Should you delete SEO solicitations?

If your job remotely relates to medical device marketing, you’ve gotten this email:

“SEO Services for Top Google Ranking.”

The one I got this weekend has an “SEO discount offer going on right now.”

If you’re like most, you delete this. Are you being too hasty?

So the email I received proclaimed,

We use only white hat SEO techniques for each website.

Monthly task and responsibilities package for 25 keywords:
1. 20 Search Engine Submissions
2. 200 Manually Directory Submissions
3. 60 Article Submissions
4. 10 Press Release Distributions
5. 5 Web2.0/Blog postings (Using pre-written articles)
6. 30 Social Book marking Submissions
7. 5 Forum postings
8. 3 Unique Article writing (400+ words)
9. 1 Press Release writing (350+ words)
10. Keywords Mapping
11. New pages suggestions
12. Keywords research
13. Competitor Analysis
14. Title Tag changes suggestions
15. Meta tags changes suggestions
16. Alt tag changes suggestions
17. HTML Site Map
18. XML site map setup
19. Anchor text optimization
20. Google webmaster setup
21. Google analytics setup
22. Fortnightly Ranking Report
23. Fortnightly Full Detailed SEO Work Report in Excel

Please let us know in case you are interested.

I am not interested. I say “DELETE” for five reasons:

1. You can do better than spam. Spam is not a great credibility builder. You don’t see trusted institutions (SEOMoz, Hubspot) sending spam. Instead, do a  little research and find articles by experts who used SEO to be found!
2. If this offer looks good, you probably haven’t done much SEO work yet. These guys are ready to execute tactics. Where’s the strategy conversation? What is your target market searching for? You have homework to do.
3. Should you even be doing SEO? I recently told a client to blow off SEO all together. He would never win the terms he sought. Instead, he needed “brochure-ware,” a relatively static site he could show his prospects. See last week’s “What the New York Giants can teach you about SEO.”
4. If you don’t plan on SEO for the long haul, don’t bother. I compete for the term “medical device marketing.” Go ahead and look up at the URL address for this post. There it is again … “medical device marketing.” I use the term in the URL every time I write. I’ve used it three times in this article alone and threw in two self-referential links for good measure. So someone competing for the term had better be prolific to compete against me. The spammers above aren’t going to be writing copy for you!
5. You know me! This isn’t a “hire Joe Hage” thing. No, chances are, I’ve worked on a site like yours WITH search engine optimization experts much more knowledgeable than I. Let me refer them to you.

So there you have it. Delete away!