Christina Gleason . com

Official website of writer, editor, and blogger Christina Gleason.

Bad Link Request That Tried to Fake the Personal Touch

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I know that link building is hard. That’s why I don’t do that sort of thing for a living. But if you’re going to do it, at least try to do it right. And by that, I mean: don’t spam people, and when trying to pitch bloggers in a personal manner, don’t try to automate “personal.”

Case in point: It’s great to actually check out someone’s blog, determine it’s a good fit for your client (or your own site), and let the blogger know you’ve done a little research by mentioning one of their posts that you found to be relevant to the site you want them to link to. Get this part wrong, and it’s obvious you’re just faking it – and that almost never goes well.

Here’s the bad link request that inspired this post. (And I’ll spare you the broken HTML that displayed in the body of the email when I received it.)
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The Nigerian Government Apologizes for Scams?

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I just received this fantastic email:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Federal Republic of Nigeria

Ref: An Open Letter To All Scam Victims,

If you have sent money to Nigeria in the course of getting one fund or the other it means you have been scammed because those funds will surely not get to you, you are required to send your NAME and ADDRESS to us for verification and after verification if truly you have sent money to Nigeria in the course of getting one fund or the other that means you have been scammed and you will be reimbursed with the sum of twenty thousand dollars only.

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SEO Cold Calling Spam via Contact Form

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It’s bad enough when you get spam email trying to pitch dubious SEO services to you. It’s worse when the spammers visit the contact form on your Web site to make the pitch. I thought this was a legitimate request for my services via Phenomenal Content. Instead, this spam came from a Gmail address with no company name attached, although “Melodie” listed her URL as google.com:

We would like to get your website on first page of Google.All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.In order for us to respond to your request for information, please include your company’s website address (mandatory) and or phone number.

Let’s pick this apart a piece at a time.

  • The spammer listed her company URL as google.com, trying to falsely lead me to believe she works for Google.
  • I run a quality copywriting company and you don’t put a space in between your sentences? Fail.
  • My Web site is already on the first page of Google for my company name. I bet that’s how they planned to “get” me on the first page of Google. I also happen to be on the first page for “content creation services.” Maybe that’s why they targeted me – if I didn’t know that, they could claim they did it for me.
  • I love how “white hat” is in quotation marks.
  • Won’t get me banned or penalized? After sending me spam, I hardly believe that.
  • Wait, they used the contact form on my Web site, and they need me to remind them of my URL?

File this one under spam. Sadly, even a Captcha field can’t guard against humans who opt for manual spamming techniques.

Update on Blog Comment Spam

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Back in April, I wrote about how my mommy blog had been targeted by a comment spammer. Since then, Carla from My SEO Gal emailed me, and I need to share what she told me.

Carla apologized for spamming my site. In her defense, she didn’t realize it was spam until she followed the link to my blog post from her referrer log. I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting her email to me:

I truly never meant to spam your blog at all and I feel absolutely horrible and have definitely lost some sleep over it this past weekend… after careful consideration, I have removed the service from my site. That is not the type of reputation I want to portray to anyone nor do I want to offer a service to anyone that might be unethical or disrespectful to others.

I appreciate that she took the time to respond to me and to reconsider the service she was offering. This story has a happy ending. I only wish that the gazillion other people who are spamming blog posts would have the same revelation… but I think most of them know what they’re doing. And they just don’t care.

Thanks, Carla, for caring.

Blog Comment Spam – People Pay for This?

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There is an update to this story posted on June 16, 2009.

I was scanning my referrer logs over the weekend for my mommy blog, Cutest Kid Ever. I came across an interesting URL “myseogal.com” in the report. So I clicked on it.

That was when I discovered that one of my blog posts was an example of someone’s “Blog Commenting Services.” Yep, I was comment spammed. The worst  part? Because of the post it was on, I’d gone through and  manually approved the offending comments from the Akismet spam queue because I thought they might be genuine. It was a post for the Ultimate Blog Party 2009, in which people just randomly drop by and comment on other people’s blogs in hopes of winning prizes. And maybe finding a new blog to subscribe to along the way.

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