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This Is What an SEO Spammer Looks Like

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

This is an actual email that one of my SEO clients received a few days ago:

Hi
I recently visited your website during a routine survey of sites which may be capable of higher search engine performance through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Efficient SEO brings an increase in online sales or leads. I hope this information may be of use to you, if not then I apologies for any inconvenience caused.

So, here’s a summary of my findings on your site:
- Your Google Page rank is 0/10
- You have 0/10 back-links
- Your website has 0/15 pages indexed

I’m going somewhere with all this… I wanted to do my homework and research your website because I want to show you that I have applied some research to your website before contacting you with my proposal. We are in the business of offering 3 benefits for your website:

1) Diagnosing and fixing all issues with your website
2) Ranking your site to the top of the search results
3) Significantly increasing your online revenue levels.

Let me know if you would like to further information by email or we could schedule a call.
I look forward to your feedback

Regards
XXXXXXXXXXXX

This is clearly a spam or fishing email from someone trying to drum up SEO business.

First off, rank position should never be used as a top SEO metric. The search engines are constantly tweaking the algorithm and looking for new ways to better personalize the search results. What you see and what your target audience sees in the SERPs are probably not same thing even if you both searched using the same keywords. In fact, the results you see on your work computer probably aren’t the same as what you would see on your lap top or home computer. The search engines keep track of search behavior to help personalize the search results. If you are logged into your Google account you’ll definitely notice a difference in the SERPs then when you aren’t logged in.

Also, you don’t know what keywords this spammer used to research your site. Of course your brand isn’t going to rank in the top ten spots for an unrelated keyword, but how is this person to know what your top keywords are? They don’t have access to your website’s analytics or SEO campaign so at best they are guessing what keywords you’re targeting with your SEO. I could say your website isn’t ranking well for “tree,” but that doesn’t mean your SEO isn’t working.

Even if you haven’t done any active link building at all, I’m sure your site has back links. At the very least you probably have a one or two social and business profiles that link to your site (like Facebook and Google Places), a few online press releases , a company blog that links back and so forth. If you’ve done any serious link building (blog commenting, video marketing, article marketing, guest blogging, etc) you know you have a strong link portfolio. How does this SEO spammer know how many inbound links your site has? You can view a portion of your site’s inbound links in your Google Webmaster tools account. While it might not show all the inbound links your site has, it will definitely show that you have a lot more than zero.

And your website is also properly indexed. If it wasn’t this SEO spammer wouldn’t have been able to find it anywhere in the search engines in the first place! If your site were de-indexed for some reason your traffic would fall off overnight (easily more than a 50% loss) and (hopefully) you’d notice that right away! Sites that aren’t properly indexed have either suffered a major penalty or their XML sitemap is out of date and new content isn’t being found by the search engines.

This is the kind of email that SEO spammers send out to dozens of website owners hoping to catch one or two unaware. Don’t fall for it!

5 Responses to “This Is What an SEO Spammer Looks Like”

  • Sarah says:
    June 7, 2012 at 9:56 am

    You forgot to mention that the research they say they do is not really done. At all.

  • Emory Rowland says:
    June 7, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    For the professional SEO who really cares about client needs, getting this stuff every day does tend to wear on you.

  • Nick Stamoulis says:
    June 8, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    Hi Emory,

    Thanks for reading and your comment!

    I agree, it wears on you, especially when an SEO client asks you about a spam email like this!

    Take Care,
    Nick

  • John Butler says:
    June 14, 2012 at 11:45 am

    Nick,

    Let me speak for the “dark side” if i might, I agree totally that the worst approach to someone you want a business relationship with is to use dishonesty. I also agree that everyone, including myself are inundated by solicitation and much of that comes from a less than professional approach.

    So how do you get someone who does not know what they do not know to understand, generally it begins with a conversation, but since the signal to the potential prospect is filled with so much noise, getting through is tough. Most of us, offering services are truly capable of providing value to the growth of a clients business and some of us believe doing that at a fair price is the best business model. Amidst all of this is the prospect/person who is never going to be found in any relevant SERPs and needs help and direction which is likely to cost them. If they have a good business model they really do have the chance to compete with the big boys by professional services bringing their message to par.

    So, my humble sales guy view is the idea of the spammer was partially correct, you should do your home work, you should know someone needs specific attention and where if you want to talk to them. The problem is someone could spend all day doing research on a site that desperately needs help and never get the chance to present that. I suspect that the attempt of this email was to gather a subset of prospects that realize they need help and are willing to get it and the conversation begins.

    Being a sales person has never been tougher and the true value we can offer has also never been more profound. So my hats off to all of us who are out there in a consultative selling mode about solutions to help people see a little more of what they don’t know but might think they do.

    Selling does provide a huge service when done correctly.

  • Marc Nashaat says:
    July 12, 2012 at 9:36 am

    Haha that has got to be one of the most terrible proposals I have ever seen.

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