Email offering high ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Thursdays laugh!

Today of our my clients received an email from a marketing company basically telling him that they could get his site into the top 10 on Google, Yahoo and MSN....  He asked me what did i think of the email and should we go ahead with it.  Like an Web Developer and SEO consultant I laughted at the words used "guarenteed placement".  However I replied to the email and i was nice too ;-).

I'm going to post their first email and their response so we can all have a laugh and giggle...

"Hello,

My name is Michelle and I found your website, quest-recruiting.com on Google.  My apologies for contacting you unannounced but I have already provided a no charge service for you (see below).

You are not on any list so this is the only email you will receive from me.

Firstly, I conducted a link check for your website. I searched on Google for link:http://www.quest-recruiting.com and found you have 15 websites linking to you that show as indexed by Google (try it, you can find websites that link to any other website in this way).

As you're probably aware the more websites that link to your website the higher up Google, Yahoo and MSN your website is likely to appear.  Getting other websites to link to you is an essential but very time consuming aspect of any successful search engine optimization process.

Secondly, I quickly searched under, 'offshore recruitment, 'Offshore jobs, and 'Oil Rig jobs', search terms I thought may be relevant.  These achieved poor results which, although I could be mistaken I felt you may like to improve on.  These placements may change a little (up or down) from time to time, however, without action being taken they are not going to get into the top 10, which is where they need to be to achieve significant numbers of targeted visitors (and therefore paying customers) to your website.

This is where we can really help you.  Using your preferred search terms (I can assist in choosing these if you wish) we can achieve top 10 placements on Google, Yahoo, MSN for you.  This is achieved through a combination of tried and tested "off-site" (arranging for websites to link to you) and "on-site" techniques.

We are highly confident we will succeed.  In fact once your account is set up we operate a 'money back guarantee' should we fail to obtain your chosen top 10 placements for you.

We're proud to have achieved Top Ten positions on Google, Yahoo and MSN for numerous (happy!) clients and I'm happy to show you examples.  I would really appreciate the opportunity to explain how we can bring the same success to you so, if you can spare a few minutes for further details, I can be contacted on <removed>, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or simply email me, <removed>  (my full contact details are below).  Oh, and just so you know, we are a UK based limited company.

Best regards,

Michelle.



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The reply was:


Afternoon Sean,

Thank you for your enquiry to Michelle with regards to search engine optimisation from the Backbone Solutions IT Group. Please visit the link for a better understanding of our services.

You are quite right in the fact that increasing the number of in bound links does not guarantee the fact that you will do well in the SERPs. However we operate with both onsite and off site manual and ethical optimisation techniques, which we are please to say produce high rankings for our clients (I have listed a small selection of examples for you below), in fact we will happily guarantee our work will results in top 10 results or we will refund for each search term that fails.

We currently run optimisation campaigns for many clients that range from small one person businesses on a limited budget through to multi national corporations.

Enhancing the natural-listing position of your website within the major search engines (MSN, Yahoo and Google) can be achieved using many different methods, however, in order to protect your brand image I would like to stress the importance of any methods used being ethical.  All of our work is heavily researched on our own R+D websites and consequently, the optimisation advice that we provide to our clients has created superb results and has stood the test of time with the 'big three' (MSN, Yahoo, Google).  

One extremely important aspect is to ensure there is enough content throughout the site, both in the source code (can't be seen by the naked eye, but the search engines 'read' it and match it to the requested search phrase) and the text body.  All of the links, pages, file names, graphic names, url structure and much, much more, can be fine tuned to fit the perfect algorithm; the numeric value the search engine would allow your site to have before you 'go over the top' with too much, therefore spamming the search engine.

Another major plus point, in the search engines eyes, is to have other websites link to yours.  This tells the search engine that you are popular and that your website should be a good experience for the end user; this is now becoming massively important in website strategy.  Two problems can arise here, in that the volume of requests you have to send out to other sites is huge and also, to check the validity of them, Google usually quarantine them for some months.  This is one of the reasons why our 'more than your money back' guarantee doesn't start until after the first three months.

Here at Backbone solutions we only provide search engine advice and consultancy for on-site and off-site 'White Hat Techniques' to secure first page placement on the search engines (initially and for the long term).  We strongly adhere to the search engine optimisation guidelines as set out on their webmasters pages and I would suggest that the use of 'Black Hat Techniques' or questionable and unethical methods is a dangerous game; hence you will not hear promises from me regarding securing results within a very short time for Google placements.  For these reasons we regard all of our client relationships to be long term ones.

How do we go about achieving top 10 placements?

I will send you a full and detailed proposal for your consideration, to include timescale and details of our optimisation processes for you (or your team) to implement, non of which employ automated methods, link farms, gateway pages or other predictable means that the major search engines have (or perhaps will in the future) recognised to be purely for position and not for the user - as outlined for all to see in Google's webmaster guidelines.

Our minimum package provides for optimisation of 20 search terms of your choice (10 primary and 10 secondary, or more if you wish) we will provide optimisation advice for all 10 and place a money back guarantee against the Primary search terms; if they are not listed in the top 10 (i.e. if it is placed position 12), you will receive monies back for that month for that particular search term.  

One of the reasons for us requesting other terms than your guaranteed choice, is that Google has for some time used Latent Semantic Indexing and Lexicon technology within its algorithm formulas (even longer for Adwords).  Semantic indexing provides further information to the search engine apart from specifically matching the text from a search query  these other search terms, along with further discussions and research into your business, enables us to optimise within this relatively new addition to the ranking procedure.  

In regards to pricing, 'how long is a piece of string?.  Sorry to appear vague, but I would require a list of at least 10 search terms that reflect your business in order for me to research the competition within your market. I would also appreciate it if you could let me know which URL you would require me to look at. I will await your reply with your chosen search terms from where I can prepare a formal proposal for you  at your request I can also include options for ourselves to implement (as opposed to providing the advice, instruction and consultation) the necessary changes to your website if you wish.

Best regards,

Carl.


What do you make of all this??

Ellandrd