Rightside - Wrong Way?
Written by Hank Castello
Would YOU Hire This Company?
It's one thing to critique a businessman's website, but when that businessman is in the business of doing SEO and copywriting for others, well this job gets to be much more fun! (Look for amazing addition to this story at bottom - after clicking "read more"!)
To give credit, it is a nice-looking website and it offers services that people do need. But, is this person truly capable of delivering those services? Well, let's see what kind of job he's done on his own website.
Since the site seems to offer advertising and marketing services (they mention those often) as well as seo services, let's take particular interest in those areas..
Poor branding!
Though the domain name is "onlinemarketingatoz.com", the logo says "RIGHTSIDE INC". Which name will visitors remember, if either? I found no other efforts to brand with either name, anywhere in the site.
Terrible SEO
The main service that seems to be offered here is search engine optimization and with a domain name of "onlinemarketingatoz.com", you would expect a decent ranking for "online marketing", right? Wrong. I just tested and Google doesn't have them anywhere in the first two hundred listings for that term nor for "search engine optimization".
6 Months & Still Not Finished?
Under "Packages", I found an interesting package - "dsfdsf". Now, either that's a brand-new acronym for an seo service that I'm not familiar with, or nobody ever bothered to proofread this site! Would you trust your website content to someone who is so sloppy with their own site?
Want more examples of sloppiness?
Front page:
Under "Google Client Rankings", writer lists "Vending Machine" twice. Also, I found no substantiating proof and, in fact, Wikipedia's listing for vending machine comes up #1 for me and I can't find this guy's credits link in any of the next 100 listings.
"Dominate the front page by .." I think the writer means the first page of search results, but "front page" misses the mark.
"..making your site engine-friendly." The writer probably means "search engine friendly", but forgot to type "search". This makes two terrible, sloppy mistakes in a single, frontpage sentence!
"Use Video, press releases,.." Video should not be capitalized.
Too much to cover on this site, so let's skip the remaining sloppy errors and go right to the heart of things..
What Is SEO?
Here, (front page under this heading), the writer gives a wordy, rambling definition totally lacking in punch or any hint of marketing.
Perhaps it is because the writer doesn't have a clue about SEO. Every page on his website has the same page title except for the last little bit which denotes the page. I thought everyone knew that search engines hate duplicate page title tags! Someone please pass the word to this guy.
Internet Marketing Director?
Although claiming they have a "very skilled team of pioneers..", the writer goes on to say that "..they spend the majority of their day dedicated to expanding their knowledge base on SEO." Is this a poorly-worded way to say that they're still learning the trade, and perhaps that is what makes them "pioneers"?
No matter how you look at it, this blurb, like the rest of the website, is proof of the writer's total lack of copywriting/advertising/marketing abilities.
About Us
"But you will only succeed if with a consistent, well thought out and effective plan." Now, I ask you - is this a "well thought out, effective statement"?
The writer not only lacks marketing and copywriting experience, but seems to have failed his high school English class! This is not the person you want wording your website content.
Why, Oh Why?
Why do we get all these totally unqualified people offering their services to the public? This website is likely to sell only those busy business people who are even more clueless than this "SEO Expert"!
Other than one of the front page rotating images being badly overexposed, he does have a nice-looking (if poorly worded) website. Someone tell him to get out of SEO and marketing and go into design work until he has the right skills.
I've got three more full pages of critiques on this site, but I'll spare us all and mercifully end it here.
Oops! Hold the Presses!!
It has just been brought to my attention that, if you Google this site's title text, you'll find a TON of other websites using this same design and even the exact (or nearly so) same wording!
That means this guy isn't just clueless, but he's apparently even incapable of creating a website as terrible as this one and had to copy it!
This also brings up copyright concerns. Even if the original site purchased the stock photos legitimately, it isn't likely that it provided rights to use the same images on other websites. Places like iStockPhoto have strict provisions about such things and lawsuits generally run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Customers BEWARE!
