3 replies to this topic

[qwerty]

I got an email this morning announcing that I'd been awarded a prize by the "US Commerce Association":

I am pleased to announce that Raise My Ranks Service has been selected for the 2009 Best of Somerville Award in the Web Site Design Service category by the US Commerce Association.

In recognition of your achievement, a 2009 Best of Somerville Award has been designed for display at your place of business. You may arrange to have your award sent directly to Raise My Ranks Service by following the simple steps on the 2009 Best of Somerville Award order form...

Each year, the US Commerce Association (USCA) identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Also, a copy of the press release publicizing the selection of Raise My Ranks Service has been posted on our website. The USCA hereby grants Raise My Ranks Service a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, distribute, and display this press release in any media formats and through any media channels.

There's even a picture of my lovely trophy attached.

Of course, my company name is not Raise My Ranks Service. It's Raise My Rank [singular] SEO Services [plural]. And I'm not a web site designer. I suck at web site design.

And of course, a search for the US Commerce Association returns a bunch of pages warning about them scamming people by selling them bogus awards.

I actually recognized the wrong company name. Yahoo Local had me listed as "Raise My Ranks Svc" for a while. I fixed it years ago, but I still get spam snail mail with that name in the address. It clearly means "I got your information by buying a cheap, out of date mailing list, so feel free to send me straight to the bin."

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[Randy]

Yeah, it's a little cottage industry isn't it? I marvel at how many of those I receive when I take the time to wade through my Junk Mail folder to make sure nothing real got caught up in my filters by mistake. The number of people doing it and the frequency seems to be rising in the last year.

The other huge trend I've seen in the last year are the folks (real people, because of the bot protection I have set up) using my contact forms to offer up their SEO services. Invariably they include some snippet of how they can get me to page one positions, when the truth is I already have page one positions for literally 100's of phrases in all of the search engines and have for years.

The real oddity there is my older and thus more popular, better ranking sites tend to garner more of these wonderful SEO offers than my newer, slightly poorer ranking sites. You know, the ones that might actually need such services if one didn't know I do all of my own SEO work. Which begs the question, why are these folks apparently targeting sites that are already top ranking sites across dozens and dozens of phrases, instead of targeting sites that have a couple dozen first page rankings but still need a bit more work to build up the number of top ranking phrases.

I would think sites that rank in the 15-50 range would be better ones for them to target in their marketing efforts.

[Katy]

Nice trophy. You've just got to admire their Photoshop skills!

[Jill]

Congrats, bob! That's nearly as nice as those topseo awards sites