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cold-calling done wrong
Wednesday November 12th 2008, 8:42 am
Filed under categories: All

I have a site I advertise on Google AdWords.

It’s expensive, so I only pay for around 6-7 clicks per day. And I get annoyed when people spam those clicks.

Yesterday I had a business proposition entered in my request-more-information form.

They were trying to flog me the latest google backdoor secrets offer, promising they could get me Google traffic for a lot less money, beating the system, and buying their product. They apologetically were sending me to a free website at GoDaddy – with ugly free ads at the top of their splash page.

They tried to make out that it was a business approach.

Give me a break guys. Could there be anything less inspiring that what you did?

You clicked on my Google Ad, costing me money.
You don’t have a proper website.
You didn’t use the correct form on my website.
You didn’t research me.

My ad already has a 15% CTR, enough conversions to keep me happy at a small scale, has great relevance between the 4 keywords I chase, against the ad title, content and domain. I’m a Perry Marshall accolyte.

You’d better be pretty sure that you can improve my stats. And next time, try to get a proper website up, if you’re selling Google secrets.

That was the most laughable moment of my inbox yesterday.




aural spam
Wednesday May 21st 2008, 1:51 pm
Filed under categories: All,SEO

We’re renovating at home. So I’m spending a lot of time sanding, preparing and painting, and listening to the radio more than usual.

Last night I heard what Google would surely classify as aural spam.

As an SEO, it’s a balancing act when building web pages, to make sure that I don’t trigger spam filters at Google. That means not using the targetted keyword phrase too many times on a page, making it appear “natural”.

Last night there was an ad on the radio that was true aural spam. I forget what it was advertising. Let’s assume it was “blue widgets”. Within the space of a 30 second ad, they used the term “blue widgets” about every 5 seconds. It was definitely unnatural. It sounded unpleasant. And that’s what copywriting is supposed to avoid. This ad treated the audience like a dummy. It’s like they were trying to improve their ranking on my internal search engine, but instead it turned me off.

But it did make me think of one of the other ads we unfortunately hear on the radio all the time in Australia, in recent years.

For AMI, with their much hyped “nasal technology delivery”, to help you last longer.

There’s nothing worse than being in the car with kids, and hearing those tacky ads. About how to make your woman happier by making you last longer in the sack. Just plain tacky, and shouldn’t be played during daytime hours.

Here’s a byline I made up, that I’m surprised they haven’t used yet:

Just a whiff, and you’ll be stiff.

What do you think?