Do you find all those emails trying to sell you SEO services or free Instagram followers annoying?
I do! One of the services we offer exclusively to our web design clients is professional website search engine optimisation (SEO), and these spammers still try to sell us SEO services … saying our website isn’t performing well! They obviously don’t even look at the website before criticising it and saying they can make it so much better!
I received another one just this morning which has prompted me to write this important blog post. The example spam below wasn’t sent via our web form so I can safely and happily mark it as spam. 🙂
Our clients get these emails all the time and are often worried by them – thinking that something is wrong with their website.
ALL the websites we design and build at Pavoni start with SEO in mind and are highly search engine optimised. The only exception is when we are specifically asked not to consider SEO. (There are downsides to having a highly SEO’d website, but that’s a whole separate blog post).
Considering these points – it’s evident that these spammers are just lying with the aim of getting you to part will lots of cash for something you don’t need and won’t help you. Here’s another example spam email sent to one of our clients:
The biggest problem
The biggest problem is that – because these emails are often clearly spam – you mark them as spam in your email inbox. But although they are spam, the issue is – your website sent them. So when you mark them as spam your email service provider thinks all email from your website is spam. So it starts to block all email from your website. This means you don’t even get the genuine enquiries from potential customers!
How can you be sure the email is spam?
You can be sure it’s spam because:
- They use your web form to contact you about their services even when your email and phone number are on your website. They do this because they know the email will get to you. Because you can’t mark email from your website as spam without losing real enquiries
- The spelling and grammar usually looks like it’s been written by a six-year-old
- Their email address is often something obscure. A genuine business person will not use an email address like ssardfsgf@fffsdfdsgsgefefaxs.com
- Or they use a Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook or Yahoo email address – successful SEO businesses do not use these email addresses they use an email address with their web address in it
- They often use jargon to make it sound like SEO is complicated … it isn’t by the way
- They don’t give you their phone number because they’re not a real business and don’t want you to call them!
How do you know the spam email has come from your website?
The subject line of an email from your website will usually say something like Website enquiry from yourwebsiteaddress.com. Also, make sure your web developer puts easily identifiable text at the bottom of each email you get from your website such as This email is sent via http://www.yourwebsite.com website.
What can you do about it?
Just delete the email and don’t mark it as spam!
If you have already marked email from your website as spam – What can you do?
Contact your email service provider and ask them to check whether your email address is blocking email from your website and if it is – ask them to unblock it.
Do you struggle with any areas of your design and marketing? Are there topics you’d like us to write about, then please email them to me: Sarah at studio@pavonicreative.co.uk or post them in the comment box below.
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