Bob Massa loves you and wants to increase your traffic!! ha!

I have tried all kinds of marketing techniques over the years but for the outsourcing business I started last year, I only want wholesale accounts that understand the SEO business. With making the decision to specialize in industrial link building and content creation, taking advantage of the work ethic and reduced labor costs in India, we are not interested in full service seo to a wide range of small to medium size companies. That means that advertising on seo blogs and forums just attracts the wrong kind of responses and my time gets swallowed up in turning down more business than we accept. So, I made a list of companies and people whose names I have seen in seo and marketing communities and target them one at a time.

Next year I intend to do marketing strictly through conference booths and sponsorships BUT, I have always felt those things are a little elitist, (about the only conferences I would really like to attend these days is the drunken deuachery known as SEO Roadshow), and frankly can’t afford that kind of exposure until we hit our numbers and I still need another 15 wholesale clients before the end of July and I feel relying on my reputation and taking a personal approach is my best bet for this type of service.

Yes, shrenik is new and hungry BUT I insisted that he spend a little time learning something about who he was contacting. Not so much to try to claim it wasn’t spam but more to be able to be sure we were talking to the right people.

Tim you give good blog and I do have a lot of respect for you. I also think you would be a good one to help other in a similar situation so I ask you

>Sorry Bob but if this is how your new business is attempting to get leads, you think I should entrust them with my clients linkbuilding? but your country men have a very bad reputation when it comes to managing SEO, you tend to be considered Spammers rightly or wrongly.about how Indian Outsourcing was the future and to be fair to him he put his money where his mouth is.<

Actually my point was that striving for excellence was the future and it didn’t really matter where the source of the outsourcing came from BUT I had chosen India.

What little lies are you referring to by the way?

So, shall we discuss alternatives to hit your numbers?

Massa

It is rather unfortunate that different regions and races are generalized in this manner, but these judgments are in many cases including my own, made on past experiences.

If I am spammed one time and react over the top, that is perhaps paranoia… However, if I am spammed 5 times a week from a particular area then I am in fact no paranoid, but rather my irritation is well founded.

Unfortunately, this situation exists for all… Including Americans. Many times clients come with terrible experiences and poor results from other firms. I am in fact embarrassed when this happens, no matter where the firm is located.

The only way to escape a largely populated generalization of this magnitude is to demand better results from yourself.

I understand how you feel tim and I wish I knew the perfect way to do this without making anyone mad.

I know it probably won’t make much difference to you but while you have it close it is not exactly accurate.

Shenrik is instructed to contact 20 people a day in his 9 hour day. that is to give him roughly 15 to 25 minutes locating and learning something about each person we contact. It is intended to be a training exercise as he reads content from some of the most well known people in the industry.

He site right next to our VP in charge of production and is monitored constantly. So I don’t know what he learns from each site he goes to BUT I do know he is spending some time at each and I also KNOW he is learning a lot fast about the industry.

All I know to do Tim is make sure that we remove you from any list we might have and not contact you again.

I really do wish I knew the perfect way. I’m good, but I never said I’m perfect.

massa

hmm. I don’t see a sphinn button on this blog post. Considering it’s the best blog post I’ve seen in awhile, someone should definitely spin it…. SPIN it, right?

And we all sit here in our little SEO industry and wonder why this industry has a bad reputation?

I wonder how many times I can write that little statement in one year’s time? Maybe about 365 times, which is just one more proof each day of why it does have a bad reputation. It does seem there is always one kind of proof, doesn’t it?

I do not want to see or read about our industry asking that question ever again, please. “Why does this industry have a bad reputation?” ….. well, duh?

Well after reading the whole scene i realised 1 thing its the fault of the seniors that dont allow the new in industry to learn. If the new has made some mistake you should not start writing like this in your blogs and start critisizing the one. Shrenik is new in this business as per Bob. If you all wanted to help him you should have approched Shrinik on his personal email not on this blog. I do respect you and your intension to help Shrinik and his team from evry possible way but think once about that time when you were at a junior level and you made some mistake at time. If those mistakes were written at such huge and reputated blogs would hadit been an easy way to comeup till this level? Well I think you all are somewhere afraid of Bob and Shrenik’s team that they might make a diffirence in SEO market (i am sure they will) thats why you all took so much of pain to interogate every small details of Bob and his team (impeccable work). Your attitude might be at a correct tract but your way was wrong. I am sorry to see such cheap talk happening on your blog Tim and where, you are so much highly involved. Anyways nice to see you all senior SEO kings talking CHEAPNESS and with 1 n only 1 attitude “I won’t let any one come around me”. Shrenik the good thing about you is you didn’t reply in your retaliasion. And Bob i Appriciate your way of thinking n the broad spectrum of accepting things in life. You rock. Grow up Tim n rest.
If any thing wrong do forgive me. I am just a HUMAN BEING.

Hi new poster; Tim wrote that he knows it’s not Shrenik’s fault. I know that as well. This whole blog post is simply pointing out that people in this SEO industry can and do send out unsolicited email. It’s the owner’s fault ONLY that this has happened. I don’t blame Shrenik whatsoever. Like you stated; he is new and does not know any better. The owner of the website is fully responsible for the actions of any employee. It’s always been that way in business and will continue to be that way in business. Bob Massa is the owner. He should be teaching the proper way to send out email spam…erm, hmm, I mean email announcements instead of asking a newbie to go drum up some business.

For the record; hosting is not free. Believe me; you do not get free email with this host, nor with any other web host worth their salt. Just thought I’d throw that in here just in case someone else who may be new may be reading.

oops, that should read like this:

“you do not get free hosting with this host, nor with any other web host worth their salt.”

Hello Kings,
I appreciate your reply Tim and Doug Heil.
After reading whole blog of yours, I came up with that comment. The kind of blog, u have written in the beginning, it was like some
small kid has written it with LOADS and LOADS of jealousy. Every body on
this planet as an entrepreneur wants to grow his brains in expanding his
business whats wrong in that. Mr. Bob gave an assignment to Mr. Shrenik to
send at least 20 mails in a day, he just started searching for those 20
mails and mailed them. Whats wrong about in that and about the mail,
praising his boss or his company may be with some exaggeration, is no wrong unless hes not facking in something they don’t have or they don’t work on written verticals and I don’t feel they did that. Well Tim been a senior KING in SEO it would had been
appreciable if you had just mentioned Mr. Bob in the Blog but not Mr.
Shrenik or his team. Your intensions are to dominate Mr. Bob and his team
and I guess I am right don’t answer me but answer to yourself what was the
exact intension behind this extensive research and Googling. Your intension
were really not on a white line and that’s why you even wrote about the Senior
SEO Manager – Techndu and his past. I appreciate your research and data
finding creditability, but more than I would appreciate the creditability
of
the Sr. SEO Manager that he has achieved so much in his life in a short
time, from scratch to SKY. It is his creditability and Mr. Bob’s luck that
hes got such a great and hard working team. Even with small googling you
can
get Mr. Shrenik’s profile too. What is his age just try to find it out Tim.
Ok I’ll help you don’t waste your precious time in searching he is almost
or
less than half of your age Tim and has achieved so much in his life from the
scratch
and even he’ll touch the sky very soon. I hope and I am sure he’ll. Mr. Bob
is lucky to have a team like this. If I have to do my SEO for my website
I’ll definitely work with Techndu. Becoz they have the capability and
honesty and acceptance of the faults and come up with the faults asap(this fact has been proved by Mr.Bob reply by accepting his creditability and mistakes). I
like and appreciate that attitude and India has the capability to produce
such great team. Tim I respect you a lot, reason:- I respect you for your age
and not for your attitude of helping that you have shown towards Mr.
Shrenik
and Mr. Bob. I’ll still say if you wanted to help Mr.Bob in his business
plans you could had contacted him directly and had not written some thing
like this in your blog. You’re the King of SEO, you should act as a king
also. I hope you understand what I am trying to explain you and others
also.
One more thing let me tell you I am no where attached or concerned to Mr.
Shrenik or Mr. Bob or the company.I am an entrepreneur. I am an Indian and a human being.
Mr. Doug Heil, regards to you. Well I really appreciate the way you have
written that Mr. Shrinik should understand and learning emailing to the
prospect and should also understand the internet capabilities. He just
cannot run around with these kinda mails. If Mr. Shrenik is reading this Blog I
would really like you to understand what Mr. Doug Heil is telling you.
I might be completely wrong with my Ideas, but I do have experience and
culture in me that forced me to say like this. I am sorry If some body is
hurt with my thinking.
But again I would like to say….
“There should be a way of approaching something and it should be followed.”
This goes for everybody involved in the Scene.
Think about it…!!!
Regards,

“Supreme excellence consists in breaking an enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Sun Tzu

Hi new person; I think you don’t understand the history of this owner of the site you are defending. Many of us have been around for years and years and certainly know a thing or two. Some of my very closest friends…. REAL friends are from India. Heck; my very best friends/programmers are from Pakistan. I know damn well that very good people are from India. That’s not the point however and never is the point. The biggest point is that this owner does not know what his employees are doing. Either that, or he does know and just doesn’t care about the SEO/SEM industry one bit and will go about getting business any way he can.

I actually have to disagree with the assignment of blame here. I agree that Bob Massa is partly responsible; after all, it’s his lackey that he’s sending out and he clearly gave specific instructions to cold-contact random people looking for someone stupid enough to buy into the claim that they could be performing better within the confines of Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

I also believe that the query that Tim discovered in his raw logs was no accident, either; I have had numerous SEOs contact myself and my clients over the last 8 years with the same sales pitch, and every one of them to a (wo)man has “researched their prospective client base” the exact same way. The fallacy of the argument used to piss me off to no end; now, I just find it amusing. All of that is partly on Bob.

But some of the blame does have to lie with Shrenik as well. People have to use common sense and good judgement, and come to the realization that 1) a good SEO will not have to research his/her clients (the clients will come to the SEO) and 2) that performing a search with SEO somewhere in the search phrase is inevitably going to result in “prospective clients” that will have sufficient knowledge, as Tim does, to be able to stand up and say, “hey, this doesn’t make any sense here.”

The big problem here, and this is a collective problem, is that by and large the SEO industry is operated in a pseudo-fascist state, with the “government” (and I use that term very loosely) in bed with the industry leaders, who in turn dictate rules, regulations, and business concepts to a populace that is either unable to think independently and determine which ideas are correct and which are incorrect, or unwilling to deal with the negative backlash and other ramifications caused when one speaks out against the prevailing “regime”. Personally, I’d put Shrenik in the former class. He heard the name “Bob Massa” somewhere, heard he was some big genius, and took a nice healthy swig of the Kool-Aid.

As far as the India/Pakistani issue is concerned, I know for a fact that there are some very intelligent people in those areas that are very capable of drawing their own conclusions. The problem is that they don’t seem to make up the vast majority of people. India and Pakistan are honeypots for search engine/link exchange/link building spam, blogs that regurgitate both content and unoriginal thinking, and random corporate rhetoric. You guys may not like that, but it is what it is and you continue to create it and misunderstand the Frankenstein that you’ve built.

This isn’t about jealousy on Tim’s part. This isn’t about hatred of India and/or Pakistan. I don’t hate you guys, and I don’t think Tim does either (although I’m a first-time poster, and I don’t know Tim at all…so I suppose it’s possible). It’s about so-called industry leaders passing down spammy, invasive marketing tactics and the inability of those underneath them to use enough brain cells to realize that these tactics are immoral, objectionable, and just plain wrong.

“…subscriber and tend to keep any overly national belief or pride to myself (except winding up American friends)…”

I will back this - he does get me wound up some times.

An interesting read. I do know Bob from some time back. I don’t always agree with him but I do pay attention to what he says as there are nearly always some gems there .

I enjoyed your style of writing Tim.

Is this what’s known as Massa-baiting?

Good post Tim, keep that spammer on guard!

Is it bad that I don’t know who this guy is? I admit that I don’t know everyone or have even heard of many of the SEO’s. But being the top would mean that I should have read mention of your name in the near 2.5 years in SEO.

Oh well? Learn somebody new everyday.

Interestingly, I have lately received the letter too. From Shrinik, from Techndu.

It was the same template, except that I were “bringing insight into SEM and SEO’.

First of all, I was thrilled, because it was the first time I was on the receiving end of sucking up.

On one hand, it’d really be nice to outsource content research and creation and I’ve been considering it (including India).

But on the other hand, the whole approach of contacting random SEO people using the same template with huge blocks of text doesn’t really look like something that could or should have been inspired by a seasoned SEO, who has 11 years of experience.

So, this email has confirmed that I won’t be hiring this firm and maybe other Indian sources, thus focusing on our local talent.

P.S. I found this very post by inserting the following phrase in Google: “Techndu is a division of SearchKing Techno Labs and is owned by Bob Massa.” A common practice for checking examples of spam/templates on forums.

I received the exact same email, and responded to Shrenik to get more information. He was very helpful providing me with example reports and more details. We’ll probably pass on the service since I’ve never had positive experiences outsourcing anything to do with SEO to India, and it doesn’t fit our business model.

I have to admit, the only reason I responded to Shrenik was the Bob Massa reference. Interesting reading this thread.

Hi Adam, It’s interesting to see your take on the exact same email that was sent out in mass. It goes to show that being a spammer, either se spam or email spam, is just fine and dandy by many in the industry. This does not surprise me at all.

You state that the name makes a difference? Why is that? Email spam is email spam no matter how you may spin it.

This is the same stuff many of us have noticed for a very long time. The industry panders and caters to others just because of some damn name. It makes no difference what they do or how they do it. I say pathetic. What say you?

I was wondering the same thing, actually. If Shrenik was representing himself, * click * JUNK MAILED.

In fact, the only reason we’re even talking about this is because of “a name”, as if “a name” somehow legitimizes the activity. Whether it’s Bob Massa or Bob Jones, Brad Callen or Brad Smith, it doesn’t change the nature of the activity.

I agree in part Doug. I think Bob could have done a better job, it’s obvious from Tim’s detective work that Shrenik was just scouring SERPs for emails to hit. The name thing for me was a credibility signal, when I saw “Bob Massa” I thought to myself that it was probably legitimate and worth a look. His services may be legit, but I can’t help feel the whole thing’s a little sketchy.