Over the years I have received a vast number of guest post, or article exchange request, emails from people. The vast majority of these I just delete but, given the emphasis Google is now placing on identifying poor quality links, I felt I should share one I received today in the hope it stops at least one person from taking up one of these ‘offers’.

The below email comes in two parts, as many of these spam requests do, appearing to be an original email I have received and a follow up email. This is a clever trick to make the recipient think they’ve entered into conversation with the sender already. I haven’t, it’s just spam.

You will notice the name of the sender is Indian, and the email address used is a free one at Gmail. The better educated among you will also notice the grammar in the email is poor. This always surprises me actually. If you’re going to the trouble of sending out thousands of spam emails looking for links on websites, you could at least ensure your own email is written properly. A little effort up from would save a lot of wasted effort in sending the emails. But anyway, I’m glad they don’t as it makes it even more obvious to spot.

You can also see the sender has requested a link on CSAhell.com, but the email didn’t come through the contact form. No, it came through the info@ email address. This again is a red flag because it shows someone has sent that email on spec to info@, hoping it exists and someone will receive it. They haven’t ‘gone through the site’ at all, and I’m sure they don’t ‘appreciate your hard work’.

Please, I implore you, if you receive emails such as this don’t reply and don’t take them up on it; just delete them. It won’t help your website’s rankings, it’ll have the opposite effect.

Hello,

I hope you are doing well. I believe you receive my previous mail. For the time being am sending few sites of mine.

Sites are:
“http://bestfinancetips.org/ ”
“http://www.learnshorttermloans.com

Please send me your feedback as soon as possible so that I can start writing article which will  be suitable for your site ” www.csahell.com “.

Waiting for your kind response.

Thanks & regards,
Basij Lorena

And the ‘original’ email…

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Basij Lorena <basijlorena@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

I am Lorena member of financial domains on debt, loan, mortgage and other various finance topics. Today, while searching for a suitable blog, I just come across yours. I have gone through it and found it very resourceful. I must appreciate your hard work.

It will be my pleasure if I can contribute some quality content  for your site ” www.csahell.com ” each of my content will be analytical and relevant . If you wish, you can suggest few topics on which you would like me to write. Not only that, I will give you the total right to edit the article and modify it as per your needs.

In return, I would gladly place your articles in my websites. This mutual content exchange will help our websites to get more targeted visitors.

Let me know your thoughts.
Waiting for your positive reply.

Thanks & regards,
Basij Lorena

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I received an email last week, through one of my other websites, from a company that specialises in e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes are electronic cigarettes that are used to help quit smoking, as they’re better for you than smoking real cigarettes and you can even smoke them in pubs and bars as they don’t actually produce real smoke (many produce a vapour). Anyhow, I digress; a firm that sells these e-cigarettes contacted me because of the recent Google updates that crack down on dodgy links, spam links and irrelevant links. It seems one of my websites has been linking to their website in an act of SEO spam… me? Surely not!

Indeed not, as SEO spam isn’t something I engage in. However, many other people who claim to offer SEO services aren’t so ethical, and a Transformers forum I run had been used by this firm’s SEO company to build dodgy links. A profile had been created on the forum, linking to the e-cigarette website in the home page field of the profile.

This is a common spam practice and one that many dodgy link builders and spammers have used for many years. Spam link builders will create profiles on forums, adding links to the target of their SEO, and often never intended to even post a single thread. It’s one of the easiest ways to build worthless links, and one of the lowest pieces of link building spam.

Anyhow, the e-cigarette firm (ecigarettedirect.co.uk by the way) asked me to remove the link as they were aware of Google cracking down on this kind of spam. Their request stated:

Google has recently made some major changes to their algorithm and we are taking action to remove certain links in order to keep within their Webmaster Guidelines moving forwards. As a result of this action please can you remove the link from your page and let me know when it’s been removed.

This all seemed fair enough. They had probably received a notification from Google about unnatural links and, as Google requested, were trying to get them removed. In our mutual interests I have removed the link by deleting the profile, but I did ask them which SEO company they used and who was responsible for this spam. They stated it was webpromotionuk.co.uk – an SEO company based in Birmingham, run by a chap named Steve Hill.

Steve – this spam link to ecigarettedirect.co.uk was only added in March, so whether you’re building these links yourself or (as is more likely) outsourcing to someone offshore to do them, you really need to change your link building tactics. Things have moved on quite a bit in the field of SEO, and spamming the crap out of one of my forums isn’t going to get you anywhere.

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