“We will get you in all the foreign search engines!”
This is a complex topic that requires some extra attention so I am going to break this discussion into two posts. Here I am going to primarily focus on a spam email that has been making its rounds across the Internet for years. It is convincing enough that from time to time our clients forward it to us and ask, “Is this something we should be focusing on?” The short answer is that if you’re indexed in U.S. search engines, you’re already on “foreign search engines”. Your SEO company didn’t have to lift a finger to make this happen. The long answer will be in next week’s post.
Here’s how the spam email goes:
“I am Dr. Marc Schneider and I work for xxxx Search Engine Optimization Inc. in Washington DC (Tel: 1-202-xxx-xxxx) – I would like to speak with the person in charge of your international clientele. Who is my contact? Who should I speak to??
In fact, after visiting https://www.webtivitydesigns.com, I have noticed that your website cannot be found on foreign search engines (I tested it on Hispanic search engines, German search engines, Asian search engines, etc.) Our company is specialized in multilingual search engine promotions in 28 languages . From the Japanese Google to the German Yahoo, from the AOL in Spanish to the MSN in Chinese, we can show you how to develop a true international online presence by promoting your website on foreign search engines.”
….and it goes on from there.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: The first rule of thumb is to ignore unsolicited emails from sources with whom you are unfamiliar; 9.99 times out of 10 it is spam and/or a scam. As mentioned above, if your website is indexed in U.S. search engines, you are indexed in the “foreign” versions too.
Let’s try a little exercise. Go to the various country-specific versions of Google below and search for your company. Since Google only has one “index”, if your website is indexed in the U.S. it is indexed in other countries as well:
Next week we will delve into the topic of marketing your company globally in more detail to keep you from falling for this common SEO scam. Watch our Facebook page for the next installment of our series.
