Recently a client told me that he would stop hunting clicks with articles that might get eyeballs but wouldn’t help his bottom line.
This was music to my ears. I have a very long (and complicated) relationship with this client and had attempted to get him to stop writing “click bait” off and on for longer than I can remember.
Click bait is, if you don’t know, anything that people have to click on. You’ve clicked on it yourself. We all have. For businesses it’s a waste of money.
A little while later, he sent me something he wanted help with. It was an update of an article that had nothing to do with the services the company provides.
More importantly, it had already been written a few years ago, and had been a big success for his website. (If you define success for click bait as “lots of people read it.”)
All he had done was pay someone to rewrite it.
Tag: Internet Marketing
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Stop Being a Web Serf
Why are you paying someone a retainer for your website?
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What Do I Now?
What’s Next?
I’ve had a relatively productive pandemic.
Are you tired of the pandemic ads yet? I know I am.
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Certified Optimizer
As of April 16, 2020, I am a “Certified Optimizer”, certified by the industry leader, CXL Institute.
A the end of 2019, I quit my day job to focus on my business full time. The first step of that was to learn Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
I’ve done that now.
Everybody is freaking out or in denial, it seems.
Most people I know well enough to talk to regularly are seemingly level-headed about this – they know it’s serious and they know that preventative measures will last months, perhaps even longer.
But prospective clients all seem to think there will be a time in a few weeks when things are back to normal and (only) then we can work together. (Well, not all of them feel this way, but most of them.)
So, here is my list of reasons why they should work with me now, and not later:
There are so many businesses that have been harmed by the pandemic and the response.
Hotels, for example. What are they going to do?
First off, I hope you and your loved ones are well.
I have been self-isolating since Saturday, as well, and I work from home so I was self-isolating by accident before that, if you can pardon a little joke right now. My parents and their siblings and my girlfriends’ parents and their siblings are all in the more vulnerable age group so we have been taking precautions for a while now.
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#1 Google
Have you ever received a message like this?
I am Really Has, III, Web Analyzer having 9+ years of experience in Search Engine Marketing, Social media Marketing, Content Marketing, Pay-per-click, Video Marketing etc.
While analyzing your website, we tracked some pitfalls for which your website doesn’t show up within top search results on search engines including Google. In addition to the same, we found that rileyhaasmarketing.ca is not able to achieve appropriate traffic/visitors for a couple of months.
I am quite impressed with your website – Business Concept, Content, Call-to-Actions and others. As a web analyzer, I can recommend few things to improve the website performance and I hope my suggestions will help business & your website.
My suggestions:
- Publish Relevant Content (Blogs, Micro blogs, Article, Business Bio and etc)
- Update Your Content regularly for quick crawling
- Go for variation keywords and website optimization
- Update Best Title Metadata, Description Metadata, Keyword Metadata
- Go for Social media marketing for more engagement and social media traffic
- Work on Page Loading speed and fix it to load within seconds
- Go for Content marketing and Video marketing
- Implement Latest Industry Specific Schema so you stand out as compared to your competitors’
not sure, if you can understand all above technical terms or not. Not to be worried, I will help to make you understand about the above points with brief descriptions.
If you have a technical team then I will wish you to go ahead and work on the above factors or if you prefer then I can help you to work on the above points.
If you are comfortable to go for a online meeting then please let me know. If you need to know about the cost then please revert back to my email and I will be happy to send you the quote with brief recommendation.
Thanks, I look forward to your reply.
Regards,
Really Has
Web Analyzer
This is (mostly) a real email to a real business owner with basically no reference to that actual business or website. It’s completely generic and full of nonspecific advice, some of which is useful, some of which jargon, some of which is complete nonsense.
Why do people send this stuff?
They send it because even something this poorly written has enough truth to make it compelling to the desperate owner.
Say you’re not getting enough business and enough traffic to generate business. If someone comes along with tips, you might actually feel tempted to hire them. Or at least hire someone who seems to know this stuff but who has a better command of the English language.
Truth is, there is no “1 on Google”.
There are, instead, billions of #1 spots on the various pages Google produces for user searches. When you search for something your search results are incredibly customized – I’ll see slightly different results than you even if I search the same term. If we live far away from each other, I’ll see totally different results from you.
So the goal isn’t to be “#1 on Google”, rather it is to rank well for the keywords (phrases) that match your business in the markets you want to get customers/clients from.
If that sounds complicated it’s not as complicated as it sounds. The SEO jargon in these emails serves to obscure that.
Convincing to Google and Bing to show a link to your site instead of someone else’s is fairly straightforward but it does matter on your industry, your location, where your customers/clients are, and the like.
These generic emails skip all that stuff and instead promise you the moon in the hope that you will be desperate enough and uninformed enough to give them some money until they inevitably disappoint you.
Instead of hiring someone who can’t even bother looking at your website before they cold email you, you should learn how to do this yourself, or hire someone who understands your goals and your business.
These generic SEO emails are from agencies that have a one-size-fits-all solution (almost always for ecommerce only) which they haven’t even bothered to see if its right for you. In the case of the above email, this guy might not even have an agency. He might not have any idea of what he’s doing.
Stay away.
Thanks,
Riley
Website | Business Diary | Riley the Writer
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Learning What I Do
When I launched my own business I had some idea of what I was doing: I wanted to help people avoid the same mistakes the business I then worked for had made. I wanted to show people that they could market their businesses online themselves, without resorting to 4- or 5- digit retainers to some agency that over-promised and under-delivered.