If you’re copied on your website’s contact forms, I’m sure you’ve seen some spammers. One of the most common forms of spam submissions are those that claim to be from SEO companies promising increased traffic and conversions on your website.
So how can you tell when an email is spam? What does a spam SEO email look like?
Here’s an example that came in on one of our client’s sites recently:
Hi,
We are a leading Digital marketing company/SEO Company.
I was analyzing your site and it seems that some of your website rankings have dropped. It is due to non-optimized techniques/errors and Google guidelines not being followed properly. As you know that Google’s crawler is software and work on the coding basis only.
That’s why the site coding portion should be strong for better results.
I would like to present a detailed analysis of your website along with errors that your website and ways to improve your Google rankings.
It would be a detailed report and would be explained as well on Skype once we send this over to you.
Note: Kindly let me know your phone number and best timing along with time zone to give you a call to discuss more.
Thanks,
(Spam name)
(name)seo@gmail.com
There are several “tells” in this email that let us know it’s spam:
- They never mention the name of their company. Nowhere in their email do they provide a URL to view their company website and their email address is from Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail rather than a company domain. Why would I trust an SEO company who doesn’t disclose who they are? How do I know they’re from a reputable company?
- The “issues” they’ve outlined on your site are very vague. This leads me to believe the email was copied and pasted from a template that’s duplicated on every site they encounter. No real analysis has been completed.
- The email is completely unsolicited. If you’re a digital marketing agency, you most likely work on contract-based projects with your clients. Why would you be doing spec work to analyze a site that’s not under your contract?
- Their grammar is questionable. Everyone mistypes now and again, but there are several grammatical errors on this email that signal to me that the email was generated by a bot and not a human.
So, what does this mean for you? Should you respond?
Our opinion is “No.” Don’t engage. If you respond, they’re likely to continue pestering you and spamming your inbox. Leave it alone and focus on contact form submissions that are actually valid.
Additionally, beware of SEO spammers who claim they can get you to rank #1 on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). They’re usually not transparent about the specifics of how they’ll get there – just that they’ll do it. This prompts the following questions:
I’ll be #1 on Google:
- … when?
- … for what search term(s)?
- … for how long?
- … at what cost?
Most tactics employed by SEO-fakers to get a site in the 1st organic position are rash and eventually backfire. SEO rankings are built up over time, so when a spammer promises immediate results or quick turnarounds, beware of the red flags. If Google spots spammy efforts on your site, they may end up flagging you and you’ll be in a worse position than where you started.
So remember, when you’re looking to improve SEO, be patient. There’s no silver bullet. No quick fix. No easy solution. It’s a mixture of both on- and off-site elements, working together over time, that prove the most effective.