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…
[Edit: 16th August 2021. I’ve edited and updated various parts of this post. Upon re-reading, some of the wording was clumsily and/or simply bad and written in such away that it could have been perceived with other meanings to which I had intended. I very much apologise for any offence this could have caused. I have removed one paragraph and have made other changes to make things clearer. I have also updated some information about Krazylow and their sites (as the sites have been updated) as I’ve discovered more information about the company.]
This time the email came from a ‘Anuradha’ who was using a Gmail address which had their name in and also some random numbers…
The subject of the spam was “Google First Page!!!” and went:
Hi,
I can help your website to get on the first page on Google and increase the number of leads and sales you are getting from your website.
Let me know if you are interested, then I will send you our SEO Packages and price list.
Let me know if you are interested, so send me your requirement with the website URL and your best contact details, then I can send you our SEO Package and pricing as well.
Thanks & Regards,
Anuradha [name removed for privacy]
Ah, the old “we can get you on the first page of Google” spam. But Google has something to say about companies which claim that…
Beware of SEO companies that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.
from Google’s “Do you need an SEO?”
I didn’t reply straight away and two days later another email arrived from Anuradha:
Hi,
Just a quick follow up on my last emails, please let me know if you got a chance to go through my last emails.
Thanks & Regards,
Anuradha [name removed for privacy]
At this point I replied asking them to take a look at my big Christmas site www.whychristmas.com. During each December my Christmas site gets millions and millions of visits and is #1 on the whole of Google for a huge number of Christmas searches – so any SEO advice about the site is always ‘interesting’…
I got a reply from Tarun who was using an @krazylowseo.com email address and it went:
Hey James,
My name is Tarun [name removed for privacy], I am the Business Development Manager for Krazy Low LLC and was referred to you by my colleague.
We have taken the liberty at Krazy Low LLC to run a free analysis on your website.
The Score for your website https://www.whychristmas.com/ is only 88. I have enclosed the website Audit Report.
Our goal is to get you on the first page of Google and increase your sales and traffic by creating an optimized marketing plan and putting your company first on the map in the search engine for your businesses criteria.
We have multiple packages varying in keywords and services.
KarzyLow’s SEO experts use the latest techniques and best practices to bring your website up in search results, removing the errors that cause search engines to decrease your ranking. We guarantee a first-page Google ranking once our overhaul is complete, with continuous keyword research and original content to keep you there.
Website speed optimization for all devices.
Targeted, competitive, industry-specific keywords and tag optimization.
Alt/image tag optimization and structured mark-up data for all listings.
Original SEO-optimized content that gets clicks.
And more
We also offer social media marketing, pay per click marketing, Website Development and Design with web management.Developing and integrating a user-friendly web platform is one of the biggest factors in having a successful business and effective marketing plan.
Our goal is to advertise, expose and establish a strong customer base for your business. Thus, allowing the increase of traffic, directly leading to sales and revenue growth.
Tarun [name removed for privacy]
Business Development Manager
Again, there’s that ‘first page of Google ranking’ claim on a pretty much copy/paste email. Hmmmm… I replied to Tarun asking some questions.
Hi Tarun,
I’ve been a web designer and developer for 20 over years. I like to reply to SEO spammers to see what ‘services’ they offer and the things they say and use to get clients.
My Christmas site www.whychristmas.com has also been on the web for over 20 years. It had well over 20 MILLION pageloads last year – so it’s doing pretty well!
88/100… Well, that’s much better than the 54/100 and 47/100 that your two sites get isn’t it! And it was only in one section that my site got less than 99% because the home page of my site hasn’t got a huge amount of text on it. But the site is still normally on the first page of Google for ‘Christmas’, so it’s doing pretty well!
Please can you tell me why you think it’s OK to spam people from random accounts to get business?
And that got this reply:
How did we spam you, we sent you the accurate score, we offered a service. You are an adult and a business and site owner, very simple to say no thank you. I understand, I would appreciate you not trying to disrespect me or my company. I could ask you why you think it’s ok to peddle christmas products and take advantage of a religion for your own profit. But i don’t. For 20 million downloads, you must be a busy guy, surely not enough time to respond to “spammers.” God bless you and your business, I will make sure that our company takes you and your company off any list we have. Thank you and have a blessed day.
I find it somewhat ironic that someone spams people making all sorts of claims about how wonderful they are, tells you that your site ‘only’ gets 88/100; and when you point out that the sites for their company gets lower ratings (using the same tools) they say you’re showing them ‘disrespect’…
I replied, strongly but politely, answering some of their points, explaining the basics of how spam works(!) and correcting some of their own rather ‘disrespectful’ assertions:
Hi Tarun,
Thank you for your reply. I will do my best to answer your points.
Anuradha [name removed for privacy] sent me an unsolicited email, from a Gmail account, claiming to be able to get a site onto the first page of Google. Its subject was “Google First Page!!!”.
Sending unsolicited emails, especially without any business details on, is spam. It’s that simple.
There are many anti-spam laws around the world dealing with sending commercial emails. I live in the UK and we have a law called PECR (https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/). There are similar laws in countries including the USA (where your business says it’s based), Canada, Australia, Singapore, etc. All of them have strict guidelines about the types of business emails you can sent to people.
If you are based in the USA, your company would come under the CAN-SPAM Act (https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business). The email from Anuradha [name removed for privacy] was in breach of that law. Again it’s that simple.
If you have a good look around my site, you will see that it DOES NOT sell anything. I DO NOT ‘peddle christmas products and take advantage of a religion for my own profit’. I run the site for the love of Christmas. The running of the site comes straight out of my pocket. I make NOTHING from it.
Yes I am a busy guy. And having people spam me takes up some of my time. So I like to make others aware of what some companies will do to get clients.
Thank you for removing me from your list. Please may I recommend that you learn more about international regulations dealing with email communications. Breaking the law to get clients isn’t good!
And that got a one line reply:
Thanks for the tip!
I really hope that Krazy Low might take some time to learn about anti-spam laws and stop spamming people. However, with my dealings of SEO over the past few years; sadly I also doubt it.
Their Report & Recommendations
The report which was sent to me was a PDF from automatic SEO checker tool, which is called ‘SEO Checker’!
Tarun said my site scored ‘only 88’ (out of 100). I think that’s pretty good. And if you look at the report itself, the ‘only 88’ statement is just plain odd.
This SEO tool breaks things into six sections and gives each one of those a score out of 100% (and some how then puts those together for the total score…).
The sections and my site’s score on them were:
- Meta information (how good the site is for meta things which search engines use): 100%
- Page quality (how good the content of the site and a few techy things are): 58%
- Page structure (how good the code on a page is): 100%
- Link structure (how many internal and external links a page has): 96%
- Server configuration (how many files you’re loading and some techy hosting things): 100%
- External factors (if a site has good backlinks and if it’s not listed on any bad blacklists): 100%
So… my site gets 96%+ on all the sections except one!
In the report it lists further items in each section. The reason the site only got 58% for ‘page quality’ is because the home page of my Christmas site hasn’t got a huge number of words on it. However, it’s designed to be a glorified ‘landing page’ so doesn’t actually need lots of words.
And the site is still normally on the first page of Google for ‘Christmas’ so that’s pretty good!
So instead of saying it got “only 88”, Tarun could have said “The site is getting 88/100. It rates very highly for most things, but it could possibly do with some more copy on the home page.”
As we’ll see below, the sites for Krazy Low SEO have MUCH lower scores than my site using the same tool!
Looking at Their Site(s)
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…
krazylowseo.com
There were two domains/sites listed in the footer on Tarun’s email. The first is krazylowseo.com. It was registered in early April 2021 – only two weeks before they spammed me!
For HTML Validation, my site has no errors. That site has 24 errors and 34 warnings. [Edit: 16th August 2021, it now has 13 errors and 97 warnings.]
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 13 errors and 84 contrast errors. My site has no errors of either kind! [Edit: 16th August 2021, it now has 26 errors and 73 warnings.]
Using the GTMetrix speed test tool their site gets:
Overall Grade: C [Edit: 16th August 2021, it now gets a D]
Performance 77% [Edit: 16th August 2021, it now gets 49%]
Structure 75%
My site gets:
Overall Grade: A
Performance 100%
Structure 100%
Using the SEO checker tool, this site got a total score of 54% (my site got 88%) and for the sections it got:
- Meta information: 41% (my site got 100%)
- Page quality: 64% (my site got 58% and that was the worst)
- Page structure: 91% (my site got 100%)
- Link structure: 73% (my site got 96%)
- Server configuration: 54% (my site got 100%)
- External factors: 21% (my site got 100%)
So, not great…
This site has no meta description. This is a vital item for SEO, yet many of the SEO spammers I come across now don’t have them on their sites!
What’s even worse is that the ‘Robots’ meta tag is set so that search engines WILL NOT index the site – why would you do that?!?!? [Edit: 16th August 2021, this robots tag has been removed. So search engines can now index the site! However, there’s still no meta description tag.]
There are two heading 1s on the home page. You should only have one. [Edit: 16th August 2021, there’s now NO heading 1 tag. That’s really worse than having two!]
Their about page says they’ve been in business for over 15 years and have over 30,000(!) clients.
The site uses an off the shelf theme and guess what, those 30,000 client numbers and 15 years in business are on the demo for the theme. (Remember their domain was only registered less than a month ago, so, erm, yeah…) [Edit: 16th August 2021, this statement about 15 years has now been removed.]
The about page also has this somewhat amazing sentence on it “World leading Digital Company is one of the biggest marketing agencies across worldwide”. Now a search for this site shows that line is also on another SEO site (which is also rather lousy…) which the domain was registered in late December 2020 in Delhi, India. In fact, pretty much all the ‘normal’ text on the about page on Krazy Low comes is also on the other SEO site!
So it looks like one site has copied from the other – but which way round – who knows!
[Edit: 16th August 2021, this statement about ‘world leading digital company’ has now been removed.]
There’s no privacy policy on the site – that’s against several international privacy laws and is just plain bad practice.
There’s a site map link in the footer, only there’s nothing on the page it links to, hmmmm.
There are lots of links for social media profiles in the footer – only none of them do anything (and one is for Google+ which closed YEARS ago – long before their domain was registered).
Also in the footer there’s a heading for their ‘Miami Office’ (although it now says ‘Washington Office’!) which it says is their headquarters and there’s also a gap where a map would be – but that image is broken/missing. So are they based in Miami or Washington?
On the home page, some of the copy says that “On the Map Inc. is a full-service digital marketing agency with over a decade of experience in the industry.” Only ‘On the Map Inc’ is a large marketing company based in Miami. So it seems that Krazy Low has ‘borrowed’ some content from On the Map’s site but hasn’t bothered to change the name! It might also be where the ‘Miami’ came from! [Edit: 16th August 2021, this statement about ‘On the Map Inc. is a full-service digital marketing agency…’ has now been changed.]
On the footer, and on the contact page, there’s another address in Virginia, USA. It’s for a normal, residential house, certainly not where you’d think an SEO company with over 30,000 clients would be located! [Edit: 16th August 2021, I now think the company is probably located here. But it’s still a residential house. I also work from home; but I also don’t claim to be a ‘the leading SEO company in XXXXX’ or have 30,000 clients as Krazylow do/did. The city in Virginia is indeed near Washington, but it’s really not near Miami!]
There’s a USA phone number on the site – for Maryland – not Virginia.
On the home page, there’s a testimonial from a customer ‘Denis Robinson’. Only the testimonial/quote and name is one that comes with the demo content in the theme and it’s really a quote by the Paul Rand, the graphic designer! There’s another quote from ‘Denis’ on the About page. This one mentions Tarun by name, so it could well be from a client. Only it’s not from a ‘Denis Robinson’! This one also has a photo of ‘Denis’ – but guess what, it’s the one that comes with the theme for Denis…
A Google search for “krazylowseo.com” turns up a handful of results. The only ones ‘from the site’ are ones which look VERY suspicious and the type of results that you get if a site’s been hacked. Oddly, they appear to be for Japanese cooking and gardening products. I have NO idea what that’s all about.
But it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that a site’s been registered for just over two weeks, might have been hacked, is now an SEO site which is actively blocking search engines and might well have copied quite a bit of the contents of the site from other places!!!
krazylow.net
The other site on the email signature was krazylow.net which was registered in late November 2020 – so it’s about five months old at the time of writing.
For HTML Validation, my site has no errors. That site has 3 errors and 14 warnings.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 28 errors and 8 contrast errors. My site has no errors of either kind!
Using the GTMetrix speed test tool their site gets:
Overall Grade: E
Performance 39%
Structure 76%
Again, my site gets:
Overall Grade: A
Performance 100%
Structure 100%
Using the SEO checker tool, this site got a total score of 47% (my site got 88%) and for the sections it got:
- Meta information: 77% (my site got 100%)
- Page quality: 24%!!! (my site got 58% and that was the worst)
- Page structure: 12%!!! (my site got 100%)
- Link structure: 75% (my site got 96%)
- Server configuration: 54% (my site got 100%)
- External factors: 21% (my site got 100%)
So, again, not good.
Just like their other site, this one has no meta description or privacy policy.
It’s also using a (different) off the shelf theme but it also has lots of the demo content still it in – much in dummy latin! The staff listed on the site are the demo ones which come with the theme, etc. The creator of the theme is also still listed in the copyright in the footer. [Edit: 16th August 2021, the copyright is now krazylow.net. However, the ‘staff’ are still the stock ones. The image of the ‘co founder’ is also used as a photo on one of the testimonials, only with a different name…]
This site says they’ve had 9407 clients and have 480 active clients. Again, these are from the theme’s demo content…
There’s no alt text on their logo (really not good) and also the logo /site name is in a heading 1. This was common practice 10+ years ago but now isn’t used much. And having your H1 with no text in (because there’s no alt) is TERRIBLE. [Edit: 16th August 2021, the logo is now text, so there’s no alt text issue. However, it’s still in an <h1> tag.]
The same address in Virginia is used on this site as well. But it’s a different phone number. This one is for Singapore! [Edit: 16th August 2021, in the site’s header there’s now a USA based phone number in Maryland. However, the one in the footer is still the one for Singapore.]
Also, rather interestingly, the main contact email on this site is also for a domain in Singapore. The domain is for an SEO company in Singapore – with the same phone number as on the site… [Edit: 16th August 2021, it’s now a krazylow.net email although the phone number, as above, is still for the company with the domain in Singapore.]
AND… on their about page it says “OmniQ is a full-service digital agency offering affordable & scalable internet marketing solutions in India, USA, Canada and over the globe.” And OmniQ is the name of the company who’s domain/phone number is in their footer. BUT the address is the one is Virginia!?! There’s a whole lot of questions happening right there.
Also the footer brief ‘about’ statements are basically identical between krazylow.net and omnique.com.sg being: Krazylow LLC/OmniQ is a full-service digital agency offering affordable & scalable internet marketing solutions in India, USA, Canada, Singapore and over the globe. [Edit: 16th August 2021, OmniQ is no longer on the site. The footer text now says “Krazylow LLC is a full-service digital agency offering affordable & scalable internet marketing solutions in USA, Canada, Singapore and over the globe.”]
So could these spammers have a connection to Singapore? We’ve come across some other Singapore based SEO spammers before…
A Google search for ‘krazylow.net’ again just has a handful of results. One is for a profile on a Crypto currency trading site where the user is a ‘KingT’ (with some numbers in there as well). I’m guessing the T is for Tarun!
What Facebook Tells Us
There’s no Facebook page linked on either of the Krazy Low sites. However, a Google search found TWO! Both were created in early June 2020 – so before either of the domains were registered. Only one is now still up (but nothing really dies on the internet!).
The active one is for ‘KrazylowSEO’. It seems that it might have originally been started for an e-commerce site at krazylow.com (which was registered a day before the FB page was created) but that site is no longer online.
The early posts on this FB page are about this e-commerce site, although I have no idea what it was actually meant to be selling!
Then on the 7th April 2021 (the day that krazylowseo.com was registered!) there’s a job posting on the FB from Tarun (who describes himself as ‘the owner of Krazylow LLC’) wanting sales people! The job states it’s in New York (not Virginia).
The the FB about page it says “Krazylow LLC is the leading SEO ( search engine optimization ) company in the United States.” Well, their domain is less than a month old. So yeah, that seems rather unlikely then…
It also says “We are 100 percent based in the U.S.” – It seems rather confusing to say that when there’s a Singapore domain and phone number as the main contact on one of your sites!
The other FB page, which is no longer active on FB but still shows up in Google searches, and a couple of bits of it are in Google’s cache, was titled ‘SaveURBread'(?!) and there’s a job postings from the 25th March 2021 for a ‘Sales Closer’. It says you can work from home and there’s this line: “If your smart english speaking with preferable American accent let’s do it.” This job was located in Silver Springs, which is in Maryland (where the phone number is located…)
The Singapore Connection?!
This domain in Singapore is: omnique.com.sg and it was registered in September 2020. (Their Facebook page was created in October 2020.)
It’s another SEO company and it also has plenty of basic HTML and accessibility errors… There’s also quite a bit of dummy filler latin and broken/missing images on the site.
There are three blog posts on the site – all dated in July 2017. But remember, their domain wasn’t registered until September 2020 – so that seems a bit fishy.
One of the posts has dummy latin in. One talks about using the best keywords in 2019(!) and the other one is about a Google ‘local business’ service in Canada from 2018/2019 which appears to have been completely copy and pasted from another (proper) SEO site!
OmniQ claim to be the #1 SEO company in Singapore – that’s pretty good going for a company that seems to have been in business for about seven months! You’d have also through that a number one SEO company would have better SEO on their own site… (Or they’re just claiming something that’s not true.)
There is a Privacy Policy page on this site, but it’s full of dummy latin, so not what you’d call useful.
On the contact page, there’s an address in Singapore. But there’s also a map – for Chicago…!
A Google of the address in Singapore also shows that a design & printing firm have the same address. It’s in a small business district along with some food markets and that sort of business. Not many high tech ones.
Conclusion
Apart from the text/email/phone number on krazylow.net, I can’t find any other connections between Krazy Low and OmniQ.
There are two options I can think of.
- Krazy Low and OmniQ are really the same company under different sites (I’ve seen SEO spammers do this sort of thing in the past).
- Krazy Low have ‘borrowed’ large parts of their site(s) (although the theme is different) and are so incompetent they’ve left copy and contact details from OmniQ on their site!
Whatever one is the case, neither is ‘good’!
[Edit: 16th August 2021, I’m now sure there’s no official connection to OmniQ, only that some information from their site was on one of the Krazylow sites for a while… I’ve also found the company registration for Krazylow LLC in Virginia in November 2020 – which fits with the Krazylow.net domain registration. However, it contradicts the statement on krazylow.net that the company started in 2011… and that they’ve been in business for over 15 years as on krazylowse.com. I’ve also found several, very recently posted, jobs for the company on jobs sites in India and The Philippines. One of the job listings states “The company is Krazylow LLC we are based in the United States but our backend team works remotely in India. You will be given an appointment letter and be hired by our Indian Company which is a subsidiary of Krazylow LLC, called RankingPros Digital Marketing Private Limited.” This seems to contradict a statement which is on their Facebook page “We are 100 percent based in the U.S.”. (Can you be based 100% in one country if you’ve got an active subsidiary company in a different country?!?!) Looking at RankingPros Digital Marketing Private Limited, it was formed as a company based in Delhi in May 2021.]
It seems that Krazy Low are happy to spam from seemingly personal Gmail accounts and make claims which Google say not to trust. Remember, the subject of the initial spam was “Google First Page!!!”. Well, this is what Google says about claims like that…
Beware of SEO companies that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.
from Google’s “Do you need an SEO?”
The quality of both of the Krazy Low sites currently leaves A LOT to be desired!
There seems to be copy on both the Krazy Low and OmniQ sites which has been ‘borrowed’ from other sites – which isn’t good.
Sadly, Krazylow also seem to know little about the CAN-SPAM act, as their original emails are clearly in breach of it. The initial emails from Anuradha didn’t have any information about the company who was sending them, there was no information about where they were located, no opt-out information and arguably the subject was ‘deceptive’ (as no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google). They’re also in breach of PECR as I’m a sole trader based in the UK and you can’t send unsolicited business emails to individuals/sole traders without prior consent.
I don’t care where a company is based. I care about if you spam me or not – and in doing so possibly break multiple pieces of international anti-spam legislation. I also care whether what a company says on their site is accurate…
Putting all of the above together, I wouldn’t let Krazylow anywhere near my sites!
But, as ever, the choice is yours…
[Edit: 16th August 2021 – On 9th August 2021, Tarun sent me an invite/contact request via Alignable.com (a small business referral network), even though in our emails I’d asked not to have any more contact with Krazylow and he said he’d removed me from their list…]