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A Warning About "SEO Services" Email Spam

Internet Marketing

Josh started this discussion 13 years 4 months ago

I get a lot of spam emails about SEO services like the ones posted below. I just wanted to warn hostels about them, in case someone out there doesn't realize what it is:

Complimentary Website Analysis and Ranking Report
Get example.com [your website] ranked on the top of Google, Yahoo & Bing!

* Get [your website] ranked top in the search engines quickly.
* See top placement for your target keywords and high quality, targeted traffic
* Receive return on investment from [your website] and improve your search engine placement, traffic, and ROI

For a No Cost Website Analysis Ranking Report and More Info Please Click Here

Sincerely,
The Top Results SEO Team

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To discontinue further mailings please click here

100 Fillmore Street
Denver, Colorado 80206

Here is another variation:

Randall Tuttle () wrote:
We noticed that you are not at the top of the search engines for a number of
your key terms. We have helped companies similar to yours to achieve top organic
rankings. Please reply to this message and we will prepare a special proposal
for you, to show you how we can achieve similar results for you.

Beware of any unsolicited email about SEO services. If you do follow up with them, you may get an account manager for a US-based SEO company with a different name emailing you. A US company apparently outsources their email spamming to other countries, and once the US-based account managers hook you into buying services, the actual work is again quietly outsourced to offshore companies.

Many shady SEO companies offer link-building services like:

blog links
forum links
wiki links
etc.

Basically that means they are going to vandalize other websites with spammy links to your site.

Also beware of any SEO company that outsources their work to SEO companies in other countries. The quality of work is typically embarrassingly bad.

I've seen a couple of hostel companies falling victim to this, which is why I mention it. :)

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Josh Hostels

13 years

Here is another example of spammy SEO services. Notice how there is no company name--just a generic title

Hi,

I am Molly, Business Development Manager

I was surfing through your website and realized that despite having a good design; it was not ranking well on the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain.

I was wondering if you would be interested in getting the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) done for your website.

There is a simple equation that is applicable to the online world.

Ethical SEO -> Better Traffic -> Higher Sales.

We are a certified partner firm with over many years of working experience on online marketing projects, with a large and satisfied customer base . All the techniques used are ethical, latest and proprietary.

In case you require any additional information, it shall be our pleasure to furnish the same.

I look forward to your mail. We will send you our company details if you find this information interesting to your business.

Yours sincerely,
Molly
Business Development Manager

Also beware of spammers offering to fix your bad reviews. Here is an example spam e-mail about it:

Effective Online Reputation Services

When you input your name or the name of your company into a search engine, do you see one or more web sites that speak negatively about you?

Is Your Company Website:

Being attacked or smeared online
Been wrongly accused online
Have negative reviews online
Haunted by outdated info online

The Web is full of negative content from innocent factual errors to malicious personal attacks all potential threats to your reputation and livelihood.
Worse, there’s little recourse, since responding to attacks just attracts attention to them.

Our Service:

Removes negative content into obscurity
Boosts ranking of 'positive' content
Posting positive content
Post hundreds of positive articles, blogs, journals and forum entries, news items, press releases and other pages, taking the top positions on the sites in which they appear.
Create new, positive content
Creating new, positive content on sites that we control, and then optimizing this content so that it rises quickly to the top search engine rankings. We own and manages hundreds of sites used for this purpose.

For more info on our online reputation service to remove negative content and bury bad publicity Please Click Here

Effective Online Reputation Services

If you no longer wish to receive correspondence, please click here

Just mark them as spam and delete them.

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Josh Hostels

13 years

Here is another example:

Darian Lewis sent a message using the contact form at
http://www.hostelmanagement.com/contact.

We can increase rankings of your website in search engines. Please reply back
for more details.

Don't fall for it... this is one of the most common scams online. I probably get 10 emails like that per day. I know the spammers by their [fake] names already: Derek Johnson, Cecilia Maloney, etc.

Several clues to look out for:

unsolicited business offer
no clear identification of a company name
no company website
no street address
ambiguous message: "Please reply back for more details."
they often use the words "ethical SEO" (only a few legitimate companies do that)

Just a reminder not to fall for it... :)

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Josh Hostels

12 years

Another "SEO services" email I frequently get spammed with is from a "Martin Vermont" at 1250 Connecticut Ave N.W. Suite 200, which is a virtual office in Washington DC. The domain is registered and hosted in Lebanon though.

The domain name of the business keeps changing.

More info here:

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jobsathostels

12 years

Yeah I work for an SEO company and the people that are e-mailing you are terrible. They basically promise you high rankings and go to websites (including porn websites) and post your link in the comments and other parts of the website. That way you have backlinks and it drives up your SEO ranking.

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BenjaminYap

12 years

Have received many of those kind of emails and after being used to receiving them, just one look at the subject title, sender and message content, they are then thrown to the Trash folder.

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Josh Hostels

12 years

In today’s Internet business world, any successful online or offline business requires effective as well as cost-effective Internet marketing and web promotions. Our SEO services are structured to offer top high search engine ranking along with low to moderate viable keywords with very high competitive keywords where we use a theatrical approach.
If you want to know much more information about top SEO companies, please visit our website [ http://www. bestseoservice. co.uk/ ]Best Seo Service Company[ /url] [link deleted]

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Josh Hostels

12 years

Nice... an SEO spammer--exactly the kind that I warned about--just showed up and posted link spam in this thread. I removed the link above, but left the post so you can see what I mean. If you hire these spammy "SEO companies", they are going to vandalize other websites with links to your site.

EDIT: A quick look at their website shows exactly what I was talking about. See the screenshot below. "Forum links", "blog comments", etc., all mean link spam vandalism.

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Josh Hostels

12 years

Great to know sounds about SEO service [link deleted] email spam. I was totally surprised because it's very admirable to avoid spam. I kinda appreciate it for my business online marketing issue. Thanks for the heads-up on crucial example. Keep it up!

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Josh Hostels

12 years

"pettersonjulie" is another example of a link spammer. Banned.

Just another warning to be careful of who you hire for SEO. :)

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John Moriarty

9 years

This topic is like a honey trap for spammers. :party:

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