The SEO Rain – What to do about it
Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Advisory, tags: adviser, advisory board, angel investor, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, dr earl r smith, dr earl r smith ii, earl r smith ii, earl smith, Executive Coaching, federal circle, federal contracting, funding, Governance, government contractor, investing, investment, investor, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, management assessment, managing partner, Personal Growth, the federal circle, turnaround, Turnaround Management, Venture CapitalDr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com
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Anybody who runs a blog gets posted comments from these slugs. Mostly they are SEO consultants who have sold some dumb smuck on the proposition that their business will bloom if only they will pay to have ‘links’ established to their website. But those of us who are on the receiving end of this SEO rain know better.
How do you tell?
The first indication that this is an attempt to use your blog to build up some consultant’s income is the incipient drivel that they post. Mostly they draft some generic statement that could be used to comment on any post and then add some shallow water compliment like “I really liked your post and wish I could write as well”. Then they attempt to slip in a sales pitch for the crap they are peddling. One response to an article on clean energy included a positive comment on some fat burning book. Another one went on about a microinverter. I just shake my head and wonder how stupid these people think we really are – or maybe how stupid they really are. Some of these comments are incredibly primitive – they only provide a link to a sales page. But, no matter how they style it, they are simply parasites who are trying to leach off of your efforts to provide meaningful content on your blog.
What do you do?
- Step one: Make sure that your spam filter is on and that every comment that is posted on your website requires your approval of– if possible use a plug-in that requires a text or numeric entry as part of the comment process. these people count on your allowing comments to be automatically posted.
- Step two: Reply to each client that is represented by the spam comment – most comment software will display the e-mail address and URL for the spammer – let them know that you do not enjoy receiving their crap and have blocked them. Maybe they will think twice before writing another check to their consultant.
- Step three: Do not approve any of these comments – tag them as spam and permanently delete them
- Step three: Pass on this post to others – let’s cram these SEO spammers back into the small box from whence they came
I Pity the poor fool
A while back I posted a question on my blog: Social Marketing or Social Scam? Most of the comments – meaning the ones from people who were not involved in this hustle – were negative to say the least. Here are just a few of the terms used:
- Snake-oil salesmen
- Link baiters
- Back-link bums
Of course, the positive comments were from people in the business of selling their SEO service. But their pitch is shallow beyond belief. I once received a call from one who had the salesman pitch right down to a fine point. “Wouldn’t you pay my fee if I could generate five times more business than you are currently doing?” The call took a downward turn when I responded that I would be glad to pay for business generated when it was generated but not for the promise to try to generate business. Do yourself a favor. Spend the money on real marketing and block the spammers.
When you hire amateurs …
The real problem is the ease of entry into the business of SEO. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “You can call yourself anything you want. You can cut off your legs, paint yourself blue and call yourself a mailbox. But that doesn’t make you one”. In a business as wide open as SEO, I would be very careful of who you employ and always insist on clear performance metrics for any money you put out.
© Dr. Earl R. Smith II
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Consultants and Prudence
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The Benefits of Knowing – The Costs of Not Knowing
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The Missing Middle – Framing the Challenge
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Dr. Smith is Managing Partner of The Federal Circle. The Federal Circle partners with teams and existing companies. We help them up their game and win big in the Federal space. We also arrange funding for acquisitions and expansion by acquisition. Our model is based on the belief that, if you select the very best and work with them in a highly professional and focused manner, the results will be truly amazing. He is the author of Amazing Pace: Turbo-charged Business Development – a book that shows how Advisory Boards can dramatically increase revenue. Dr. Smith is also the author of Dream Walk: Parables for the Living – a book of Raven Tales and exploration.
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Neil, thanks for your comment. There are so many ‘black hat’ scammers out there that I have decided to ignore the process of link building and focus instead on generating high-quality content and monitoring the links to the site. I scrape three to five of these pieces of crap a day off the website. Most leave flattering but saccharine comments and attempt to link to some diet site. This is what these people sell the poor bastards who hope that links will hide the fact that their site and its contents are without merit. I also see the rain of 600 word articles ‘designed’ to include just the right number of key words. the articles are crap and generally written by people for whom English is a second or third language. And these people get paid pennies per article to add to the SEO rain. Even most of the consultants who swear that they only use ‘white hat’ methods – and there are a legion of them – are scammers. The real test is one you allude to. What are the metrics that attach directly to the customer’s bottom line? Connect what you are paying these people to what you will realize int he form of new business and profit margins if you can. I have never met an SEO-type who could or was even interested in talking the risk. Dr. Smith
Thanks Dr Smith – your article made me laugh.
I think you are right that the challenge is to educate the check/ cheque writers into thinking more about what they are getting.
Perhaps there needs to be an independent (automated) way of auditing the techniques used?
So, say company ABC says ‘I can build your links’ – then, if you (the client) could run a program to review the quality of the links built for previous clients – and get a report on the degree of spamming vs the degree of genunie link building, then the spammers would have to cut their rates to survive and the genunie would be able to charge a premium for the valuable work they do?
BTW – is there any general agreement about what is okay? For instance, in this post I have left my name as ‘neil lewis – successful entrepreneur’ with a link to one of my digital magazines. If you agree to post this – then I get a valuable link – using a key term (successful entrepreneur) – in return for my (hopefully) useful comment?
Is this an example of good link building? And therefore, it is acceptable? Do we have a win/ win?
Br
Neil
This one is a real pip – from an illiterate moron who selling ‘trading advice’ for investors
Please, can you PM me and tell me few more thinks about this, I am really fan of your blog…gets solved properly asap.
Would you really want to do business with this guy?
webdhoom.comHere is another good website focused on SEO spamming: http://www.webdhoom.com/seo-search-engine-optimization/spamming-SEO-India.htm
Here is a great website focused on SEO spamming: http://searchengineland.com/library/seo/seo-spamming
Search Engine Marketing FAQ
Answers to some of the thousands of questions asked by marketing executives who attended the AMA’s first free Web seminar, “Why Can’t My CEO Find Our Website??”
What is search engine spam, or SEO spam?
Defining Search Spam
In the search engine world, spam is defined as the manipulation of a web page to give it an artificial boost in the search engine rankings. Generally, spam is what the search engines say it is. I.e., it is defined by the search engines themselves. Each of the major search engines provide specific guidelines describing what webmasters should and should not do to their web pages in order to achieve a better search engine ranking, though that has not always been the case.
Several methods are universally deemed search spam, including hidden text, doorway pages, and mirror pages.
For engine-specific guidelines, visit the search engines themselves.
Yahoo Spam
Yahoo! > Search Help > Search Spam & Deletions provides information about what search engine optimization tricks to avoid on Yahoo! and on Alltheweb, which will soon be powered by Yahoo!.
Google Spam
Google Information for Webmasters provides information about what techniques to avoid on AOL, Google and Netscape.
AltaVista Spam
AltaVista – Help – Adding & Removing URLs provides information about what techniques to avoid for AltaVista. Just search the page for the word spam by selecting “Edit > Find (on This Page)… Ctrl+F” in the browser menu.
If you find a website using any of the search engine optimization tricks mentioned here, we encourage you to report the spam.
See also: Web Spam Taxonomy. Gyongyi, Zoltan; Garcia-Molina, Hector. Web Spam Taxonomy. Technical Report, Stanford University, 2004.
Here are two more – the rain continues. This first one was made in response to an article about the necessity of developing and implementing an action plan:
OP: I could be slow (lord knows I have been told lol) but that made absolutely no sense…
Everybody who reads this crap know how “slow’ this jerk is – we could all do with a break from being reminded of it
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And this one was sent as a comment to the above article:
The above writing was great. I find it very interesting and I will surely forward this to my friends online. Anyway, thanks for sharing this.
Just how dense it this guy?
Barry, Thanks for the post. I agree that there are SEO professionals who can make a difference in some websites. But that is not the focus of the article. I am sure that you would never take the low road that these people do. I am also sure that you agree they are making your job much harder. We, unfortunately, live in a time of blossoming scammers and spammers. Personally, I believe that it will only get worse until there is a postage put on all e-mails sent out in batches and to mailing lists. Dr. Smith
Here are two more pieces of ripe spam:
Very helpful post. Very clear commentary and suggested phrasing are most impressive, as are his and your generosity in sharing this explanation and example. I would also encourage everyone to bookmark this page to your favourite service to help spread the word. Thanks
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I saw something about this on TV last night
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The second one was from a scammer selling resveratrol.
Dr Smith,
I am an ardent and appreciative follower or your writings, in which I usually find wisdom, guidance, clarity or at least provocation of considerate examination of a topic.
Your “SEO rain” commentary however, while indicative of too much “SEO labeled” offerings, seems to fall short of capturing the breadth and capability of properly applied SEO techniques. While I agree there seems no lack of over-exuberance for SEO (including some ridiculously unfounded fantasies), the place of SEO in our world is real, offers incremental value and (when properly applied) can be a vital source of business and/or customer communications.
I have personally directed SEO optimization for a website… not based on links, questionaires or junk mail… but by careful examination of customer patterns and needs which were used to improve content and keywords so as to create significant and viable qualified incremental leads that converted to sale.
Will is the bomb. Such a talented actor. Hopefully he never raps again, though! haha.
This piece of drivel was sent to my contact page. The bozo behind it expected that I would let the post through and establish a link to his website. To do so would put my website on his hit list and I would be considered just the kind of fool he has spent his professional life searching for. Delete, report and respond – let them know how much you object to being subjected to SEO rain.
Here’s another gratuitous piece of crap that showed up in my spam filter:
Nice to be visiting your blog again, it has been months for me. Well this article that i’ve been waited for so long. I need this article to complete my assignment in the college, and it has same topic with your article. Thanks, great share.