Doing it all wrong

Given that I've been writing this blog for more than five years,  I recently found it very disappointing to discover I'd been doing it all wrong.

I frequently get emails from people who tell me that if I hire them, they could improve my blog significantly,  one today made it very clear that it didn't just need improvement, it was a total disaster.

Here's what my correspondent said:

Dear sometimesitislupus.com Team,

Have you ever checked for sometimesitislupus.com position in Search Engine Result Pages?  If not do it TODAY! Being a contemplating Digital Marketing professional, I found some major issues with your website which are the sole causes for making hurdle to achieve your desired business goal. 

I found some major issues with your website:

·         Poor visibility Of Important and competitive keywords in SERPs

·         Stumpy image optimization

·         Unfocussed and low quality website content

·         Wrong steps followed for Social Media campaign


Our ethical Digital Marketing services with an excellent team of experts are here to assist your business and at the same time, we will fix all the above issues. Having years of experience and incorporate with latest techniques, our experts will deliver you a great result despite of Google’s latest Algorithm Updates such as Penguin and Panda.

If you want, we can send you more details regarding your present website status; we would be glad to share PRE SEO REPORT or WEBSITE ANALYSIS REPORT of sometimesitislupus.com Without any Cost.

Being at the top left of Google (Top 10 organic positions) is the best thing we can do for your company's website traffic and online reputation and there is a saying “More Traffic Leads Better Business”.  You will be happy to know that, our team is willing to guarantee you 1st page Google ranking for most of your targeted keywords in our six months ongoing campaigning period. 

If you are getting satisfaction with these proposals for your business objective, feel free to email me, or can provide me with your phone number and also the best time to call you. I am also available for online meeting to present you this website audit report.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm Regards,

Garry (SURNAME DELETED)

Sales Advisor

PSI:  I am not spamming. I have studied your website and believe I can help with your business promotion. If you still want us to not contact you, you can ignore this email or ask to remove and I will not contact again.

PS II: I found your site using Google search and after having a look over your website I recommend you to implement future technologies such as HTML5 and Responsive Design to make your site more accessible in mobile phone, tablets, desktop etc.

Clearly, as this expert points out, I just don't know what I'm doing.  And the mobile version of the site must not have worked for him.  Garry didn't name the organisation he was a sales adviser for. In fact his business doesn't seem to have a name at all.

What could I possibly say to this?  (Frequent readers would know I just couldn't leave this alone.) So this is what I said:

Hello Garry,

Can I make a suggestion?  When you want to convince someone you’ve read their blog, you might want to mention specifics from that, instead of generalisations?  Alternately, you could at least notice when a blog is in fact a personal blog, and neither a business, nor a company. You may even want to acquaint yourself with the “about” page that clarifies that the blog is written by one person, not a team. (Most of the offers I receive for SEO at least get that last part right.)

Oh, could I also suggest that you would appear more professional if you had a business email address, rather than a gmail address?

As a matter of note, my blog's so poorly visible, it’s amazing that you, who are clearly not a part of the niche I write for, even found it.

No, I will not be hiring you. I wish you well in your attempts to gain some employment.  

Regards
Iris Carden
www.sometimesitislupus.com

Was I too harsh? Possibly.

But do you know what?  Even feeling relatively well, at the end of the day I'm tired and in pain, and not in the mood to suffer fools gladly.  I've discovered that ignoring people soliciting for SEO (that's search engine optimisation) doesn't stop them emailing.

And if you're with Garry and find that my images are stumpy and my content is unfocussed and of poor quality, that's OK.  I wish you well as you go and find what you're actually looking for elsewhere on this big world wide web.

If you actually find that me posting random things about my struggles living with chronic illness helps you feel less alone in your struggle with chronic illness, then you are the person I'm writing for.  Yours is the opinion that actually matters.