Monitor the results of outsourcing of your website promotion

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Be careful with outsourcing your web promotion.

Outsourcing the job of promoting your website is becoming an attractive option for business owners who either don’t have the time or know-how to do this promotion themselves. However, you really need to keep a careful eye on what your promoter is doing, as if they are not professional about it, their work could end up damaging your business’s reputation rather than enhancing it.

The people at Jensen Windows & Doors (www.jensenqld.com.au) appear to have employed someone from overseas to promote their website in what appears to be a less than professional way. How do we know? Someone based in the Philippines (as determined by looking up the submitter’s IP address) filled in our free listing form for tours and activities in Victoria in order to get their business and website displayed on the Travel Victoria website.  They specified that Jensen Windows & Doors, who are manufacturers of doors and windows in Queensland, conduct tours and activities around the Great Ocean Road coastal town of Aireys Inlet in order to trick us into approving the listing and displaying the website link. With their link published, they would have gained exposure by people clicking on the link and viewing their website.  Also, web search engines like Google would notice the link and treat it as a vote of popularity for Jensen Windows & Doors, thus possibly boosting their website’s ranking when people conduct searches for window and door manufacturers.

While we obviously didn’t publish the free listing as requested by the person from the Philippines that Jensen have hired, it has however left us with a negative view of this Queensland-based manufacturing company that resorts to hiring people from Asia to get their business listed in inappropriate places.

Promoting your business and website is serious stuff.  If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, ensure the person or organisation you outsource this task to is of a reputable nature.  Also ensure that the methods they use to promote your website are appropriate.  They should not spam and they should definitely not try to trick others into listing your website by misrepresenting your business.


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Comments

13 responses to “Monitor the results of outsourcing of your website promotion”

  1. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    We’ve just had another case of an Aussie business employing unprofessional people overseas to handle the important task of web promotion. Today, a web promoter from India, working for Queenscliff Holiday Home (www.queenscliffholidayhome.com.au) has tried to get that holiday home’s website listed for free within our “tours” section for the Melbourne CBD. Firstly, the listing is a holiday rental property, not a guided tour, and we don’t offer free listings for holiday rental properties. Secondly, the holiday home is located in Queenscliff – that’s over 100 kilometres from Melbourne, which is something that someone in India may not be immediately aware of.

  2. Luke Chapman Avatar

    It’s disappointing to see this sort of thing happening, but far from surprising. The number of SEO “experts” sending unsolicited e-mails to businesses is astounding. They all claim to be able to get your website ranking at the “top of Google” and claim to be a “leading company” in India, or Philippines etc.

    Unfortunately you get what you pay for. You’d be much better off spending a few extra dollars and getting a reputable, locally-based SEO/online marketing company to do the work for you. Though even then it can be hit or miss. Before hiring a company, have a look at their clients. Do they have happy clients, and have they been clients for a long time? Are they promising to have you at the “top of Google” or ranking number 1? If so, don’t touch them with a 10 foot pole. Google is getting wise to some of the dodgy tactics, and once they penalise you, it’s a long crawl back to the top. Put in the effort now and it will pay off in the long run.

    1. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

      Your point about avoiding those organisations promising to get you at the top of Google is golden advice. We discussed this in our blog posting: https://blog.travelvictoria.com.au/2012/09/13/be-cautious-of-those-offers-to-get-your-website-to-the-top-of-google/

  3. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    Here’s another one.

    A web promotion team from Bangladesh was hired by “Stylish Kitchens – the Gold Coast’s most trusted kitchen company” to market their website. With a poor grasp of the English language, their hired promotion team submitted a completely irrelevant and meaningless follow-up to our post titled “Caravan parks close to Spirit of Tasmania”. Their post had nothing to do with caravan parks, the ferry, tourism, or anything remotely related to Tasmania. Instead, their follow-up comment read:

    “Does your family use the kitchen for anything else? How do ergonomics come into play? The latter will largely have to do with height and accessibility. Your family pet is also an important consideration. You do not want the dog licking your food. Pets should also move through kitchens Gold Coast easily.”

    The above text sounds like it comes from automated text generator. Hardly inspiring people to do business with Stylish Kitchens!

    Included, of course, was a link to the Stylish Kitchens Gold Coast website.

    We straight away hit the “trash” button on that follow-up comment in our blog posting.

  4. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    And here’s another one. Also from Bangladesh, a web promoter posted a completely irrelevant comment in our article about caravan parks close to the Spirit of Tasmania. It was supposedly from the promoters of Noosa Pet Resort in Queensland, and it read:

    “we’re the pet accommodation more pet choose to take care of their dogs and cats. We’re confident that we can offer your pet the boarding experience of a lifetime.”

    Included was a link to the pet resort’s website, linked to the words “pet resort sunshine coast”.

    Out of curiosity, we decided to contact the management of Noosa Pet Resort via their Facebook page, telling them what had happened. They had no idea what was going on, particularly when we mentioned someone from Bangladesh was working to promote their website by posting irrelevant posts with links in our blog. Based on their response, we can only conclude they had hired someone, perhaps a local, to promote their business, and that person was outsourcing the work cheaply overseas to people who were using unnatural methods of promotion.

    So that’s another spam comment we relegated to the trash bin.

    1. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

      A month later, Noosa Pet Resort on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland are busy at it again.

      They have directly or indirectly hired someone from Bangladesh to again spam their pet minding service by including an irrelevant posting within our “Caravan parks close to Spirit of Tasmania” blog posting. Of course we have relegated that nonsense posting to the trash bin.

      Because of their disinterested response when we notified them about this issue last month, we haven’t bothered to contact Noosa Pet Resort again. After all, a long time ago Google started to frown upon irrelevant and/or spam promotion in blogs like they are undertaking. So if Noosa Pet Resort want to continue hiring people from Asia to market their website, and pay them money to do promotional work that may actually harm their business rather than improve their website rankings, as well as alienate blog owners that have to keep filtering out their spam postings, then good luck to them.

  5. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    They seems to be coming thick and fast this month.

    The latest we’ve had is from some web promoter, based in The Philippines, working for Waterfront Retreat at Wattle Point, which offers holiday accommodation near Bairnsdale in East Gippsland, Victoria.

    Their web promoter attempted to promote their client’s website by submitting it to our “free listing” section. As we don’t offer free listings for holiday accommodation, they decided to specify that it was a fishing charter business, so as to try and trick us into letting the submission through and publishing the link.

    Interestingly, the promoter working for Waterfront Retreat at Wattle Point thought their submission would be published almost instantly, and when it wasn’t, they kept re-submitting it. We then kept receiving multiple copies of their submission – a bit annoying!

    We sent an email to Waterfront Retreat at Wattle Point describing the activities of their web promoter, but we never heard back from them.

  6. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    Our latest “spam” blog comment has come from someone by the name of Susan Hirst, whose email address features highly on the “CleanTalk” website which identifies spammers and internet bots. She is based in the U.S. and is working for Aspley Acres Caravan Park in Brisbane, resulting in a nonsense comment in our blog posting about caravan parks close to the Spirit of Tasmania. Well, Aspley Acres Caravan Park is thousands of kilometres from there, however that doesn’t stop them! As per usual, the meaningless comment includes a link to the Aspley Acres Caravan Park website. It’s been sent straight to the trash bin.

  7. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    Aspley Acres Caravan Park in Brisbane have been busy again, hiring people from overseas with Gmail addresses to spam their caravan park in our blog.

    The latest nonsense posting from Aspley Acres was:

    “Thanks for sharing all of these awesome caravan parks in Melbourne and Devonport. I definitely like seeing so many different parks between those two cities, especially since I would love to caravan down there some time with extended family. Right now, the Melbourne BIG4 Holiday Park and the Discovery Holiday Parks in Devonport look the best to me. They look really scenic!”

    Rather strange coming from someone who is posting from the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, wanting to take their caravan with their extended family to Australia. Particularly surprising is when they describe the Melbourne BIG4 Holiday Park as being “scenic” despite it being set on a flat area of land within a built-up suburban area. Then they publish the website address of Aspley Acres Caravan Park in Brisbane within their contact details.

    We sent an email to Brisbane’s Aspley Acres Caravan Park about this last month, but they have chosen to ignore it and continue their spamming activities. Not really a good look for that caravan park, and they will probably end up doing their reputation more harm than good.

  8. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    Today, Noosa Pet Resort in Queensland have their website promoter from Bangladesh busy again spamming their website in our blog postings. We wrote an article on how important it is for tourism operators to have an internet presence, and their spammer from Bangladesh wrote this irrelevant follow-up comment to that post:

    “This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! Keep up the good work.”

    Clearly not a genuine comment from Noosa Pet Resort!

    We tried to contact Noosa Pet Resort in the past about what was going on, but they either don’t care or simply don’t know!

  9. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    The serial spammers from the U.S. representing Aspley Acres Caravan Park in Brisbane have been working overtime this weekend. They posted two individual comments on our blog post “Caravan parks close to Spirit of Tasmania”. Here is one of them:

    “My husband and I have been looking for a good caravan park we can go to for a long weekend. The Melbourne Holiday Park sounds nice! I like that it has a heated pool! I will have to show this to my husband and see what he thinks.”

    Now that would be interesting, coming all the way from the U.S. for a long weekend caravanning in Australia. By the time they fly out here, pick up the hire caravan, and then take it to Melbourne Holiday Park, they would have to immediately turn around, return the van and fly back to the U.S. Not much of a holiday, despite costing thousands of dollars!

  10. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    Aspley Acres Caravan Park in Brisbane are certainly going into overdrive with hiring people from overseas to spam their caravan park in our blogs. Overnight, comments from web promoters they hired from Romania and South Africa were submitted to our blog posting “Caravan parks close to Spirit of Tasmania”.

    An extract from one their meaningless postings, which included a link to the Aspley Acres Caravan Park in their contact details, is:

    “My friends live in a caravan lot, but they don’t really have anything around it. Everything around them is mainly underdeveloped so they really are the only thing for almost a mile. If they had something like this, it would really be nice and maybe attract more attention.”

    That comment, along with all others that pertain to Brisbane’s Aspley Acres Caravan Park, have now been filed under “spam”.

  11. Travel Victoria management team Avatar

    The infamous Noosa Pet Resort have their spammers in Bangladesh busy submitting more nonsense comments and links in blogs. We received one this morning, which was a comment posted to our article “Some accommodation owners in denial about the internet”.

    Their meaningless comment was:

    “Wonderful website. A lot of useful info here. I am sending it to a few friends ans also sharing in delicious. And obviously, thanks for your sweat!”

    What exactly do they mean “thanks for your sweat”?

    Anyway, their comment has been marked as spam and swifty dispensed with. Nice try, Noosa Pet Resort!

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