SEO Cold Calls / Shoulders

Got this in this morn from one of my clients:

So, I just a cold referral from some vendor who wanted to pitch for them doing our SEO... needless to say - they put together a sample report to display their skills - 😆 ! Basically it was an excel file of keywords & competitors with a "Ranking Column" that stated "Good" "Bad" "Very Bad".

No, I'm not kidding.

Hope that added some humor to your day 🙂

Also, one of the more recent job openings called to my attention was a thing yesterday, a well-known company based in Seattle looking for an SEM Director. Now, Seattle is arguably as much of a hotbed of Search Marketers as the Bay Area is. Apparently though, all the good and/or experienced ones there are all unavailable(?).

...with our staff getting competing job offers every other day, we need to make sure that we can compensate our team at market rates...
- SEOmoz

Rand, your turf's overflow is felt southward.

* * *

That's one of the things about the SEM and Web Analytics spaces nowadays, if not the Web Marketing sector overall. Just about everyone I know seems either fully employed if not overbooked. While I've got some years under my belt logged in, I'm not one of the uber-badass heavy hitters e.g. the "name" people who are self-employed and/or ceaselessly working the conferences speaking circuit etc... So I can only imagine how many calls some of those folks get asking for their services, and it's a given that they don't place (cold) calls looking for work. They're always working as well as turning down work.

So re. those vendors who are placing cold calls... sure, some might be great and totally know their stuff - however especially in this market, jeez: buyer beware.

These are robust times thankfully, but they are in some ways fragile.