The Keyword Here

I know you get spam e-mails too. We all love them. Oh sure, I could set up my Yahoo account to “filter” the spam out of my inbox, but that’s my primary e-mail account and I actually expect to receive a significant amount of unsolicited e-mail from all sorts of sources that the Yahoo filters find “suspicious.” I don’t like wondering where an expected e-mail went, only to find it’s been sitting in the spam folder for days. So I just let everything go to my inbox and then I sift through it.

Occasionally I get e-mails from people who manage websites and they all want me to sign up for their services so they can “fix” my SEO — search engine optimization.

The e-mails go something like this: “Hi, my name is Moron and I work with Stupid Internet Marketing Company. I recently did an Internet search for ‘ugly nails’ and came across your website. There’s no reason why your website shouldn’t be the first listing under ‘ugly nails,’ so contact me and I’ll help you get your site listed first whenever anyone anywhere on the planet Earth searches for the keywords ‘ugly nails!’ “

I desperately want to choke these people. Seriously, I should get to go to their tradeshows and give lectures on how stupid they are.

First: I don’t need my website to be listed first all over the planet. What good does it do me if someone in Romania does a search for a nail salon? I mean — “HI EVERYBODY IN ROMANIA!” — I love hearing from the nail artists there, but let’s face it, if someone in Romania is looking for a place to get their nails done, I’m a little out of their way. So SEO for local, brick-and-mortar businesses is only useful if the SEO takes location into account.

Second: They found my website, didn’t they? I mean, this person did a search for something that is TOTALLY NOT in my “keywords” or “meta tags” and YET. THEY. STILL. FOUND. ME.

So I’m gonna have to assume my search engine listings aren’t that bad.

Which brings up point #3: WHY ON EVER-LOVING *&#*@*!-ING EARTH would I WANT mywebsite to come up A-number-uno in the results for something like “ugly nails?!” Or, in the case of the last actual e-mail of this nature that I received: “death by pedicure?”

Seriously? These people think I want to be the first thing that Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, or Bing or whatever) associates with the words, “death by pedicure?!” They are out of their freakin’ minds!

So I guess I’m just going to have to continue suffering my lousy ranking in the top listings for things like “Visalia nail artist,” and all those people who are looking for “death by pedicure” might actually find Dr. Spalding’s book.