Just had a rather tasty dinner of home made pizza and dropped back into my desk here to check my emails and my Twitter stream.

What should I find when I checked my email other than a very polite email from an ‘offshore’ Search Engine Optimization expert called Reema (if in fact that is a real name).

I have included the text of the letter below, however, to cut a long story short, I will show you what can be learnt from such proposals.

Firstly, the website Reema refers to is a “not for profit website” that myself and a couple of buddies maintain for the local football (soccer) market here in Perth, Western Australia. It is our passion and we love it, giving up our time and using our skills to promote our sport locally.

‘Reema’ states that “I was surfing through your website and checked it for a few keywords on Google. Unfortunately, it was not ranking on any of those.”

Well Reema, last time I checked, the website ranks as number 5 on Google for its primary keyword “football wa” out of 9.9 million entries (see image from Google).

Not so shabby for a website that we do not actively perform Search Engine Optimization on is it ?

So what keywords was my expert friend Reema checking our website for ?

Well , surprisingly enough Reema doesn’t mention these keywords. An oversight perhaps ?

Finding our primary keyword wouldn’t have been that difficult for someone who had any modicum of Search Engine Optimization knowledge. Its actually in the domain name www.club-footballwa.com.au. Yes its “football wa”. Well hidden wasn’t it ?

The website has been active for just on a year and to get to a number 5 position out of 9.9 million entries without trying is a pretty amazing effort but not according to my expert friend Reema.

So, what can we take out of this little exercise ?

Reema, of course, could be genuine and be genuinely interested in helping this website perform better in the rankings. Of course Reema is in business to make money and has a service to sell so why not send us an email offering to help ?

Alternately, Reema could know very little about football or football websites in general and therefore not know that our website ranks so highly for our primary keyword “football wa” because Reema didn’t consider that keyword a candidate in his / her list of “a few keywords”.

If this is the case Reema is definitely not the sort of person I would want to do business with as his / her knowledge of such an obvious part of this business is very limited.

Another possible option is even more worrying. “Reema” (and many like him / her) could be sending out hundreds of these emails a day to various websites around the world and convincing a huge number of small business people who know very little about SEO that they need Reema’s company’s services based upon at best poorly researched information or, at worst, no research at all. I do not know this to be true but it has to be an option I consider.

My advice to you friends is to only have Search Engine Optimization performed by someone who has been recommended by a business colleague or, if you can’t get this, a local Search Engine Optimization consultant.

Pick a company that you can work closely with to have them understand your business and, should things go wrong (and sometimes they do), one where you have some recompense towards the return of some or all of your hard earned readies (your money).

Give “Reema” and his / her buddies short shrift.

Hi,

Yours sincerely,
Reema

I don’t think you will be doing any business with this little black duck Reema !!!!!

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