What is SEO Spam?
Whether you are a small business owner with a basic online presence or a substantial website, you probably had to deal with the annoyance of getting unsolicited email from companies promoting their SEO or search engine optimization services. Simply put, you are getting spammed or to be more specific, SEO spammed. While up to a certain level, this may not be much different from regular business spam or personal spam would otherwise get – porn sites, dating sites, male enhancement websites, breast enhancement creams, online diplomas, replica watches and all sorts of garbage. What makes SEO spam different is, of course, the type of services they offer. It does not look like spam at first because, on its face, it is offering services that many online businesses or offline businesses with online presence need. Regardless of what type of online business you have, you need traffic and search engine optimization is one of the most targeted sources of traffic. There is a lot of demand for this kind of services and that is what makes it deadly.
The Dangers of SEO Spam
If SEO spam actually delivered the services that it promised, it would not be a problem. It would be an annoyance but it would be a bearable annoyance because it is using a rather pushy means to make known a service that your business actually needs. However, the vast majority of SEO firms that spam their businesses run scams.
Over promise but Under deliver
Many of these over promise and vastly under deliver. The most common way these service providers scam you is when they do not deliver on time. They would give a deadline and they would grossly overshoot the deadline. This might seem to be a small issue to some people; however, depending on the size of your order, this could mean a difference between success and failure. Also, this reflects a lot about the professionalism of the outfit you are dealing with.
Fraudulent work: Unaccountable work
Another problem to look out for is just straight out fraud which can be avoided. Many SEO activities cannot be detected immediately. For example, when doing submissions you can submit to a website, but they will not automatically build the link back to your website so it is easy to track. Most of the time, if you comment on a blog it takes quite a while for you to get a back link to your website. These are the services that many of these SEO spam companies offer. They are hard to trace and hard to account for. When you have these two elements of lack of transparency and lack of accounting, fraud is very possible. They will just send you a report of the sites that they supposedly submitted you to or supposedly commented on a blog and you are on your own. There are ways to avoid being scammed and we will discuss this later. However, it bears keeping in mind that since you are not dealing with a longstanding company with solid reputation regardless of what they say or what they claim, there is an opportunity to be ripped off.
Common Victims of SEO Spam
SEO spammers use a shotgun approach in victimizing people. They would compile a massive list and hit all sorts of businesses. They try to exploit newbies to SEO. SEO or search engine optimization is a rather arcane term that scares many small business owners. Many business owners think it is completely mysterious, really technical, or would take too much time for them to learn. This is a perfect opportunity for scammers to gain the confidence of small business owners that are intimidated by SEO to get into contracts and then exploit them. SEO spammers also exploit the ignorance of the general public regarding online marketing. Following resource is an article with SEO basics for beginners with free tips and guidance, much can actually be done by yourself.
Fake Guarantees
Many spammed SEO messages hype results or offer guarantees and make all sorts of outlandish claims. Getting ranked number 1 is a very common claim or get your site found immediately is another. The truth of the matter is nobody can guarantee SEO success. Even the biggest companies in the industry will not guarantee you a certain ranking. That is irrational. If all factors in SEO were controlled by one party, then guarantees would be possible. However, the control of your ranking is largely in the hands of the search engine and also the sites being used to build up your ranking. Very little of this equation is under your direct control except for your website content and how your website is optimized. But that is just one fraction of the overall equation. Avoid guarantees. If you see an online marketing firm or SEO firm guaranteeing certain results, run the other way. More likely than not, it is a scam.
Even if you accept the risks that there are no guarantees, there is still a chance of disappointment and that is one of the ways SEO spammers harms small business people. Instead of devoting their time to finding a reputable online marketing company, they have wasted time and money on people that cannot deliver. In addition to the disappointment and emotional let down, there is also the opportunity cost. You could have been doing something else. You could have been adding value to your site or you could have been pursuing companies that will help you get to where you need to go. That is the tragedy of opportunity cost due to SEO spam.
Typical SEO Spam composition and form
SEO spam is written in a form that is similar to standard business communication. There is an introduction where they are known to use American names or a lot of these companies are based in Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia. They also refer to several years’ worth of experience and some even go so far as to say that they have Fortune 500 or large American client companies.
We are not sure if any of these claims are legitimate or accurate. Remember that these companies are using surreptitious means to get your attention. They are using spam. If they are using an illegitimate way to get your attention, how can you really trust the claims that they make? If you cannot trust them with reaching you in an ethical and straightforward manner, how can you trust the content of their claims? Be very careful when looking at SEO spam messages in trying to judge the content of such messages. Another common part of this type of spam is the list of services. A list of services is fairly standard such as social bookmarking, directory submissions, social network services, blog comments, back links, forum-based back links and web 2.0 profiles. They all fall within the same general description – link building. The spammers/scammers offer to build links to your website from a large collection of other sites.
Variations to this standard copy and paste spam message include the addition of other services like copy writing, press release writing and on-page optimization. Again, anybody can claim that they can do a wide range of services. However, given that they are using this method to reach you gives you a massive red flag about 1) believing if they are who they claim to be, 2) the accuracy of their experience claims and, 3) their competence in delivering the services that they purport to know. Be very careful because many of these services are offered at very, very low rates aimed at appealing to your greed. There is no such thing as a free lunch and if something is too good to be true, it usually is.
How to Avoid Becoming an SEO Spam Victim
Follow this quick list of practical steps to avoid getting your email harvested or getting contacted by these shady operations.
Domain Identity Protection
Always install privacy guard for your domain name. Most website owners leave their website’s contact and admin information available for general viewing. This is a very big mistake as many spammers use automated software to look for website names that contain certain words. They then assume that these words refer to a particular industry that would need SEO services and they then proceed to look up the public admin billing and contact information for these website names and load those to a mass mailer and spam them. Alternatively, they would use robots to go through lists of websites and then try to pick from the actual content of the website or certain keywords that would indicate that that website needs SEO services. Regardless of whatever creative or sneaky way they are using to harvest and process website names, you do not want your name or website to be on that list. Take yourself out of the pool and privacy protect your contact information.
Do not disclose your email in public
Never use your email address on your website and use a contact form instead. In the code of the contact form, however, make sure to hide the email address that the form is going to. This way the spammer would just have to enter this information in the contact form and then they would hope that you would get it. We have other tips lower on this list that will help you sort through the email sent through the contact forms to avoid dealing with annoying spam.
Anti Spam Software or an Anti Spam Service
Use spam arrest or similar types of services or even install an anti spam software. Spam arrest or Boxbe and other services operate like this: when somebody sends you an email, spam arrest will send them a confirmation email. The sender will have to click the confirmation email by entering a Captcha code to confirm it is a human being actually consenting to send the email. Their email would then be sent directly to you. This prevents spam because most spammers will not go through a Captcha system. They are giving themselves away and they could get into all sorts of trouble depending on which country they are operating from. It is a very effective way of blocking spam. Most importantly, most spammers who use automated tools would not go through the hassle of manually confirming their emails so that their emails will go through. It prevents spam on that front as well.
If you have to use email, use Gmail
Gmail can be configured so that it works with your website’s email system. It acts as a filtration system for your email. Gmail has a really good reputation for blocking 90% to 99% of spam. If you use this system, more likely than not SEO spam will not get to you.
Do not use your URL in your forum signature
Many online businesses go to online forums to network, exchange information, and check up on trends. These are all well and fine; however, make sure you do not set yourself up as a victim by doing so. People who put their URL on their signatures and then going to an industry-specific forum is basically signaling to a spam harvester to look at their signature. You are marking yoursel as someone who is interested in a particular topic or in a particular type of service. Don’t do it. Make sure you use either a re-direction URL or you use some sort of scheme to deflect harvesters.
Do not use your email on forums
This is self-explanatory and related with our previous tips. Do not advertise your email and do not invite the attention of email harvesters.
Use code breakers if you have to absolutely use email in a forum. Sometimes you cannot use private messaging system in a forum. Sometimes it is not turned on or it is not supported by the forum regardless if you needed to contact somebody or you needed people to contact you. Instead of putting your email address in its regular form on a post, use contact forum breakers like two asterisks before and after @ sign, or change the @ sign to parenthesis and put a letter A in the middle. Do whatever you need to do to throw off spam email harvesters.
How to evaluate an SEO company
If you are hardheaded and you are bent on not following our advice and are wowed by the outlandish claims and cheap prices offered, at least protect yourself by reading through the following advice. It may mean the difference between losing a lot of money and getting your money’s worth.
Ask for results
When you are dealing with an SEO firm that “guarantees” its work, ask for concrete results. Tell them to give you a list of websites that they have actually worked on that ranked well and the key words they use for these campaigns. Randomly go through them and search them in Google and see if they actually rank high. If they do, contact the website owner and inquire if they did use the SEO company. You can say that you have this type of website and point out that you are not a competitor, which is very important, because if you are contacting a competitor and ask them if they are using this website, of course they will say yes to throw you off when they did not. You get scammed and they maintain their high ranking and see how that works out. Be very careful and double check the results.
Look at case studies
When you go to the website of the SEO spam company, dispose them immediately if they do not have a case study. Companies that take the time and effort to put up a case study has a higher likelihood of being a legitimate company than just a company just puts up a standard list of services and hoping to hook and scam somebody. If they put themselves out there with a case study and you could verify the results, then there is a higher chance that they might be legitimate.
Get real references and follow up
Get a list of five references and contact these people. Make sure that these are real websites and that these websites are substantive. Go to alexa.com to see if they are getting a decent traffic or look at their industry to see if they are high up in their industry. Make sure that you are dealing with real websites. Many scam SEO companies would put up fake companies that they would then rank high and then use though as reference forms. Be on the look out for that misleading scam. There are a lot of ways that they can trick you, so be very careful.
Who are they in the SEO industry? Are they accredited?
There are accreditation bodies for search engine marketing like Google has an accreditation system. There are other bodies out there. While it is not a slam dunk that if somebody is accredited that they are legitimate, if they are Google certified then there is a higher chance that they are who they claim to be. Look for some sort of accreditation, but do not hang your hat on this one criterion. Weigh the accreditation body and make sure that it is a legitimate international body.
Look at the company’s own performance on Google
If a company is claiming that they can get you to the top 10 of Google for your search term or if they claim they can deliver results, look at how well their ranking is. If they are not even in the top 10, it is a scam. It is obvious fraud because if it is claiming a service that it would guarantee, but it cannot even perform that service for its own website, then it has no business offering guarantees. If this criterion comes out negative, find somebody else.
The Bottom Line
In this tough economy, many online businesses are getting desperate for traffic. The most obvious source that they turn to is search engine optimization. Many businesses look at free search engine optimized traffic as the magic bullet to profitability. This situation is ripe for fraudsters and scammers. Follow the guide above to prevent becoming a victim. Do not let your greed or desperation lead to your victimization.
