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The internet is a weird and wonderful place. With the right skills, it can be harnessed to promote your brand, manage your reputation and engage directly with your customers.
But be wary of con artists who bank on your limited understanding of complex systems to convince you to part with your hard-earned cash.
Have you ever received one of these cleverly disguised spam emails parading as email marketing specifically designed to suit your business? I know ITM has.
Let’s take a look at an email that ITM recently received, and we’ll reveal its lies and misdirection:
Subject: Google Webmaster Tool Report of itm.co.za
Dear itm.co.za Team
I am David. I would like to have a discussion with you regarding the web promotion strategy for your website. We wish to work out a proposal to strengthen the online presence of your website, via. A strategically planned web promotion campaign. You should be focusing on the new revolutionary ways of generating traffic.
We were curious to know if you were aware that are a few issues bugging your website. Sorting out these will help you get the best returns out of your website.
1. Your website (itm.co.za) seems to be attracting traffic, but this traffic is almost stagnant and limited, which affects potential sales as you move forward.
2. Your website doesn't feature in Google's first search page for some of the major keywords in your niche, which affects visibility.
3. Your website has been diagnosed with coding issues, which affects ranking.
4. Your back links profile is not efficient enough to help your search engine visibility.
5. Your website is currently not being properly promoted online, which is affecting your marketing strategy and goals
6. Your presence in social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc.) is minimal. This is depriving you of a huge market of prospective referral clients.
We excel in running promotional online marketing campaign for websites. We have a host of ethical services and techniques, which you can utilize to improve your website's performance.
Please let us know if you would like us to perform a detailed WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE of Charge; as well as a Plan-of-action (Deliverable) from our end, comprising some of the strategies we can implement to help you improve your business and justify your online marketing spend.
We would love to hear from you regarding any questions you might have. Please let us know if you wish to move further, so that we can schedule a meeting without disturbing your busy schedule.
Thanks & Regards,
David
Sales & Marketing Manager
Sounds convincing, right? The team at ITM found this email rather amusing for a number of reasons. Clearly David did not realise he was sending this to a website design and digital marketing agency. It’s obvious he has not taken the time to personally analyse our website, all he has done is used a website crawler to steal the email address.
This email has been sent to millions of business owners in the hopes that someone will take the bait. And I am going to prove it to you:
Google’s webmaster tool report: The subject of David’s email is his first mistake. Google, the world’s leading search engine, does not make your website’s search console report available to the general public. That is your private information and is protected by a number of rigid security checks.
Traffic: Once again, David would not have access to this information.
Ranked on page one of Google: This point was rather entertaining for ITM because David takes a chance that the email recipient’s website does not rank on the first page of Google. Unfortunately for him, ITM’s website does, for a whole bunch of keywords.
Coding issues: These two points play on most people’s ignorance about the backend of their website (where the coding is found). Rest assured that coding has no effect on ranking. The only coding that David would have access to is the HTML in the page source (a relatively tiny piece of code), and there’s no way for him to make a diagnosis from this.
Backlinks: For years now, people have been offering to create artificial backlinks for ITM using means that Google expressly prohibits, and will punish in its algorithm. Therefore ITM is a firm believer in organic backlink and network building.
Website promotion & social media presence: If David had actually bothered to investigate ITM and what it is that we do (which, of course, he didn’t), he would realise that we are experts in content keyword optimisation, digital marketing, SEO search engine optimization, social media marketing, website design , and web development, with proven results from 15 years in the industry.
Scammers, like David, rely on fear mongering and misinformation to convince their victims that their website is in need of their help. But if David lies about the above aspects, what credibility does he actually have left?
Don’t be fooled by BS. Rather speak to us or Get a Quote about growing your business online.
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