Andrew Riedel, SEO Gold Coast
Got a call from a client today. Nothing unusual about that; it happens all the time! What was unusual was that he was concerned about a call he had just received. Someone purporting to be an agent for Google called my client (let’s call him Pete) to let him know that Google had brought to his attention that Pete could be in breach of Google advertising regulations. Further he asked for Pete’s account login details so he could work through the issues to ensure his advertising was Google compliant.
Now Pete is no dummy so he questioned the caller at length to establish whether in fact he was a Google agent, someone marketing SEO services or just a scam artist.
The caller was very persistent so Pete mentioned that SEO Web Magic was looking after his SEO and his Google pay per click advertising and advised the caller to talk to Andrew Riedel.
The caller wouldn’t have a bar of this and insisted he needed to work with Pete to ensure Google account compliance.
At this point Pete said “if I find out that you are indeed just marketing your SEO services, I’ll go to extreme lengths to complain to Google and anybody else who’ll listen”
The caller then backed down from his stance of being an agent for Google and admitted that he wanted Pete’s business. He also guaranteed a 200% return on any money invested.
The call ended shortly after when Pete told the caller that is main keywords were all ranking number 1 on Google and his PPC ads were in slot one as well!
So what’s the moral of the story? The SEO industry has more than its fair share of bottom feeders, scam artists and scumbags. I know that you are inundated with emails and phone calls from people claiming to be able to get you on the first page of Google. Others will tell you that you have zero backlinks, no social media presence and you don’t rank on Google. Of course what they don’t tell you is that they haven’t done any research nor have they even looked at your website. They just scraped your email address and phone number along with thousands of others in the hope that a small percentage will take up their offer.
Now we don’t want to teach you how to suck eggs but NEVER give your login details for anything to anyone you don’t know. This caller may well have only been trying to hack Pete’s account.
At SEO Gold Coast we offer an ethical SEO service to local businesses that can meet us in person whenever they want. Our number 1 rankings speak for themselves.
So just hang up on the bottom feeders and delete those emails. It’s really that easy.