federal Regulations relating to spamming people who have not given their consent to be approached? You sure you don't want me to remind you?

I also do reviews of those that say they help artists. I'll be sure to remember the name of your company.

Regards
Katherine

Katherine Tyrrell
Making A Mark on Art

Making A Mark is a top art blog - #3 in the UK and #7 in the world
c. 3.8 million+ visitors and 10.5 million+ pageviews and counting.....
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Website: Art Business - for Artists + Blog + Facebook Page
Website: Botanical Art & Artists + Blog + Facebook Page

If you get approaches like this:

You shouldn't be. This is spam. It also breaches the rules of marketing online.
They typically all say the same generic things irrespective of what the issues are with your website. That's because they are selling their services to make money for themselves.
They typically haven't got a clue about the target market for your website. They are selling cookie cutter solutions - not something specific to marketing art by artists.
Check the website to find the pricing page. Alan forgot to mention that help from his company STARTS at $400 per month! The more difficult it is to find the pricing the more suspicious you should get. That includes any omission to mention prices in any approach to you.

The enormous prices for services from NGR

You most certainly don't need to be spending a lot of money. Most artists simply don't need help from professional companies if they are prepared to learn the basics for themselves. It's not difficult.

Personally I'd recommend avoiding SEO companies who in my book are the equivalent of snake oil salesmen!

Try and see how far you can get on your own through studying the basics of what helps with marketing your art online. Unless you've got a BIG pot of money to sink into creating a brand and marketing it and expert who gets results for ARTISTS!

One simple way to improve your website performance

I've always found the Google Webmaster Guidelines is a good place to start because you need to ensure your website is compliant with Google if you are to get a good ranking and turn up in search enquiries.

Work your way through these before you ever contemplate looking around for more help.

What's your best tip for fellow artists?

Please share your best tip for improving the performance of your website.

Mine relates to being very careful how you title pages and construct URLs for individual pages on your website.

be aware of the keywords associated with search queries
be very accurate as to content (Google likes this!)
try not to be the same as everybody else!

7 Comments

Robert Bonomo

18/2/2017 04:58:45 pm

There is another "scam like" activity you should warn your artist friends about. This is the domain name registrar phishing scheme where you receive a communication, via e-mail or post, to renew your domain name. Except is is not from Your Real Registrar. Unless your domain info is private (either paid for or free) you can receive this at the (e-)address listed in your domain registration. An e-mail from Your Real Registrar will be clearly labelled with their logo. You cannot mistake this. The real brazen may try to forge the e-mail.

The scam is to getting you to pay them then trying to get your money back once you realise it was phoney. (Now they have your credit card info) It will also request a transfer of your domain name to "their company". This "transfer" has to be initiated by you within Your Real Registrar's portal. This is your clue that it is a scam.

A possible defense against this is to NOT use the same e-mail address in your domain name registration as the one given to Your Real Registrar who will never contact you by post. Use the office or other if you have one. Or pay the premium for privacy. As a last defense, if unsure or the e-mail was a real good counterfeit, do not use the link provide in the email but instead go through Your Real Registrar's portal for any activity relative to your domain like payments.

Katherine Tyrrell link

31/7/2017 02:12:36 pm

NEVER EVER log in to your domain via a link. IMO setting up the domain name registrar from scratch is much the safest route to locking out the very good scammer.

Gillian link

28/2/2017 12:01:26 pm

Thank you SO much for this post! You saved me the time and energy of figuring out if this was for real or not.

Cassidy

28/6/2017 05:13:44 pm

Thanks for posting this!! I just got the same email from Alan Sehwag except he is with a different company!! Must be a scam. All I did was google his name and this was the first to pop up!! Thanks Again!!

cindy green

11/8/2017 01:14:30 pm

Yes, thanks for the information. I also got an email from him with a different email reply address. No company mentioned by him at all.

NS link

18/9/2017 12:49:08 pm

He's now moved on to use "[email protected]". In addition, the bottom of the email reads:

"Caution: This is our marketing strategy that we use the Gmail. If you want to receive detailed plan of action, please feel free to reply Yes, We will get back to you with Details.

Disclaimer: - "Note: - We are not spammer. We found your email through manually efforts. We are sorry if you get email 2 or 3 times. You can simply reply with “remove” so we will delete your email from our list."

Probably a direct result of this post.

5/10/2017 12:47:22 pm

Clearly Alan Sehwag has a very lame - and inaccurate - understanding of what spam is.

You are spamming somebody ANY TIME you send then unwanted emails which individuals have not signed up to receive.

If nobody has had any contact with Alan Sehwag or his related companies then there is no way he can approach individuals with his marketing offers.

My suggestion is to use filters on gmail or your email provider to block his name. If enough people block him then Google start to ask questions about what the gmail address is being used for.

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