Red Flags of a Cold Pitch Email for SEO Services
These cold pitch emails about SEO services have got to go, but until they do—here are the red flags to steer clear of.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever received a cold email pitching you to book SEO services with someone. You know… the ones that say “I’m from Wix/Squarespace/Wordpress blah, blah, blah.” Wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask someone if these emails are legit or a scam? That’s exactly what this episode is all about! I’m using a real life email example (thanks to my friend Mindi Trimble) to walk you through the exact steps to determine if emails like this are spammy or actually require your attention.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Red flags to look for in cold emails about SEO services
How to use clues to dissect the validity of a cold pitch email
What role your intuition or “gut feeling” plays in this scenario
What to do with these unsolicited emails in your inbox
What to do when you’re ready to work on your website’s SEO
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Mentioned Resources:
➡️ I’m having Amanda Walker join me very very soon so she can tell you all about her experience with the SEO packet for her podcast & blog!
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to the short and sassy segment of the Basic Bee Podcast. As you know, these episodes are usually a bit shorter, more actionable, and about a variety of topics. And today, I am coming to you freshly frustrated by an SEO cold email. So there was an email that was sent out and I've received these myself and I just know that it's junk and so I just delete them. And usually I will also report them as spam because I didn't sign up for anything. They're sending this to me.
Like I didn't ask for it. So use your discretion, do what feels good for you with regard to that. But this is a topic that keeps coming up. This email that I'm going to use as an example is one that my friend Mindy Tremble sent me last night. And I was like, can I use this as an example to record this podcast? So don't worry, she said, yes, I've been given permission. I'm not going to show you the email or even really reveal too much of what's in the email because we just don't need that on the internet, you know?
But I was very grateful that she said yes, because I want to point out some of these red flags that you should keep an eye out for. There are so many emails that we get and there's only so much time in the day and we have to really learn to tune into those intuitive hits that we get or that gut reaction that we get and not let what we hope to be true, like I hope that this person is actually writing to me and they have the best of intentions toward me and my business.
just not always the case. So listen to those intuitive hits, listen to those gut reactions that you get because it's going to steer you in the right direction. So we're going to go over the red flags and some stuff that you can do and just things to notice. So here we go. Not only did Mindy send me this email, which I'm actually going to read her email to me, but there was another person who reached out and was like, I'm getting all these SEO things in emails.
from a variety of companies. I'm not sure if I can trust the people. Can I just get on a call with you and see if you can help me?" So that was one, and that actually kicked off a couple months ago. Got on a sales call with this person and she actually booked an SEO packet for June. So that was incredible. But I'm not sharing this with you just because it would be wonderful to work with you. I'm sharing this with you because I know to delete these emails, I know when they're bogus, but you don't necessarily know.
Brittany Herzberg (02:26.442)
So let's walk through that. We're gonna start with Mindy. This is her email to me and she forwarded this cold pitch that she got, but this was her message to me. Hey there, so I have Wix and I've gotten these types of inquiries before, but are they even from Wix in your opinion or is it a total scam? Wouldn't Wix just email me directly? And I'm sure there are people out there straight up falling for it if it's giving me pause. Thanks in advance because this kind of stuff makes me so mad. Same.
Same, same, and that's exactly why we're here. We all want to believe the best in people. We all, like it's a protection mechanism. We just want to think that there's no way this person has like negative intentions toward us. And we start rationalizing things and we ignore those intuitive hits, those gut instincts, those gut reactions, the gut pulls. So this episode's gonna be fun. It's gonna help me tie in my massage therapy training into and bring it into this online business world.
because we have to start listening to those intuitive hits to whatever our gut is telling us when we have a reaction, just listen to it, trust it, because it's usually guiding you in the right place. All right, I digress. Let us dive into this email and I'll share some red flags to look out for. So like I mentioned, I'm not gonna be showing this email, but I'm gonna be looking at it and referencing it while I'm talking to you. So,
So the first thing I noticed was that there were two different names used. So Mindy obviously, and by the way, she did give me permission to use this in case I didn't say that. So nobody panic. She was good with it and I'm going to link her below. But back to this form. So Mindy has, she helps kids, high schoolers get into and through the college. Let me say that again. Mindy helps high school students.
navigate the college application process. So shout out to Mindy if you need her help. I'm definitely gonna link her below. But she clearly has some kind of inquiry form because it says first name, last name, email address, and then message. And first name, it says Anthony T. Let's just say last name is a repeated version of that. So it says Anthony T. And then you get to the body of the message and it says, Hi, my name is Daniel. So the first
Brittany Herzberg (04:46.69)
They're using two different names. They're not even following what the form says where it says first name. They have first and last name. It's just, it's a clue. It's a clue that this is not a legit thing. Also, the email address that they put in is actually Mindy's email address. So that's really weird because if someone was writing to you and wanting to share some stuff with you, they would put their email address, not yours.
So we've got the two, the double name situation. We've got them using a fake email address. At least it's not their email address. And then even this first line, my name is Daniel and I am Wix advisor. That doesn't read correctly. Wix isn't even capitalized. And again, we don't even have their email address to confirm that they work at Wix. There's not even a like at wix.com or something like that. So we've got.
We've got some issues there and those are the first things that I'm picking up on where I'm like, mmm, I don't know if I can trust you. And like I said, I get these types of inquiries too, but I know that they're junk and I just want you to even spot those tiny little things that we can pick up on where it's like, this something's off here. So I'm already concerned. The price that they talk about is nice, but it's also not indicative of good work. They are valuing this work in like the low hundreds.
And on top of that, they're like, here's this discount link, and they make you feel such pressure to book within a few days. So it's like, here's this really great deal, and you can get an even better deal if you do this in a short amount of time. That much pressure just doesn't even feel good right off the bat, knowing that this is a cold email. If you click on the link, which takes you to this SEO report that they claim to have so nicely done for Mindy, which I would not.
advise clicking on the link. I did it just because I wanted to be able to have some stuff to share with you. I would not advise clicking on the link. Sometimes we click on links and it's a virus and it downloads stuff to your computer and we all learned that in the late 90s and early 2000s. But just a reminder, not a great idea to click on the link. So it takes you to this report that it just looks so generic. Like it's not even working that hard to make it appear like they looked at her site.
Brittany Herzberg (07:11.022)
There's only one link that kind of makes you think that they looked at Mindy's site. Um, it's just so generic. It's ridiculous. Um, so the next thing that we can notice within the report is at the very bottom it has this line, it made me giggle, this report is completely free and without obligation. You bet your tosh it is because I didn't even ask for this. I didn't, I'm not paying you for it. It doesn't even look like you put any effort into it.
It's just bunk. And then leaving that report going back into the email at the very bottom of the email, there's a button that says, if you think this email is spam, report it as spam. So again, I kind of hinted at this earlier. Handle it at your discretion. Do what feels good to you. Typically, I know I have reported a lot of these as spam. Sometimes I'll just delete it because I just don't want to deal with it. But you could choose to report it as spam if you want to. So.
We have lots of things within the email where it's just like the names are off, the capitalization is off, the grammar is off, you know, it's making you feel lots and lots of pressure. It's really funny too. Again, toward the bottom, note after purchase, access data to the site administration panel will be required and this will be sent via a secure SSL zone. It's just like they're using big words. I'm not about to like...
pay you and give you my login information though. I'm just not doing it. So several things within the email. If you click the button, which I would not advise, and you see that the report is very generic, just know that. Like again, like I said, the report was probably three or four pages and there was only one link in there that indicated anything about like Mindy Trimble. So if you're writing an email to Mindy or Brittany, you kind of want to say more about their site if you're going to at least like give it a real effort, you know?
But this is clearly an unsolicited cold pitch. Definitely be wary of these. If you did not reach out to someone to give you any kind of report or to give you any kind of advice or guidance, you know, like not everyone is out here to do you harm or to trick you, but it's 2024 and people are slick and they know that people aren't going to catch everything. So just be on alert. So don't jump.
Brittany Herzberg (09:33.686)
respond to something like this. See if you can, you know, if you really do kind of want to pursue it and see if this is a real person, you could see if you can find the person online. We have three names here, so I don't know which one you're gonna type in. But you could try to find the person online. See if they have a website, see if their company is legit. Do they have an Instagram profile? Are they on Facebook? Something like that. What do you see? And then, you know, follow that up with...
Do you have an SEO pro that you could reach out to be another set of eyes for you? Like in this case and with my other client where Mindy emailed me and she was like, is this legit? Or like, I don't think it is, but will you kind of confirm this for me? So, you know, you could send it to somebody else. You could have them look at it for you. And remember, you could probably just work with this person if and when you want to. You don't have to, but even if you just want to clarify like.
I'm not thinking something's going on here, right? Like this is legit something weird. You could definitely reach out to them. And then, you know, the next thing that you could do is you can walk yourself through a free SEO audit with Ubersuggest Chrome extension. What you would do if you want to, this is if you want to see if you have any issues or errors, you can Google Ubersuggest Chrome extension, download it. It's totally free. You only need the free one. They do have a paid version, but you only need the free one.
you type your site into the search bar. Once it loads, you then click on, there's an orange U at the top in your bar at the top of it. On Google, you'll see your website and then at like the bar at the top. I don't even know what to call that, but anyway, there's an orange U up there. And you can click on that. That is the Ubersuggest app, and it will drop down several different options. If you look all the way to the right, there's one that says SEO audit. And what you could do,
bare minimum, if you get information from this, you know, SEO email cold pitch where they're saying like, hey, your site has blah going on. At the bottom, once that SEO audit is run, you'll see some errors. I think it usually displays three or four errors for the free Chrome extension. If you want to see all of them, then you do have to do the paid version of that or you have to sign up with someone like me to do an SEO audit for you for a fraction of the cost of actually signing up for Ubersuggest.
Brittany Herzberg (11:53.622)
But it's going to give you enough information where you're going to be able to say like, okay, this report that I was sent is bogus or this report that I was sent, maybe they have some, maybe they have a point and do I want to work with them or do I want to try to find like a legit SEO expert and work with them? That's some stuff that you could do. Um, but you know, like reading that email, having received emails like this, I am not about to give someone money and my login information with
email and a report like that. I'm just not gonna do it and regardless of if it's like SEO or some other industry I'm just not gonna be doing it. So if you have SEO related questions like this one, don't forget that there's a submit your question form below. It's gonna be wherever you're looking, listening, watching, clicking on this. It's gonna be below somewhere. And you can send in your question to me if you have gotten emails like this and you found this helpful just to know that it's
not legit. Let me know. I would love to know that. I want to make this stuff so that it actually makes a difference in your world. But again, so we're looking out for things like the weird names, bogus emails. Maybe they're using something like info at hello info at britneyherzberg.com or something like that. Or, you know, britney at britneyherzberg.com. If they're using some email address that includes your web domain and you're like, wait, that's weird. It is weird.
names, emails, capitalization of things, grammar, prices being too good to be true, reports not having enough detail or information and just looking very generic. Those are definitely going to be some red flags. So hopefully this helps. If it, if you need more, find me with the question form below. And then if you know that you're ready to tackle SEO, but you want some help from a qualified and trustworthy professional like me, you can always
I'm going to make sure that's linked below. You can go poke around my website. I've got some downloads. I've got free stuff. I've got DIY and then I've got done for you, like I said, with the SEO packet. But yeah, I'm actually going to have a client of mine and a friend, Amanda Walker, come on very, very soon so she can tell you about her experience walking through the SEO packet with me, which I'm really excited about because that's another thing that you should be able to find with these professionals.
Brittany Herzberg (14:17.238)
You should be able to see testimonials of people working with them or even, I mean, if they're really smart, you want to see some case studies of people working with them. So just now, again, going back to that very first point that I made, and I kept harping on this whole time, listen to your gut. Listen when you get that intuitive hit of like, something's not right here. You don't need to respond. You don't need to interact. You don't need to do anything. It's quite all right if you just simply delete the email and pretend you never got it. So,
Hopefully this is helpful. If you have any other questions, come find me. And hopefully we'll all start getting fewer and fewer cold pitch emails like this about SEO services.