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 is a bit different to my normal SEO spammers. It’s from a Guest Post Spammer. I’ve been getting more of these, so I thought it would be good to see what they say…
The email came from an ‘Ella’ who was using a Gmail account with ‘advertistingcompany’ in it. That’s not iffy at all… The spam email subject was “Greetings from INTANT Publishing!” and the email went:
Hey!!
How are you?**INTANT PUBLISHING ***Blogs Available For Guest Post.
Permanent and do-follow link with GooGle indexed.
Link insertion also available..
[There was then a list of 16 sites along with their ‘DA’ (Domain Authority) and ‘PA’ (Page Authority).]
I am waiting for your good response
THANKS
I’m not sure what ‘intant’ publishing is… I’m guessing it’s ‘instant’ publishing spelt incorrectly. They also spell GooGle with an extra capital G, possibly to evade spam filters…
And they don’t explain what DA and PA are… They are ranking factors, from an SEO company called Moz, and can give a guide as to what Google thinks of a site; but they’re not set in stone.
The 16 sites they listed were mostly junk news/articles sites which dodgy guest post spammers tend to post articles on.
Anyway, they’d told me nothing about who they were, so I asked.
Hi,
Please can you tell me more about your company? Do you have a website?
Thanks,
James
And I got this reply:
Hi Dear
Thanks for your response
Yes, I have thousands of websites. Just let me know your requirements. I will rank your site on google top page. I’m ready to work with you on a project. We have different packages as per your budget requirements.
Awaiting your reply.
As that didn’t answer any of my questions, I asked again!
Hi,
I wanted to know about the company you work for. Who are they? I want to know more about who I’m working with before I’m willing to go any further.
Please can you tell me about your company. You must have a website right?!
Thanks,
James
That got this reply…
Yes, I do.
Please note our company http://zajidigital.com/. We can rank your site as per your requirements.
The links will be dofollow and indexed. Please let me know if you have more questions.
Thanks!
Aha, a name – well a website anyway! Ella asked if I had anymore questions – I did, so I asked!
Hi Ella,
I’ve been a web designer and developer for 20 years. I like to reply to SEO & other spammers to see what ‘services’ they offer and the things they say and use to get clients.
If you’d have actually bothered to visit my site, you would have seen that it clearly says “Please don’t ask if I have guest posts, this site is just for my rambles!”
So why did you then spam me (breaking several international laws in the process…)?
Also, why did you spam me from a gmail account rather than your main business domain? Is it because you know you’re spamming and don’t want to get your main domain into trouble for spamming? hmmmm…
Why does your site claim to be “The #1 experts in creating the best quality guest posting services & link building services” when you’ve been in business for less than a month?
None of that is very trustworthy or professional is it?
But I’ve had no reply to that email. Oh well…
Looking at Their Site
With SEO spammers, I also like to look at their sites, to see if they practice what they preach (I mean would you trust a plumber who had leaking and rusty pipes all over their own house?!); and also to compare their site with a site they say they can help…
Their site is https://zajidigital.com/ – it was registered in December 2020, so it’s just over one month old.
Their site has 6 errors and 20 warnings. Not bad for spammers.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 4 errors and 17 contrast errors – again not bad.
Using the GTmetix Tool their site gets:
Overall Grade: A
Performance 93%
Structure 86%
All of those are about the best I’ve ever seen from a spammer! I suspect it’s because they’re using a very good WordPress theme called OceanWP.
However, just because you’re using a good theme, and have good numbers on auto tools, it doesn’t mean you have a good site!
The contents of the site are less impressive.
There’s no privacy policy – that’s really not good.
There are several ‘mixed content’ warnings meaning the site might not load properly. Indeed, when I first visited the site, all the icons and fonts were broken!
The address listed in their footer is ‘123456’ – erm, that’s not an address!
The page is a ‘one page’ site. However, there are navigation links for ‘Our Team’ and ‘Recent Posts’ sections but both are empty, yet the headings have been left in. Ooops.
There are ‘Create an Account’ and ‘Login’ buttons right in the middle of the screen when the page loads – only they don’t do anything!
On the site, they claim to be “The #1 experts in creating the best quality guest posting services & link building services.” and in one of her emails, ‘Ella, claimed to have “thousands of websites”. That’s rather impressive considering the site has been online for just over a month! (Their Facebook page was created on the 22nd December 2020, so it’s less than three weeks old!)
Their LinkedIn profile lists some of their employees. These include a ‘Xenon Tae’ from Dubai – only a reverse image search shows that the profile image is of a female student from Finland who’s been on some Finnish news sites. They also list an employee called ‘Max blogger’ (his profile picture is a random logo).
Those sound very genuine and trustworthy to me (NOT)!
The LinkedIn profile also says the company was found in 2019 – so that’s not true then either…
Nowhere on Zaji Digital Agency’s site or social media profiles does it say where they are based. However, the domain was registered in Pakistan and the first employee on their LinkedIn profile (who actually seems to be a real person) is also in Pakistan. So I’d say they’re probably in Pakistan (as the other two guest post spammers I’ve also reviewed have been…).
Update!!!
Three days later I got a reply from ‘Ella’. In fact I spent most of a morning having to and fro emails. ‘Ella’ confirmed that they are in Pakistan. I did ask what their non western/real name was but never got an answer to that question. They also didn’t answer my questions as to why they spam…
I also kept explaining why lying on a site and on social media profiles aren’t good and don’t make a company trustworthy… But STILL Ella came back and told me to trust them and place an order.
I told them “I will NEVER use your services” and yet the reply to that was to STILL to say how great they were and that they had ‘thousands of sites’.
After I said “What part of “I will NEVER use your services” don’t you understand?” I finally got an answer of “okay” and that was the end of our conversation.
It seems that to borrow a phrase “spammers gonna spam”…
Conclusion
Zaji Digital Agency hide behind fake names and Gmail accounts when sending out spam.
They claim to be the number 1 company in the business, despite being in business for less than a month!
They’ve messed up the installation of a simple one page site using a very good theme – that’s quite an achievement…
So if Zaji Digital Agency want to offer guest posting services to you. I’d probably run a mile.
But the choice, as ever, is yours.