Paying to have your online reputation ruined
Are you paying good money to a company that is hurting your online reputation?
The sales pitch:
We will build you a website and manage your SEO to get you top rankings in all the search engines. There is just a small setup fee up front and then monthly payments for the rest of eternity.
For your search engine placement we will have one of our outsourced positions from another country leave short tacky comments on websites and blogs in your name.
We will be sure to build your site so there is not contact form. This will make sure no one will bother to contact you about the spammy comments we are making on your behalf.
Now all I need is your credit card number and we can get this set up for you.
For all the Real Estate geeks that don’t know what to do with themselves on Christmas Eve. You drop by the lab to see if there is anything going on and I’m doing my best to put together a couple of tidbits to keep you from going into withdrawal.
I didn’t get these comments at the Lab. I got them on the Bent and Twisted thinking blog For No REal Reason.
In the spirit of Christmas and giving something back to fellow agents that are paying good money to a company for SEO and in turn getting their online reputation damages I would ask that before you send their comments to spam (which is what I do) contact them if possible and let them know that the company they hired is leaving spammy comments on blogs.
I try and do this when I’m in a generous mood. In the case above, you can read in the graphic both parties involved. When I went to their site (designed by the same company leaving the spammy comments) There was no contact form. That is the end of my efforts to make contact. If I can get an email address I usually forward the comments to them.
Therefore, if you are feeling generous and want to take the effort to help someone who (we will assume) isn’t knowledgeable about their online presense. At least not knowledgeable enough to realize they are paying someone to damage their name and reputation, then give them the benefit of the doubt and let them know what they are paying for.
I’ll try and have more for you to chew on yet this week as Christmas drops into our geeky lives and we wonder what to do with ourselves.
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Post Tags: real-estate , spirit of christmas
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Hahahahaha….this classic…
just kidding…lol
Seriously though, I don’t see any major grammar errors so I’m willing to bet some of these comments are from the agents themselves and not an outsourced company.
Hey Dave, I hear ya. I wrote a post on this same thing not too long ago. I try to reach out when I can, otherwise I have little choice but to send comments like this to the spam bucket. Here’s my post
Merry Christmas to you, Barbara, the Lab and all your readers!
Jeremy,
Take a close look at the email address. It isn’t from the agent, it is from the seo/hosting company.
I didn’t point it out, but should have. Agents don’t have email address for an seo/hosting company.
Jay,
Merry Christmas to you and your family as well. Thank you so much for your friendship. It means more every year.
I wish I could say that I have not seen these things 100 times. Having the SEO company do the spammy comments FOR you is a new (and unsightly) wrinkle…grin. As Jay says, the only choice is to spam it. Sad part is, they are going such a long way to avoid building a true relationship…They are this far (visualize fingers close together) from getting it and yet is it better to outsource it to someone to spam it. Frustrating.
Will write another post on it this am at EoS, linking to y’all. I think the best disinfectant is often sunlight.
Jay-while I am here…Merry Christmas, my friend. Dave, likewise…please send my best to your family.
[...] trend towards having people (on your behalf) drop spammy comments on blogs with YOUR name on them. Here’s a great post on the subject by Dave Smith, who is a friend and fellow blogger. (For the record…dropping spammy [...]
Hey Dave, Hopefully a lot of agents that are hiring those foreign companies will read this. I doubt it though. It is a shame that so many people get suckered in by these so called SEO guru’s. Have a great 2009!!
Jeff,
I doubt it also, but I wrote it in an effort to throw a few beached starfish back in the ocean.
Have a great 2009 yourself.
Dave
Mahalo!
I have a local guy working for me; I’d heard horrible things about using overseas companies.
I would agree that nothing can hurt your online reputation and relationships like spam-y comments. But, for those people that feel they just don’t have the time to put into these wonderful online communities, then they should at least keep track of what the comment makers are saying on their behalf.
Make sure to use a reputaable company for SEO. If you go with someone who dosen’t know what they are doing, you could hurt your site permanetly with non-organic links. It’s very important build links correctly from the start.