Drowning in SEO spam

If you don't have a website, you are probably lucky enough not to be bombarded with emails promising to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Here's a typical example that I received recently:

I have looked at your website and realize your website is great design but your website ranking not good all search engine Google, AOL, Yahoo, and Bing.
Do you want more targeted visitors on your website?
We can place your website on Google's 1st page. Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest etc.).

We also offer the most competitive rates for this service, May I send you quote?

What is a bit scary (apart from the grammar) is the sheer volume of this stuff I receive. Thankfully, my spam filter is pretty good at clearing them out of my inbox, but one day this week, for example, I received 20 such emails, and rarely get fewer than ten a day.

We can only assume that some companies respond to this bombardment, or why would the spammers bother? And when they do, it can result in potentially respectable companies being hauled into the mire. Because, sadly, some of the less salubrious SEO companies try to get better search engine ranking by... spamming.

Specifically, they attempt to put comments on blog posts like this one with links to their customers' websites, as a result, in theory, pushing the clients' sites a little up the search engine ranking. Traditionally, those spam posts have been for something generic, such as the ones in the image at the top (shown larger below so you can read some of their purple prose (I particularly like 'thanks for coprating profit automation'.)

But lately I have been getting a few for what appear to be ordinary, presumably honest, UK companies that have been taken in by these spammers. When I do get a dodgy comment linked to what appears to be a genuine company I always email them to point out what is happening - but I am yet to have a reply from any of those I have alerted. This is the kind of thing:

The trouble is, if you want to be, say, the 'most trusted air conditioning & heating engineer service' anywhere, it's not a good look if someone is spamming in your name. Here's another example:

Note, by the way, the sheer irrelevance of the comments to the subjects of the blog posts. It's not just comment spamming, it's bad comment spamming.

So if your company pays for SEO and you get someone complaining about this happening, don't ignore them. Apologise and sack your SEO company. You know it makes sense.

Comments

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