[Hot] SEO Spam Emails: Bad News for You and SEO
According to the most recent "Email Statistics Report" from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, the number of emails sent each day worldwide is 269 billion. Unfortunately, according to other reports, nearly half of these daily emails are spam.
Spam is often associated with crazy requests for bank transfers from Nigeria or China, or nonsense English, but most spam emails are generated in the United States (Belarus leads spammers, per capita).
Too often, too, spam emails arrive from so-called "SEO experts" promising higher rankings and increased online traffic--the same promises you might hear from reputable online experts. These emails may even seem tailored to your site, with warnings of "errors" that harm your site's performance.
Most of these emails can be dismissed, point blank, without a second thought. However, even reputable SEO firms send unsolicited emails, which can be harder to identify as spam and dismiss as nonsense. A local friend, a partner at a law firm, recently received the following email from a digital marketing firm in New York. The friend forwarded the email to me with a simple question: "What do you think?"
***
I do NOT need legal help - I am calling for a different reason.
I work for 130 different attorneys throughout
The United States, and I have a simple proposition
that will benefit your website and ours.
One of my attorney clients would like to
Place a link from his website to your website,
Which will elevate you in Google’s eyes and help
You get higher up in Google results.
In return, we ask for a link from your website to
A different attorney client of ours.
No money exchanges hands, the links are not
Reciprocal, and both parties benefit.
This is NOT a ‘black hat’ technique, or anything
That violates Googles’ terms of service.
100% straight up, legitimate, tit for tat.
Are you open to this simple arrangement?
Please reply regardless...
***
The email is articulate and sensible--and it is clearly written by a well-meaning human being, and not a spam bot. So should it be dismissed like any one of other hundreds of spam emails?
In our estimation, yes. It should be dismissed--point blank. Below we discuss the problems with SEO spam emails--and why this email meets the criteria of spam.
Unsolicited Email = Spam
Not every unsolicited email qualifies as spam, per say, but an unsolicited email from a so-called "SEO firm" (or any other iteration of digital marketing) is usually spam.
Any reputable firm that associates itself with SEO and/or digital marketing should abhor unsolicited marketing emails. It is not precise, as an analytics-driven digital marketing campaign should be, but scattershot.
As we've noted before, spam works not on a premise of quality but quantity:
"Blasting emails to millions, regardless of the recipient's preferences, spammers care little about the quality of their image. Instead, spammers play a numbers game, hoping for bare minimum conversions: 1% or less. Sounds inefficient? Well, it is, in a sense. Yet a 1% conversion for one million emails is still 10,000. Would you like 10,000 customers? Perhaps. But if you're goal is a sustainable business, of course, spam is not the answer."
Read: Quality or Quantity: A Different View of SEO Marketing
Now, the email quoted above, although unsolicited, still seems relevant to my friend's business. The sender even included a legitimate name and website. So should it sill be dismissed out of hand?
Black Hat Practices
What is so egregious about the email above--and most spam emails--is that it presents a questionable act, a link exchange, as "100% straight-up, legitimate."
Strictly speaking, link exchanges do not violate Google's terms of service, yet Google does clearly advise against "excessive link-exchanges ('link to me and I'll link to you') or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking."
Read: Google's Advice on Link Schemes
The problems with the request for a link exchange above is not the excessive nature of the request itself but the fact that the request comes from a total stranger.
Google always preferences a natural, "organic" approach to search engine optimization. Requesting a link exchange from a site that may or may not have anything to do with another site is decidedly not natural.
My friend, an attorney, may or may not have any relation to the "130 different attorneys throughout the United States."
Again, SEO is about precision; the category "lawyers" is not inclusive: lawyers specialize in any number of niche areas. A link between two disparate firms, say an employment and immigration firm, operating in two distinct parts of the United States, does not make sense.
The link's purpose, in fact, is only to boost rankings; it is manipulative, then, a direct violation of Google's guidelines:
Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:
"Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines."
This is a black hat practice.
The Real Problem with SEO Spam Emails
No doubt SEO has a reputation problem, and emails like this only serve to exacerbate the problem. As the web marketing firm VITAL says:
"Not only are such offers not worth investigating, they actually serve to undermine the credibility of legitimate SEO service providers – fueling broader skepticism about search practices in general and sowing confusion about the difference between trustworthy SEO providers and fast-buck scammers."
Honest SEO with Stepman's SEO
It is important to understand the work your SEO firm performs for you. You want to hire a real professional who will not waste your time and money. If you want to speak to a reliable SEO professional, please consider the Organic SEO Blog's sponsor, Stepman's SEO.
Just like this blog, the professional SEO specialists at Stepman's SEO strive to educate you about what we do and how we do it. After all, you should know exactly what to expect from your SEO professional's work.
Spam is often associated with crazy requests for bank transfers from Nigeria or China, or nonsense English, but most spam emails are generated in the United States (Belarus leads spammers, per capita).
Too often, too, spam emails arrive from so-called "SEO experts" promising higher rankings and increased online traffic--the same promises you might hear from reputable online experts. These emails may even seem tailored to your site, with warnings of "errors" that harm your site's performance.
Most of these emails can be dismissed, point blank, without a second thought. However, even reputable SEO firms send unsolicited emails, which can be harder to identify as spam and dismiss as nonsense. A local friend, a partner at a law firm, recently received the following email from a digital marketing firm in New York. The friend forwarded the email to me with a simple question: "What do you think?"
***
I do NOT need legal help - I am calling for a different reason.
I work for 130 different attorneys throughout
The United States, and I have a simple proposition
that will benefit your website and ours.
One of my attorney clients would like to
Place a link from his website to your website,
Which will elevate you in Google’s eyes and help
You get higher up in Google results.
In return, we ask for a link from your website to
A different attorney client of ours.
No money exchanges hands, the links are not
Reciprocal, and both parties benefit.
This is NOT a ‘black hat’ technique, or anything
That violates Googles’ terms of service.
100% straight up, legitimate, tit for tat.
Are you open to this simple arrangement?
Please reply regardless...
***
The email is articulate and sensible--and it is clearly written by a well-meaning human being, and not a spam bot. So should it be dismissed like any one of other hundreds of spam emails?
In our estimation, yes. It should be dismissed--point blank. Below we discuss the problems with SEO spam emails--and why this email meets the criteria of spam.
 |
| Most unsolicited emails can be dismissed as spam--including emails from so-called SEO experts. [Photo source]. |
Unsolicited Email = Spam
Not every unsolicited email qualifies as spam, per say, but an unsolicited email from a so-called "SEO firm" (or any other iteration of digital marketing) is usually spam.
Any reputable firm that associates itself with SEO and/or digital marketing should abhor unsolicited marketing emails. It is not precise, as an analytics-driven digital marketing campaign should be, but scattershot.
As we've noted before, spam works not on a premise of quality but quantity:
"Blasting emails to millions, regardless of the recipient's preferences, spammers care little about the quality of their image. Instead, spammers play a numbers game, hoping for bare minimum conversions: 1% or less. Sounds inefficient? Well, it is, in a sense. Yet a 1% conversion for one million emails is still 10,000. Would you like 10,000 customers? Perhaps. But if you're goal is a sustainable business, of course, spam is not the answer."
Read: Quality or Quantity: A Different View of SEO Marketing
Now, the email quoted above, although unsolicited, still seems relevant to my friend's business. The sender even included a legitimate name and website. So should it sill be dismissed out of hand?
Black Hat Practices
What is so egregious about the email above--and most spam emails--is that it presents a questionable act, a link exchange, as "100% straight-up, legitimate."
Strictly speaking, link exchanges do not violate Google's terms of service, yet Google does clearly advise against "excessive link-exchanges ('link to me and I'll link to you') or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking."
Read: Google's Advice on Link Schemes
The problems with the request for a link exchange above is not the excessive nature of the request itself but the fact that the request comes from a total stranger.
Google always preferences a natural, "organic" approach to search engine optimization. Requesting a link exchange from a site that may or may not have anything to do with another site is decidedly not natural.
My friend, an attorney, may or may not have any relation to the "130 different attorneys throughout the United States."
Again, SEO is about precision; the category "lawyers" is not inclusive: lawyers specialize in any number of niche areas. A link between two disparate firms, say an employment and immigration firm, operating in two distinct parts of the United States, does not make sense.
The link's purpose, in fact, is only to boost rankings; it is manipulative, then, a direct violation of Google's guidelines:
Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:
"Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines."
This is a black hat practice.
The Real Problem with SEO Spam Emails
No doubt SEO has a reputation problem, and emails like this only serve to exacerbate the problem. As the web marketing firm VITAL says:
"Not only are such offers not worth investigating, they actually serve to undermine the credibility of legitimate SEO service providers – fueling broader skepticism about search practices in general and sowing confusion about the difference between trustworthy SEO providers and fast-buck scammers."
Honest SEO with Stepman's SEO
It is important to understand the work your SEO firm performs for you. You want to hire a real professional who will not waste your time and money. If you want to speak to a reliable SEO professional, please consider the Organic SEO Blog's sponsor, Stepman's SEO.
Just like this blog, the professional SEO specialists at Stepman's SEO strive to educate you about what we do and how we do it. After all, you should know exactly what to expect from your SEO professional's work.