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.

SEO Cold Calling Spam via Contact Form is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

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.

Update on Blog Comment Spam is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC

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.

I immediately deleted the comments that were now confirmed as spam. I updated my blog post with a message for people considering purchasing the “services” this spammer was providing. There are a few things I take issue with about the claims this spammer is making on her Web site:

• “So you don’t have to worry about any black hat listings tactics.” (Oh really? Comment spam is white hat? I think Google would disagree.)
• “We do not post on any blogs that have a no follow tag.” (Wrong! My comments section is no-followed. And it was being used as an example!)

Let’s remember… the only reason these comments showed up is because I manually approved them to begin with. Akismet identifies this crap as the spam that it is. It was my own stupidity that allowed a spammer to post links about personalized diaper cakes… If you look at the remaining comments on the post, there are a lot of “Just dropping by” messages, which were all in the spirit of the UBP. The difference in the spam was the optimized anchor text… even though no link juice was getting passed.

Blog spam is icky. I suppose at $14.99 for 10 backlinks, you can’t really expect quality anyways. But seriously? This woman chose the wrong blog to use as an example for her spamming tactics.I did consider emailing her to insist she remove the link to my site, but then I thought that educating the people who clicked on it served my purpose better. I wonder how long it will take  her to catch on. (Maybe looking at her referrer log and finding this post?)

Just say no to blog spam. And if you’re in the market for link building services, don’t be naive and think you’re going to get quality links for $15. The Google algorithms likely can identify comment spam. If the algorithms don’t, human reviewers can. Don’t get smacked by the Google hammer for buying bargain basement link building services. Seriously. Contribute to the quality of the Web. Be smarter with your money and your reputation. Spam sucks for everyone.

Blog Comment Spam – People Pay for This? is a post from: Christina Gleason - Founder of Phenomenal Content LLC