It happened again. For the third time in as many months I received an email from a client reading something like this:

Hey Mary, I just received a letter from XYZ Internet Marketing Corporation and they’re threatening to remove my website from all search engines if I don’t renew my domain with them by the third of next month. They tell me I’ll get detailed search engine reports monthly from them, but it costs $60 to do this. Who are these people and could I possibly have an account with them??

Major scamming going on here!

What these companies are doing is getting you to transfer your domain name to them (to the tune of $35+ per year) and then sticking your domain name into a mass email and shooting it off to 15 search engines. When I buy or renew a domain name I pay around $10 at GoDaddy These companies are asking you to pay $35 (the most common price I’ve seen) to over $60 for the same thing.

You get listed by most search engines these days just by being on the web and having good content. For example, if you Google Rachel Butler you’re going to see Rachel’s official website at the top of the list. I did nothing more than add her to Google manually. It only takes a minute and it’s included in my custom design package.

Be careful and alert when you get these things in the mail. They are often very official and slick looking. Some even look like invoices even though they have “this is not an invoice” in small print somewhere on it. If you have a question about the legitimacy of something like this ask your webmaster. If you don’t have a webmaster you can always contact TechnoDiva. She’ll help you sort thru the junk!