Web.com Suspicious Sales Practices

Update #1: I was contacted by Matt at Web.com today (three days after this post went live) and he informed me that first, they didn’t obtain my client’s info from her domain registration. Second, he said that this was a good post to checkup on his sales team. Finally, he said that the info about “monthly submissions” is dated. He also explained to me that they are a big company and that things like this happen sometime.

Matt seemed to be fair, and he agreed that the monthly submissions information is incorrect. As I said in the post below, I still don’t like the unsolicited contact offering SEO services to someone who already has an optimized site, but I suppose that’s a relatively minor thing. The “Google certified editor” business is a little sketchy as well, but as Matt said this could be the verbiage of one rogue Web.com salesperson and not the company as a whole.

My thanks to Web.com for contacting me to discuss this post.

Original Post:

Far be it for me to be a consumer watch dog, but one of my pet peeves is companies that rely upon consumer ignorance of SEO to market their products. I think it’s bad form to leverage ignorance to sell something, but I’m not a boy scout – I realize the world works this way.

Still, a recent email from one of my clients about Web.com has me concerned. Here’s what happened in my client’s own words:

…got a call from Michelle at Web.com who got my contact info from my domain registration. She spent a lot of time telling me about how my site needed additional keyword work (using their certified google editors), some changes to the structure of my website, and an analysis of how many links go TO my website. She’s just certain this would increase my visibility on-line…I felt like I was being shammed!

While I doubt Michelle at Web.com has any malicious intent here, based on this description and the accompanying sales materials I find the following items objectionable:

1. Unsolicited contacts offering SEO services are almost always sketchy. Pulling WHOIS domain registration info isn’t a marketing best practice either.

2. If this Web.com employee would have reviewed the site in question and interviewed my client about her goals, she would have found that it is already keyword optimized.

3. How can someone who grabs a name off a domain registration advocate structural changes to a website without asking some questions of the website owner and/or developer?

4. Why do the sales materials offer to do “monthly search engine submissions?” This is a ridiculous idea – telling Google or Bing that a website exists is unnecessary, let alone doing so on a monthly basis.

This is a screenshot from a PDF that Web.com sent to my client advocating "monthly submissions."

5. What, exactly, is a “Google certified editor?” I’ve never heard of a Google website editor certification program…probably because such a thing doesn’t exist.

Web.com Not All Bad

In all honesty, I think it’s fair to say that most websites need keyword optimization and structural adjustments. If the Web.com sales people tell everyone they speak to that their site needs “fixed,” it’s probably true. However, it doesn’t seem to ethical to tell everyone the same thing regardless of the circumstance.

I’m sure that Web.com has some happy clients and success stories, but it’s pitches like this that give the entire SEO industry a bad name. While my client saw through this pitch immediately, I’m sure there are a lot of people that get hooked. Here’s to hoping that they get value in return for their payments to Web.com.