Those little tidbits of SEO spam in our last blog post weren’t enough, were they? If those whet your appetite, here’s a virtual spam buffet — all of the examples in our last blog post were from emails we (or our clients) have received. Have an especially egregious example we should add? Email it to us at [email protected], and we’ll post it below!
(Just a quick note — we’ve taken out the spammers’ exact contact info, since you wouldn’t want to contact them anyway.)
1. This email makes big promises. Big, empty promises.
To: Brady Chatfield
Subject: Re: A question about your website
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Rachel Jensen wrote:
Hi Chatfield,Your company has done a terrific job on your Adwords and I keep coming across your ads on Google, which is why I’m contacting you.
I’ve reviewed your website and discovered what your business would look like if you ranked No. 1 on Google organic search for your best keywords – the results are pretty amazing.
My company works with 1,500+ businesses and I know we can make a big difference for you.
I’d like to follow up about this with a quick phone call. We can cover the important issues in 15 minutes.
Is there a time this week that works for you?
Best,
Rachel
Online Marketing Consultant
(818) 746-XXXX
2. This email just gets spammier and spammier, culminating in the second “note” at the bottom. That said, it’s pretty hard to pinpoint the worst offense here — all signs point to spam. How would emailing from a Gmail account then switching to a corporate one possibly be part of a sound marketing strategy?
From: Leo clay <———[email protected]>
To: contact <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, Jul 8, 2014 4:04 pm
Subject: Gain Organic Traffic: Higherpowerseo.com
Hi Higherpowerseo.com TeamI thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough organic & social media traffic on your website.
Let me tell you that your website is still not ranked on Google’s first page organically, for most of your competitive keywords, which means people searching for your products are not able to find you and you are losing traffic. Your loss is your competitors’ gain i.e. the traffic which could have generated quality sales, goes to your competitors as they rank well in the Search Engine Pages (SERPs) organically.
Some of the major steps you can adopt to rank well in SERPs organically and increase your social media presence is:
1.Your website may not be technically sound to be search engine friendly.
2.Your website profile needs to be regularly updated in social media sites.
3.Your site has very less number of genuine Google back links and this can be improved a lot further.
4.You need to update fresh and quality contents on your website and blogs as per the latest Google guideline.In the present day scenario it’s very essential to take a proper care of your website and keep it updated with fresh and original contents. One single unwanted link might put your website in disaster situation. There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you are interested to learn about them and curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you a detailed proposal for your website.
We do website optimization, Reputation management, SMO for websites to make them listed on the top of the search engine as well as promote them over the Internet. We have a bunch of 220+ SEO professional working 24*7. Unlike other SEO companies we do not believe in talking rather we believe in delivering what we promise to our clients. And our advanced SEO process has every solution to combat recent Penguin update.
Our clients’ consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are on the top of Google. Being on the top of Google is the best thing you can do for your sales and online reputation.
This email just tells you the fraction of things we do, our optimization process involves many other technical factors which can be sent to you on your request. If you would like to know more about our services then please write us back else you can give us a call us in our number below.
Let me know your thoughts and looking forward to work together.
Best Regards,
Leo clay |DM Consultant
PH. No: +1 845 521 xxxx
—————————— —————————— ——————————
1: This is a onetime email and you may ask us to “REMOVE”.
2: If you are interested I will send more details on our “corporate identity”, “company profile”, “why you should choose us?”, “Price list”, “money back” etc. in my next mail.P.S: – This is our marketing strategy that we use the Gmail account. Once you reply us back, the next communication I will do is from my corporate email ID.
3. When it comes to SEO, there’s definitely no such thing as a free lunch (or in this case, a free 30 days of work). If the punctuation doesn’t make you suspicious, the grammar definitely should.
——– Original message ——–
From: Ashwini Kumar Padhi
Date:04/04/2014 11:14 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: [email protected]
Subject: www.higherpowerseo.comHello Team,
We are from SEO Fied Team would like to let you know about our company Offer for Re-branding your business website by optimizing it over search engines like Google which will ensure better visibility , traffic and sales .
As per our company Policy we will work for your website one month ( 30 days ) as free without any cost and make your website fine tune during that time period whatever possible on our part.
During the free trial we will only work for your website with 5 keywords just to let you know more about our services, to see what kind of reports we are producing, our Process of work and communication and to realize that we are normal people doing normal business, not someone who tries to get our money and run away.
We are giving our clients complete freedom to know more about us, to test and verify the work before we get paid for our efforts. As we believe in Trust on business and Long term relationship.
Looking to your positive Response to take this process and discussion to the next level which is nearer to free trial with my company..
Thanks & Regards
AK Padhi
Business Development Manager
SEO FIED TEAM
Email: ashwini————@gmail.com
Ph: +1310626xxxxPS I: I am not spamming. I have studied your website and believe I can help with your Business promotion. If you still want us to not contact you, you can ignore this email or ask to remove and I will not contact again.
PS II: I found your site using Google search and after having a look over your website I recommend you to implement future technologies such as HTML5 and Responsive Design to make your site more accessible in mobile phone, tablets, desktop etc.
4. No direct salutation, no specifics, not even a cursory mention of what site or domain “she” is talking about — whatever you do, don’t take the bait!
Subject: Direct/Honest Feedback on Your Site
On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Leighton Hayley <leighton.hayley—–@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,I wanted to point out some specific observations I see on your website. To sum it up shortly, I see two clear-cut areas holding your site back in search engines.
The fortunate thing is that your issues aren’t terribly complicated. They will, however, require attention as well as solid execution.Would you be open to giving my consultants a few minutes of your time to discuss these two areas briefly? At the very least, you’ll have some more refined opinions on where your website could be more profitable.
All the best,
Leighton Hayley
5. Hmm, does “Peter Krebs” work with “Leo Clay” (email #2, above)? Because they’ve got some of the same text, verbatim, in their emails.
From: Peter Krebs [mailto:yourmarketingguide—[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2013 3:49 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Increase your Website traffic and sales.Higherpowerseo Team
I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough organic & social media traffic on your website.
I would like to update you that your website is still not ranked on the top pages of Google SERPs for your popular keywords (Products). Your loss is your competitor’s gain i.e. the traffic which could have generated quality sales for you goes to your competitors as they rank well in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) organically.
Reasons:
1. HTML and other on-page errors are present on your website.
2. Low number of internal and external quality links present on your website.
3. Duplicate or low quality contents present in your website without any regular update.
4. Need to update fresh contents on your website and blogs as per the latest Google guideline.
5. Broken Links and Poison words might be present in your website.
6. Social media profile needs to be updated regularly.Long gone are the days when Google used to give priority to websites of keyword based domains or websites with huge number of links. Now Google counts each and every detail to verify if your website is relevant to the keywords you are promoting for. A single un-wanted link or a duplicate content can lead your website to be penalized by Google.
This email just tells you the fraction of things we do, our optimization process involves many other technical factors which can be sent to you on your request. If you would like to know more about our services then please write us back else you can give us your best contact number and time so that one of our senior technical manager call you for further discussion.
There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.
Let me know your thoughts and looking forward to work together.
Best Regards,
Peter Krebs
Business Development manager
6. From nonstandard English to vague claims to an amazingly garbled disclaimer, this email really has it all.
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 8:37 AM, Richard Smith <danielpalmer——@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear higherpowerseo.com,
Hope you are doing well.
I thought you might like to know some reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for higherpowerseo.com.
My name is Richard Smith and I am the SEO expert of a leading SEO service provider company. As per my analysis, your website is not performing well in the Google organic search. Also your traffic is poor from last couple of months due to some of the reasons.
Some of the aspects given below:
1. Due to poor Back links
2. Keywords are not in the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing
3. Due to errors and issues present in website
4. Errors in the coding part of your website
5. Website content quality is not high standard.
Area of Improvement:
1. We will give you 1st page ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
2. Improve your sales and brand value.
3. 100% satisfaction guarantee or your full money back.
4. Hummingbird recovers and secures your website from next Google updates.
5. Increase your traffic flow.
6. Target your local market to increase business.
Note: We give guarantee on the improvement in your keyword ranking from the first month itself, if we fail to achieve then money back.
We will be optimizing your website in the major search engines like: Google, Yahoo & Bing which results in improvements in keyword ranking, traffic, link popularity, goal conversion, and ROI in the first month of our work.
For more details please reply. We have 24×7 supports, so you can contact any point of time with your website issues.
———————————-
Thanks & Regards,
Richard Smith | (SEO Specialist)
(We have Google Certified Experts)
——————————————
Disclaimer: “Note: – We are not spammer. We found your email through manually efforts. We are sorry if you get email 2 or 3 times. You can simply reply with “remove” so we will delete your email from our list. Thanks again.”The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
7. In case the low price in the subject line wasn’t enough of a red flag… by the end of the email, the price has jumped by $51!
Subject: SEO Services $99 Per Month
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014
From: Aaushi shukla <johnseoservices@——-mail.com>Hi,
My name is Aaushi shukla and working with a reputed leading S.E.O. Company in INDIA having the experience of getting our customer’s websites top in Google, Yahoo, and Msn and other search engine rankings producing high revenue with top page rank.
We provide a S.E.O. Special Offer going for the following package.
Monthly task and Responsibilities:-
1. 150 Directory submissions
2. 10 Social Bookmarking Submissions
3. 10 Article Submissions (1 article x 10 article directories)
4. 10 Press Release Submissions (1 press release x 10 press release websites)
5. 10 Blog Submissions
6. 1 unique, 400 word article written
7. 1 unique, 400 word press releases
8. 15 One Way back links with mix PR
9. Meta tags changes suggestions
10. Keyword research
11. Competitor Analysis
12. Heading tag changes
13. Alt tag changes
14. Interlinking wherever required.
15. Keyword Density in site content.
16. HTML Site Map
17. XML site map and Submission in webmaster toolBest rates for this package are: USD150 per month per project.
Let me know if you are interested and I would happy to send you more details on this.
Kind Regards
Aaushi shukla
Online Marketing Executive
8. Nothing makes you feel more assured than the “company” failing to spell marketing correctly in their email address.
From: Ena James [mailto:lenovomarkiting@——.com] Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014
Subject: SEO NO .1 PROPOSAL !!Hi.
Want to get your website on Google’s First Page search?
If yes, please let us know your website which you want to optimize.
We will provide full SEO proposal with plan and activity which will help your website to rank on the first page of Google with many competitive keywords.Our Highlights:
1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
2. Pay per click (PPC)
3. Website Designing
4. Conversion Services
5. Digital Marketing
6. SEO, PPC, Banner Marketing
7. Video Marketing, Affiliate Marketing
8. Video Creations and Marketing
9. Social Media Optimization.
10. Mobile Apps DevelopmentWe always adopt the ETHICAL SEO process/White hat techniques; we also follow the guidelines of Google and major search engine for Organic SEO results which stay there.
ADVANTAGES FOR YOUR BUSINESS
100% Transparency: Detailed tracking & reporting
03 Years Experience
100% Success RateGET STARTED TODAY!
Let us know if you are interested in any of our services. Please send your URL which you want to optimize, so that we can do website analysis and quotes accordingly.
Reply back with your Skype ID for quick communicationThanks & Regards
Ena James,
Online Marketing Consultant
9. Even though the CAN-SPAM ACT disclaimer is pretty legitimate, we still aren’t about to risk emailing them back even to opt out.
From: John [mailto:john.marketingpower@—–.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Subject: ProposalHi,
We came across your website “www.higherpowerseo.com” a week ago and after our thorough SEO audit we have come to a conclusion that the site could potentially be generating $5000 to $10,000 more in new revenue.
We are digital marketing consultants and solutions provider.
We have a comprehensive SEO audit report which we would like to share with you for your perusal.
If you are interested in knowing more about online marketing methodologies and how we can help you realise the true potential of your site, just reply to this email with a best number to reach you at and one of our consultants will get in touch with you.
I would be very happy to share a free of cost analysis report for your website.
Best,
John*****************************
Disclaimer: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask mailers to stop spamming them. The above mail is in accordance to the Can Spam act of 2003: There are no deceptive subject lines and is a manual process through our efforts on World Wide Web. You can opt out by sending an email to ana.seoexpert@—–.com to ensure you will not receive any such mails.
Want to share your own experience with SEO spam? Send us your (least) favorite SEO spam emails at [email protected], and we’ll add them to our list.