I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
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“anti-spam” spam!
I write this post partly to warn people but also out of amusement!
Like any public blog, I get people adding spam comments occasionally. Most of it is caught by Akismet so it doesn’t bother me but I received some interesting ones today that I thought I’d share.
The comment was:
Hi nice post, i read your blog from time to time but i was wondering something. I also run a blog on a similar topic, but i get 1,000’s of spam comments and emails every day does that happen to you.. Any ideas to stop it? I currently have commenting disabled but i want to turn it back on.. Thanks!
Sounds nice enough doesn’t it? Which is why I want to warn people not to fall for it as it is not a genuine request for help.
There are two main reasons I know it is spam…
- The email address was nonsense – just random letters typed either side of @ symbol. Someone seriously asking for help would give their contact details
- I got the exact same message (punctuation, spelling, everything) on a different post and from a different person with a different fake email address but the same IP address and the same URL to be added to their comment.
It amused me because it is appearing to hate what it is – very circular! And that the spammer has no idea of how silly it is to post it twice under different names in the same blog.
So if you get the same request, please delete the comment and don’t click on their links.
Learning from SEO spam
Last week, I wrote about SEO offer spam emails. Having just received another one of these annoying emails, I thought I’d give some examples of why I don’t trust them…
We can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.
Sincerely,
First Last
So what is wrong with this email?
- no greeting is rude. Even if he didn’t want to take the time to research my name, he could have said “Hello” at the minimum
- who is he? There was no other information to help me identify his business or contact him except by reply email
- if he doesn’t know what my website is (so how did you email me then?) how can he be sure he can help my rankings improve? Maybe I’m already at the top, maybe it’s a family site I don’t care about rankings for, maybe a thousand different things that mean his service is not relevant
- what does he mean by ‘top of a search engine listings’ anyway? Top of page 10 in Google is still top but not something I aspire to! Top for an irrelevant or obscure keyword won’t help me either. By not being clear, he missed an opportunity to show me he knows what he is talking about and starting some trust.
- where is he located? Yes, we could deal via email which means his location isn’t too important, but knowing he is overseas helps understand time differences. Further, I would be more likely to hire an Australian as they understand my market better and I don’t have to deal with the dollar value.
Whilst I hope you don’t send out spam to get business, the above tips will hopefully help you avoid answering spam like this and help you write better sales emails.
Use your words wisely!
rejecting SEO “offers”
I seem to be getting more emails about search engine optimisation (SEO) services lately – all of which I delete without any consideration I might add!
Why do I delete them?
- I don’t have time to read so many emails that are often copies of the same text
- I don’t trust services who need to spam me to get work – if their services are so great, they should be able to get work in less annoying ways
- no one can promise to get another site to to the top of Google – Google changes their system often enough that no one can hack it exactly for one thing, and it depends on what other sites are doing as well – if their site is improved, how do I stay as number 1?
- I am convinced that good content is a key to succeeding with search engines – the amount of site traffic I get from my articles is evidence of that – and I doubt an SEO company will help me with my content!
- I hate spam!
What worries me more is that some of them will convince other business people to take up their services. Not only would it be a waste of money most of the time, some SEO strategies can actually penalise your site (and if Google or Yahoo cuts you out, it is very hard to get your site recognised.)
So if you get made an offer to ‘put your site at the top of search engine listings’, please consider carefully if it is worth pursuing. In fact, if they convince you of the need to have SEO help, go online to find a company to use instead of trusting an uncalled for solicitation. Finding a company gives you the chance to decide how reputable they appear.
Alternatively, take some time to work on your content to make it useful and relevant for humans and read up on other ways to help your page rankings.
Spam writing
Writing spam? Don’t you just want to delete it rather than create more of it???
Occasionally, I read a piece of spam that gets into my inbox – mostly by accident and sometimes as research 🙂
I can see various spam emails being useful as examples of bad writing so I can show you how to improve your writing – or give you a giggle at bad writing anyway!
For instance, I got one yesterday that started with “Kind time of day of ladies and gentlemen” – why limit yourself to good morning or good afternoon when you can cover both at once! Obviously, a simple “Greetings”, “Hello” or “Dear friend” would be my suggestion.
Then, there was “Get $999 you download our casino.” Hmmm, a casino that will give me money to download them? I am very curious as to how I could possible download a casino – but not so curious I clicked on the link 🙂 A better way to say it would have been “Get $999 when you download our casino software” or “Join our casino and get $999”.
And “same problems. somewhere in the world.” could probably have been better written as “The same problems occur throughout the world” or “Someone in the world has the same problem as you.”
I could go on and on, but thought I’d finish with mentioning a blog entry that shows you how to write better spam – enjoy!
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