The Branson Pro

Star Position sucks.

Once again, I find myself amused by so-called “SEO professionals.”

It all started when one of their “advanced SEO specialists” sent me an email. Here is the original:

“Hello,

I represent a company called Star Position, a company that does what’s known as advanced search engine placement. We reach a Network of over 35 million people who are predominantly US based. Our Network is entirely opt-in, and the users on our Network allow us to present them with a preferred choice whenever they are looking for anything on the top sixteen search engines. (GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN and thirteen others.)

I seek one source to send the users on our Network, from the major search engines, for real estate in Branson and surrounding markets.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I will be in the office daily from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific time.

Best regards,

Robert Sexton Director of Business Development,

Star Position Phone:       800.481.2979, ext 2001”

So naturally, I call thse guys up to see what “advanced search engine optimization” techniques they are offering . And let me tell you - these guys are lames!

Robert Sexton, their salesperson who sent me the original SPAM email and who also answered their phone told me how great their SEO services are. He told me that for $599 per ,month, they would guarantee me a #1 spot for any 2 or 3 word keyphrase. And he said for only $999 per month, they would guarantee any 1 word.

Hmmm….last time I checked, the only man on the face of the Earth that can absolutely GUARANTEE any keyword goes by the name of Matt Cutts - and he’s not selling or providing any services of the kind.

Anyway, as I had this jack-ass on the phone, listening to his sales speech, I immediately ran a quick SEO analysis of their website: www.starposition.com.

And here’s what I found:

• > Major canonical URL issues
• > They do not have a 301 permanent re-direct in place
• > Their site is only a PR 2
• > Meta title, keywords, and description tags are the same for every single page in their site
• >No headings used
• > No DMOZ listing
• > No Yahoo directory listing
• > Only 365 in-bound links

And if that were not enough, they do not even rank anywhere in the top 200 positions in Google for their primary keywords.

I’m actually laughing my ass off as I am writing this!

How can any self-proclaimed “advanced SEO service” ever have so many problems with their own website? These guys are SEO half-breeds for sure! And it pisses me off because they give the real SEO pros a bad name.

After I ran the SEO analysis on their website, I confronted him about it. I asked him if they wre only a PR2. He replied “No, we are higher than that.” (blatant lie). I asked him why they were not in the DMOZ when their site is over 5 years old. I asked him why they did not have a 301 in place…. All he could say was “Can you elaborate on that?” Basically, he was saying that he had no idea what these terms meant and he did not have any clue as to the technical side of the SEO field.

And the only rebuttal he could come back with was: “We have a very high Alexa rank.” STOP RIGHT THERE. Once again, Alexa rankings are VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS. They only collect data from those users who have the god-forsaken Alexa toolbar installed on their browsers. This is a very small number of users!

Anyway, I went on to tell them that they should stop spamming me and they need to do some research before they go spamming people because every now and then, they might run into someone who actually knows what true SEO is all about.

Star Position, I courteously salute you with my award for being one of the crappiest ”SEO service providers” :

You guys most definitely suck. I would recommend you not spamming anybody until you get you get your own website straightened up… and even then, make sure you know what you are talking about before you try to sell it.

It’s people like you who give us real SEO pros a bad name.