This is one in a series of posts reviewing and looking at how some of the SEO companies which use bulk emails/spam with ‘we can help your terrible site’ type emails really can (and actually mostly can’t!) help your site.
Read some simple explanations of some of the SEO terms used on this post…
This post is very different to most of the other SEO spam I’ve posted about. This time the spam came a company offering ‘Guest Posting Services’.
Posting on other sites and blogs can be a good way of raising the profile of a site. However, only if it’s done right. And, as we will see, this company, don’t seem to be doing things the right way…
Below is a series of emails between me and ‘Millie Zeo’ (that’s one amazing name!) with my comments about them as we go along… The emails came from Millie’s generic Gmail account and came into my Christmas site, which just has Christmas information and doesn’t sell anything.
I knew it was total rubbish from the outset, but I played along, sending emails as someone who wouldn’t know this is an overpriced scam…
The Emails
Hi, I hope you will be fine .
I am sending you sites that are most visited sites. These have very high Traffic.These sites have very good DA and DR. These will increase your sites traffic . Please take a look at my sites and select .
[There was a list of sites here, it included some big US colleges, some design/art sites where anyone can have an account and add content, some wikis where anyone can add anything and some ‘junk’ news sites – sites that looks like real news sites but are really just places for spammy articles to be posted.]
I am Waiting for your response.
I’d had spam from Millie for several days in a row. On one of the spam emails from Millie, she’d also added a list of ‘example’ posts from these sites. These included some dead links, some blog posts from large companies that were clearly written by the company and not ‘guest posts’ like Millie is proposing, some posts on completely different sites to the ‘big’ ones she claimed they were on; and mostly links on ‘junk’ news sites…
With Millie’s first several spam emails, I simply hit delete, but on day four, I decided to reply…
Hi Millie,
I’m not quite sure what your service offers. Please can you explain it to me some more?
Thanks,
James
Which got the reply:
You just need to select a site. We will publish your article on the website with a do follow link of your sites.
It will rank your site to google and increase your site traffic.
To which I replied:
OK. But what company are you? Do you have a website I can look at? I want to make sure I’m dealing with a good company, not any spammers or anything!
Millie:
Dear i am a professional Blogger attached with a seekngeek company.
We have lots of sites for our client. We work in long term. You just once make trust on me and work with me.
Hopeful of your cooperation.
Me:
Is your company called ‘seekngeek’? Do they have a website? I’d really like to know more about the company! If you’re a professional blogger, do you have your own blog? I’d like to see some of your own blog posts if you have them.
Thanks!
I then got another initial spam email from Millie in the middle of conversation! It contained another list of ‘big sites’ they could post things on. I ignored it and shortly got another reply from Millie, in our conversation…
Check my blogs with post:
[This was another list of 11 ‘guest posts’ and articles which Millie had supposedly written. Of the 11 sites/posts:
5 were ‘junk’ news sites – they all had names associated with the posts – none of them were ‘Millie’ (one of these junk news sites openly advertised for junk news posts);
2 personal blogs where the posts were clearly written by the authors of the blogs;
a post on a blog from luxury travel company which was clearly not a guest post;
an article on a leading Iranian News site which clearly wasn’t a guest post;
a random post on a forum about slot car racing – I’m guessing the link they sent was wrong!
and one ‘proper’ guest post on a site – but it had no name on it so there’s no way to tell if Millie did actually write it.]
Me:
Thanks for those links. They all seems to be written by different people. I thought you were sending me posts you’d written? Can you explain, I’m confused…
Also what is your company?
Oh and I’ve not asked how much it costs for things like this?
Thanks!
Millie:
Hello Dear
my company name seekngeek.co.uk i have sale for back link paid guest posting are you interested?
i am waiting for your reply.
Thanks
So we’ve finally got a name and site we can look at! Although seekngeek.co.uk is a ‘UK’ domain, there’s no connection to this being a UK company. The domain was only registered in June 2019 (so the site is less than 4 months old).
Looking at the site, it’s a typical ‘junk’ news site and it also looks rather many of the junk news sites that Millie sent us links for, hmmmm. The home page ‘looks’ like a shop selling different mobile phones in Pakistan, only none of those links work…
So as a rather confused business owner I replied to Millie.
Thanks for sending that link. I’m still confused. I thought that was your business site about SEO and guest posts? But it looks like a funny news site and also has lots of mobile phones for sale in Pakistan – I’m confused!
Also, if you’ve got a sale on, what are the prices? I did ask in my last email to you 🙂
Thanks.
There was no reply from Millie for three days – well apart from yet another initial spam email with yet another list of impressive looking sites! So I emailed Millie again…
Hi!
Did you get my last email? What are your prices, etc?
Thanks.
This did a reply – a rather short and sweet one!
$220 per post`
So I replied with:
Thanks for that. Please can you answer my other question… I thought the link you sent me (seekngeek.co.uk) was your business site about SEO and guest posts? But it looks like a funny news site and also has lots of mobile phones for sale in Pakistan – I’m confused!
If you can clarify that, it would be really helpful.
Again there was no reply from Millie for three days (well again apart from yet another initial spam email…!). So yet again I sent another follow up email to Millie:
Hi Millie!
Did you get my email from Friday?! I sent you this…
Please can you answer my other question… I thought the link you sent me (seekngeek.co.uk) was your business site about SEO and guest posts? But it looks like a funny news site and also has lots of mobile phones for sale in Pakistan – I’m confused!
If you can clarify that, it would be really helpful.
I’m awaiting your reply!
And that dear readers is it. Yet another three days have past and Millie has yet to reply to any of my emails or answer their rather basic questions.
It’s almost as if she’s not interested in people who actually have questions about how their business works…
Conclusion
Guest Posts can be a great way of getting ‘out there’ for your blog/site/business. BUT using a spammer offering to post on your behalf probably isn’t a great way of doing it…
If you’re really interested in guest posting, then these two posts about guest posting by Jeff Goins and Neil Patel are very good places to start (Jeff and Neil are blogging & SEO experts).
But as ever, the choice is yours…