I received this letter today and actually thought I owed money! I get this kind of stuff all the time in regular email, but these guys go as far as sending me real mail. I wonder how many unsuspecting people really fall for this? Easy money if you don't have a conscience the way I look at it.
So how did they find out about the site shown? The only source I can think of is godaddy, but I could be wrong because it's public record. I also paid ten years in advance for the domain. Perhaps they think I'm more serious than someone who paid for a one year listing.
The site is something I was thinking of putting together last fall, but I hit a dead end because what do I know about landscaping? I still think it's a great domain because it has the important keywords in it, and alot of people search for "landscaping ideas" online.
What a trip. Domain name submission with up to 8 keywords/phrases to 20 established search engines, blah, blah, blah. Eight? Yea, that's almost like 200 another email solicitation mentioned the other day. There are only three real search engines and I only pay attention to two; Google and Yahoo. They account for 85% of the search traffic any of my sites/blogs get.
Let's examine the domain name submission part.
It's not necessary. The simplist way to get the search engines to see any site is by way of links...then they take it from there. For instance, mylandscapingideas.com. If I wanted it shown I would go to the garden web and post a link in the message threads they have there. Mind you it cannot look like a sales push. Or another idea is to have your local chamber of commerce list your website. Another suggestion is getting listed in dmoz.org...at no cost. The latter is a real biggie, but it can take awhile to get listed.
And about those keywords. This is where you put them into the actual website. Frankly I don't know what this service can do with the keyword part unless they submit to the search engines with a spammy title of the site such as:
"Landscaping ideas, home, lawns, gardens, patios, pathways, backyard pools, house"
I've seen those websites. In fact I spotted a real spammy one last week by random surfing and the site had a two paragraph title! Google has a section of their site designed specifically for those with websites. It's very useful information if you're looking to get on the web or improve your visibility. Freebie too!
http://www.google.com/webmasters/