As anyone who knows us at FiveRDesign, and myself (Jamie) in particular, I like to talk about SEO and things I feel are relevant in the SEO community at the current time, so I'd like to encourage a debate, and at the same time have a bit of a rant.

Today I have been in the process of cleaning out the "support at fiverdesign.co.uk" email address which I must admit has been somewhat neglected, but most people if they are serious about contacting us use our contact form. What has struck me is the sheer number of emails that conform to the following pattern:

"Dear sir/madam, my name is xxx, I am from company xxx, a specialist web design/graphic design/seo firm from India, we have over (insert number from 30-100) specialist professionals ready to assist you in your xxx" (and it carries on in this manner. I am wondering, in todays SEO industry (mainly in the UK but this applies to the wider industry), are people genuinely outsourcing to companies such as these?

If I receive a link request from someone like this my brain automatically goes into reject mode, maybe its just me. I also wonder if there is so many of these "specialist outsourcing firms" how the hell they actually make any money, even though I am well aware most of the employees will probably earn in a month what some of us in the UK earn in a day or two. The fact that there are seemingly so many of them also makes me extremely skeptical as to the quality of services you would receive from said companies.

If there are any companies or individuals out there using them, are you getting good results? I would love to hear about any good/bad SEO experiences with these kind of companies in the comments. Maybe I am just cranky because I've just deleted my 200th search engine optimisation outsourcing email. Over to you guys.