Pabitra Kumar returns!

Filed Under SEO Callout | 2008-09-15, 12:00

Pabitra, the not-so-good SEO, is back and this time he has a new approach.

from pabitra to admin@[SITE].com
date Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 2:11 AM
subject SMO Service

Hi,
I am Pabitra Kumar, Marketing Manager

Advertising in online world is one of most inexpensive and highly effective way of promoting a business.

Along with SEO, we use social media to increase the sales exponentially and improve the image of our clients i.e. brand, re-brand there products/services. This would include optimizing the website and at the same time writing Articles, Reviews for the company and submit it to various places.

The benefit of Social marketing is that the stimulus comes from social networks rather than traditional marketing sources. Arriving this way, it bypasses the many filters we have developed to tune out commercial messages. Research has shown that a positive mention on a network can be much more powerful than any number of ads or commercial messages.

You’ll be surprised to see the Returns on investments. Each and every penny spent is calculable along with the amount of returns it generated.

Let me know if you are interested and I’ll present you with a proposal that would not only improve sales of your company but also brand your products.

Feel free to contact me in case of any enquiry.

Regards,

Name :Pabitra Kumar
Post :Marketing Manager
Email:pabitra@anekstein.com

“Please avoid taking printouts of the mails .Minimise paper, use E-mails.”
Fight against global warming.

Disclaimer: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.

The above mail is in accordance to the Can Spam act of 2003: There are no deceptive subject lines and is a manual process through our efforts on World wide web. You can opt out by sending mail to pabitra.mosaic@gmail.com and we ensure you will not receive any such mails.

Apparently the SEO market was not lucrative enough for him, so now he’s in the SMO, Social Media Optimization. He thinks that he can help me sell more things that I give away for free. It’s pretty apparent that this is a form email and that he hasn’t actually looked at my site. Or if he has, he’s horribly mistaken about it’s purpose and how it runs day-to-day. He mentions the benefits of “social marketing” and how it bypasses “filters”. Sure, that’s true to some extent, but many people these days can tell a fake social interaction online from a mile away. Besides, the site he is emailing about grew entirely out of social interaction amongst users online. It has been popular because I am part of the community it serves, I know the users, they enjoy the site, they tell their friends, they post links on their MySpace pages, etc. It’s an organic growth and not this sort of artificial social-marketing that Pabitra is promising.

It only takes one look at the domain that Pabitra’s email is from to see that this is not someone who has your user’s best interests in mind. It is filled with links to completely unrelated sites that are just trying to get better search engine rankings. He’s trying to game the system, and I hope Google cracks down on him.

I also like the nice touch at the end of his disclaimer that says this “is a manual process through our efforts on World wide web”. Sure, maybe you’re hitting “Send” manually, but I’m sure you just got my email address from a database that crawled whois information.

The next day he sent me a follow-up email:

Hope you are doing well.

Haven’t heard back from you, just wondering if you are interested in our services or not.

Let me know if you are interested and we can discuss this further.

I sent him an email back letting him know I’m interested in hearing about his “proposal that would not only improve sales of my company but also brand my products”. It should be interesting. I’m really hoping he comes back and says that he can offer me TMO (Twitter Marketing Optimization).

3 Comments

SEOs that don’t do their homework, Pabitra

Filed Under SEO Callout | 2008-08-13, 11:44

I run several websites, many of these rank #1 in Google results for their keywords. If they don’t rank #1, then they’re almost always on the front page. I keep an eye on search engine optimization and try my best at it. Occasionally I’ll get an email from a so-called “professional SEO” who wants to help me get my sites ranked at the top of the Google results. These emails are form emails but make an attempt to be personalized to my site. They fail. Here is where I start to call out these SEOs on their BS:

from: pabitra <[REDACTED]@freedomcoach.org>
date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:42 AM
subject: SEO Service

Hello and Good Day!

I am Pabitra Kumar, Marketing Manager

I was surfing through your website and realized that despite having a good design; it was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain.

I was wondering if you would be interested in getting the SEO done for your website.

There is a simple equation that is applicable to the online world.

Ethical SEO -> Better Traffic -> Higher Sales.

We are an ISO Certified, SEMPO registered Online Marketing firm and have over 5 years of working experience. All the techniques used are ethical and proprietary.

In case you require any additional information, it shall be our pleasure to furnish the same.

I look forward to your mail.

Yours sincerely,
Pabitra Kumar
Marketing Manager
Email:[REDACTED]@freedomcoach.org

PS: “Buying a website without search engine optimization is like spending your entire budget on a commercial without buying any air time to show it to the world”

First off Pabitra, my web design sucks. I’m a programmer, not a designer. Second, I already rank #1 for my main keyword and first page for any secondary keywords I target. Sending an email that says the following might be better:
“I took a look at your site, http://www.whatever.com and checked the search engine results for several keywords I believe are related to your site. I see that you rank:
#2 for “keyword 1”
#8 for “keyword 2”
No ranking for “keyword 3”

I can help you obtain higher search engine results for these terms if you’d like. ”

This would show that you’ve actually looked at my site, you understand my niche, and you’re willing to put a little bit of work into things. While I would probably never hire someone to do SEO for me, it’s a much better approach that would attract clients that would be willing to pay for your services. You might also want to work some SEO on your own name, as the first thing I do when someone contacts me trying to sell services is to search for them on Google. If you don’t turn up on the first page, that’s a bad sign. If the website of your email address isn’t accessible, that’s even worse.

PS: Sending email to potential clients without doing your research is like shouting on the street looking for customers. You just look silly.

UPDATE: Apparently it _is_ just a form email, as I also have the exact same email in my inbox from your friend, “hasan”, the “SEO Manager Mosaic”

8 Comments