Beware of this search engine optimization rip-off…

One of our SEO clients forwarded me an email they received from “Global Vibrations Inc” in Washington DC.  Here’s an excerpt:

As I was on http://www.trueympact.com this morning, I was unable to locate a “Google Sitemap file” on your website.  I am not referring to a regular “site map” for people to visit online, but rather to a script which helps Google to read and index your website’s overall content. I advise you to visit us online where we explain clearly what a “Google Sitemap file” is and what you need to do to get one…

At this point they link back to their website, where they are charging $250 for a “Google” sitemap, and $125 for a “Yahoo” sitemap.

Unbelievable.

This email from Global Vibrations Inc makes me angry on several levels:

1. First, while it IS a good idea to have a sitemap in an XML format for the search engines, we already create those for all our clients.  This guy didn’t even LOOK to see if our client had a sitemap before sending this spam email.
2. Even if our client didn’t have a sitemap, his suggestion of paying for a “Google Sitemap” and a “Yahoo Sitemap” is ridiculous.  The search engines are perfectly capable of using the same sitemap, and they know right where to find it on our clients’ websites.
3. It takes about 10 minutes to generate a sitemap for a website and post it.  Charging $250 to do so is a $1,500/hour pay rate.
4. This is speculation.  Something tells me they would have happily taken their $375 and just told them they did something that we had already setup.  After all, they had no qualms about sending an email with the lie that our client didn’t have a sitemap, when they really did.
5. Finally — it turns out that the sitemaps they are selling is a one-shot deal.  Which means if you add pages later, they’d be happy to update your sitemap for an additional fee.  Our sitemaps automatically update themselves whenever a new page is added in our SpireCMS, and because it’s XML, Google & the other search engines send their spiders quickly when they see an update has been made.  I guess that wouldn’t be a standard feature for most, but if one of my clients responded to this scam, they’d actually be taking a step backwards for their money.

Beware of this company, and others like it.  If your company works with Spire, you are welcome to forward emails you get like this one.  We’ll be happy to review them and help you recognize the rip-offs.