SEO spam, and the dark side of Online Marketing

December 11th, 2006

If there’s one thing I hate about my industry, it’s the amount of cowboy operations out there who are more than willing to take your money on false promises, and do nothing for your business. Every time we pitch to a prospective client, we need to dispel these notions that SEO and online marketing is a black art that costs loads of money with no perceivable results. Check out this email I received this morning (I’m not surprised that the sending ‘company’ don’t even take a cursory glance at the websites they’re sending their spam to)

Subject: Your Complimentary Link Check and Rankings Recommendation
Hello, my name is Rita. Apologies for contacting you unannounced but I have just visited your website at www.zzmarketing.co.uk and have provided you with a complimentary service related to this website (see below).

Just so you know, you are not on any list so this is the only email you will receive from me.

For your complimentary service I conducted a link check for your website. I searched on Google for link:http://www.zzmarketing.co.uk and found that you have 0 websites linking to you that are in Google’s database (try it, this way you can see lists of websites that link to any other website).

As you are probably aware, by getting more links pointing at your website you can achieve much higher rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN (because most search engines consider each link as a “vote” for your website) and thereby increase your profits by attracting many more customers.

Although essential to achieve top rankings, getting large numbers of websites linking to you is extremely time consuming.

This is where you will really benefit from my company’s services. Using your chosen search terms (we can help you select these if you wish) we can achieve your top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN. We do this by using a combination of tried and tested “off-site” (getting websites linking to you) and “on-site” techniques.

So confident are we, that once your account is opened, we provide you with a “money back plus” guarantee should we not obtain the top 10 rankings you require.

We have already been extremely successful in obtaining top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN for our many clients and would be pleased to show you examples. We are highly confident we can achieve the same success for you.

You will also be provided with regular rankings reports to keep you fully informed. These reports not only detail your own rankings but also the rankings for your 3 major competitors. After all, if one of your competitors has great rankings for a product or service you provide they are taking business away from you. This is a familiar situation that we have reversed many times.

For further details either phone us 24/7 on [removed] or send an email directly to my manager at [removed] who will be happy to provide you with all the necessary details for you to make an informed decision.

Best Regards
Rita Wang
Assistant Promotions Manager

SearchedMedia.com
61 Praed Street
Paddington
London
W2 1NS
Tel: [removed]
My Email: [removed]
Email For This Promotion: [removed]
Website For This Promotion: www.searchedmedia.com
UK Government Approved Supplier of Interactive Websites

Ok, firstly - “UK Government Approved Supplier of Interactive Websites”? What?

Our main service is SEO and Pay per click management - arguably some of the most competitive terms to rank for on the internet. And yet this company ‘guarantee’ top 10 rankings, or my money back, over companies that spend huge amounts (of their customer’s money, no less - in increased costs to cover this self promotion) on ranking for these terms?

zoomzoom don’t need to rank well for these terms - we grow our business through personal recommendation and word of mouth - plus this blog exists as a way of us communicating our research to our contemporaries and clients, and presenting a professional and ethical face to our team.

What made me laugh is the disclaimer at the bottom of the Searchedmedia site - check it out! “You have every reason to wonder why this site has no page rank! Find out more”.
This link states that the site is merely a ‘business card’, and that “[it is] designed so you can quickly find the SEO information you are looking for rather than being an optimized site itself”.

Really. So, it wouldn’t have anything to do with that fact that you yourselves have ‘0 links in Google’? If your whole sales pitch is based around building incoming links, shouldn’t you have a few yourselves? If your service is so great, where is the buzz about your product? The people talking about it.. the incoming links?

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Which reminds me, since the recent move of our blog, I should really start spreading the word again and generating a bit of buzz for ourselves. As is always the case in a successful web agency, we always put our clients first so never seem to get around to optimising our own site, or launching the forever ‘almost done’ redesign of our main Web development agency site! Maybe that’s the case for Searched Media.. but if so, wait until you’ve got time to make yourselves look genuine before you tout for business - and don’t do it via a unsolicited, untargeted bulk mail shot - whether I’m on any ‘list’ or not.