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Deconstructing SEO Spam

"Dear Website Owner: If I could get you five times the RELEVANT traffic at a substantially reduced cost, would you be interested?"

It's a classic salutation from a search firm trying to snag business -- but it's also a tell-tale sign of SEO spam. Todd Mintz deconstructs his latest piece of unsolicited email in this article, taking shots at supposedly reputable SEO firms who blast poorly-targeted, misleading messages at Web site owners.

The company didn't use his name, clearly had no clue that the site they were referencing was for personal use (with no marketing or e-commerce aspirations), and alluded to their "proprietary" techniques and "closely held trade secrets" for driving traffic and delivering "more top rankings than anyone else."

Mintz adds that with a little detective work, he gleaned that the company didn't even have a physical presence -- just a UPS Store address that's coincidentally shared with a successful adult media enterprise.

A Webmaster who spends his day managing PPC campaigns might not even blink at this kind of spam. But for someone new to SEO or a site owner with plans to hire a search firm, following up on an email like this (which Mintz concedes "is probably the best written SEO spam" he'd ever received) could lead to lost dollars and negative results.

Read the whole story at Search Engine Guide »

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