The SEO That Works fiasco
Bay Point Trading aka SEO that Works are what we in the SEO industry would like to call aggressive marketers who follow the same technique used by the mobile phone companies that try to sell you a cell phone contract. I had the opportunity to interact with one of their cold callers and when he couldn’t answer the simple questions directly related to the SEO service & domain name registration he was offering he put me through to his sales manager. I later learned that this was his first day doing sales calls and only spent 3 days on training prior. This is my experience with Bay Point Trading.
Inbound Marketing, particularly Search Engine Optimization, is something that I am extremely passionate about. I’ve dedicated nearly a decade of my life to playing around with, testing and implementing various SEO techniques trying to find the holy grail, SEO That Works. To that extent I wanted to gauge the impact Google Places has on certain keywords I watch like a hawk. My phone number is therefore one of the three or more positions on the Google map you see when searching for certain location specific phrases people search for daily in Cape Town. My phone now rings about once per day and 99% of the time lasts 1 minute where I can actually help the caller with credible information to the query they have. Not today though, Bay Point Trading called.
The salesperson rushed through how important it is to rank at the top of Google and how registering a certain domain name with keywords they already found me on Google for will get me to the top of Google. Being a Web AddiCT I know how these things work and wondered if the person from Bay Point Trading could explain it to me. Are they going to redirect traffic from the new domain name to my site? Will it be 301, 302 or are they going to build a landing page targeting the same keyword as the domain name? An SEO professional can answer these questions in their sleep. This was the salespersons first day, he didn’t have all the answers. I hope he doesn’t get into trouble. The cold caller handed me over to his sales manager. I didn’t get his name. Asked the same question and this is what he asked me…
Bay Point Trading Sales Manager: “Are you in front of your computer?”
Me: “Always”
Go to Google South Africa and type seo that works
Already I was thinking… How many people actually search for that keyword? Checked and found that 4400 people do monthly. OK so they have the exact match domain name seothatworks DOT co with a all the on page SEO checkboxes ticked. The keyword they found my number on Google for only gets less than half the searches the ‘seo that works’ exact phrase gets. Cold calling and other marketing methods have proved successful for them as they have more than 8000 customers.
So I asked him to go to Google and spelled my name… R-A-F-I-Q… click search.
To cut a long story short the sales manager didn’t want to speak to me anymore, mumbled something and hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. Was it his first day too?
This is not SEO and is only one tactic that could prove successful in the short term. If you’d like an idea of how a most SEO companies could and should interact with you try this test. I wish Bay Point Trading well with their marketing and sales initiatives.
Has Bay Point Trading called you too?