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 time, we get multiple spams and multiple spammy SEO companies all for the price of one! (It all gets a bit confusing but I’ll try and keep it as simple as I can.)
The spam emails (and there were plenty) came into the contact form on my big Christmas site.
The first was from a ‘P Spencer’ (I normally remove the last name of spammers for privacy reasons. However, I know all the names of these spammers are fake, so they’re all here!). ‘P’ was using a Gmail address.
The subject of the spam was “Professional Graphic Design important for Business ……….” and the spam went:
Hello
I have found that your website’s design is not professionally designed compared with your competitors.
That is why we have come to you ..We will provide you PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP DESIGN MOCK UP ..If you like our work,then proceed next …
Our design will be more SEO friendly and the User experience will be much better for traffic conversion.
Features of the Design ……
Properly Architect
High-Quality Graphic Design
Error Free Coding
Call to Action button
Totally Responsive Web Design (Mobile, Tab, Laptop, Desktop & Giant Screen friendly)
Proper Mobile Optimization
Professional Content Writing Support
Cross-Device Checking
Cross-Browser Checking
Onsite SEO Support
One-year FREE Website Maintenance
All pages different design structure
Blog Page, Privacy & Terms Page, Testimonial page, Get quote page Create > Social Media account Integrate
Website Loading Speed Optimization (As much as possible)
All Images Optimization
Accessible to All Users
Browser Consistency
Good Error Handling
Image Alt Tag Optimization
Robots.txt Optimization
XML sitemap Optimization
Custom 404 page design
Google Analytics & Webmaster Tool SetupWe are charging $59 only for all! This is the monthly charge and will continue for 1 year.
Possible to talk via whatsapp or skype messenger ? So we will discuss more .I want to do a video call and show our office to all.It’s for trust .. We are also available on Zoom and Google Meet for project discussion.
We are looking forward to work with you for a long-term business relationship.
Looking forward
Regards
Within a few minutes, there was another one. This time from ‘Spafford Jackson’ (I mean, that’s a completely real name isn’t it?!) and it came from a different Gmail account. The subject was “WHY UNIQUE CONTENT IS SO IMPORTANT?” and it went:
Hello
This year we are planning to work hard for your website and bring you more traffic from search.
The plan I have come up with offers a One time charge. Let me explain to you what is included in this offer.
50 Articles and Press Releases Writing
Posting them on PR websites & Blogs.
Word Limit –Articles 1000 words
Press Release (PR) 500 words
Link Back to your website.Coming to the charges – We are charging $5 for each Article and PRs = ($5 x 50) = $250 Including Paypal Charges and $50 for the Submission charges.
Grand Total is $300 Including Paypal Charges (This is ONE TIME CHARGES)
This will not only increase the search and overall traffic but will improve your backlink quality and brand value.
This offer will also help you to improve the Domain Authority and Page Authority to outrank your competitors.
We are very keen to implement this service for your project.
Possible to talk via whatsapp or skype messenger ? So we will discuss more .I want to do a video call and show our office to all.It’s for trust .. We are also available on Zoom and Google Meet for project discussion.
Regards
Spafford Jackson
And within the hour another one arrived! This time from ‘Branded Ortner’ (another amazingly real looking name…), from yet another different Gmail account, with the subject “Google reviews Important for your business …” and it went:
Hello,
How are you doing? Hope you are fine.
We have noticed that your Business Listing ( Google ) is missing a lot of traffic and not ranking well. We can help you with your Google My Business ( GMB ) with real high-quality reviews.
If you are asking why you need Google reviews then here are some reasons that will tell you you should –
Google reviews help your business build trust and credibility.
One of the key factors in the customer decision-making process.
Google Reviews help your business listing to rank higher in the searches.
Positive reviews can improve the ROI
Creates Brand Awareness and transparency.
and more …We would like to offer you 100% effective Google My Business reviews at an unbeatable price…
So, Do you like to increase the local traffic?
Do you want to Rank in Google Maps?
Do you like to increase the leads/sales generated from your website?
Do you like to OutRank your Competitors?We provide a complete solution for your Online Business needs.
I would like to have the opportunity to work for you to give you better local ranking and traffic for your website.
We are a team of 100+ professionals which includes 18 full-time SEO experts, 15 full-time developers, 4 full-time App Developer, 20 Full-time content writer, 30 Marketing Executive, 8 Project coordinator. We are proud to inform you that our team handled 100+ SEO projects and many website design & development works. Each team is managed by a team leader.Contact us for the best quote for your Google My Business Reviews Now!
Contact us for the best quote for your website & we will help to Rank You top 10 positions in Google SERP.
30 Reviews price is only $139 + Paypal charge (THIS IS ONE TIME CHARGE)
Looking forward to hearing something from you soon…
Regards
Well, there we are. Lots of spam all sent within 90 minutes. You might be asking yourself “How do you know they’re all from the same spammers?”; well that would be because they all came from the same IP address! One which is in Kolkata. They also all put that they’re in India on the form as well! (I’ve got a “country you’re from” field on the form to help me answer questions from around the world.)
As I’m really interested in the SEO side of spamming, I only replied to ‘P’. (I also find it amazing that ‘Branded’ knows that my Google Business listing isn’t doing well. It’s especially impressive considering that I don’t actually have a Google Business listing for my Christmas site!)
Anyway, I replied to ‘P’:
Hi,
It sounds like you think you can do a lot for my site. What you do think is wrong with my site at the moment (both design wise and SEO wise)?
Who do you think my competitors are?
Also, please can you tell me more about your company? Where are you located?
I can’t do a call at the moment, so please reply be email.
Thanks,
James
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’…
That got me this copy & paste reply from ‘P’:
Hello
Thanks for your reply.
Possible to talk via whatsapp ,Signal or skype messenger ? Our whatsapp ,Signal, number is [removed for privacy] & skype id is :[removed for privacy] ,so we will discuss more .I want to do a video call and show our office to all.It’s for trust ..
We are also available on Zoom and Google Meet for project discussion.
Signal > [removed for privacy]
Whatsapp > [removed for privacy]
Skype id > [removed for privacy][Erm, so they told me their contacts TWICE – I’d also say I couldn’t do a call… Also, the Skype ID was yet another different email address!]
Let me introduce us to you first,
top10seorank.com is Digital Marketing company, providing SEO, Web Design, Logo Design, Web Development, Web Applications Development, Online Reputation Management ( To remove negative links from Google search), CRO, SMO, Mobile APP Development ( IOs, Android and Hybrid ) & moreGuaranteed Results: I promise from the very first day you’ll get quality leads and the first month you will find improvement in Keywords position, Improve Organic Search Traffic. Within 3 to 4 months your 70% keywords will be in the top ranking position on Google and drag more organic search traffic on your website.
Our Price is now $ 199 /Monthly
Before,We start the We Need Some Information…
Admin Details for website On-Page SEO work
Main Keywords from your side
Targeted main areas and local areas
Access to available Social Media.
Google business listing access
Company name and address
Google Analytics & Webmaster Details (If available)
Top 3 competitors websiteHere is the list of services we will provide within the $199.
Writing Content for the necessary segment within the website.
Onsite Optimisation –
Keywords Optimization
Keywords Mapping ( Content Optimization )
Title Tag Optimization
Meta Description Optimization
Heading Tag Optimization
Image Optimization
Interlinking Between Pages
Website Re-Structuring for SEO
Example: Alphabetical Menu Dropdown, Page URL structure and etc.
Structured Data Markup
404 Page Setup
Loading Speed Development ( Google Insight + GTmetrix )
Mobile SEO Optimisation
Soft 404 Error Check
Onsite Blogging ( Weekly once )
Robots.txt Optimization
XML Sitemap Optimization
W3C HTML Validation
Search Console Monitoring
Google Analytics Monitoring
30 Days Interval Website Full Audit ( Linkassistant and SEMrush )
and more.Off Pages Optimisation :
1. Web 2.0:
Profile Link
Social Web 2.0
Blog Web 2.0 ( Open Source Network )
Web 2.0 Blog Post Promotion2. Article:
Article Submission
Submitted Article Promotion3. PDF:
PDF Creation
PDF Submission
Submitted PDF Promotion4. PPT:
5. PPT Creation
6. PPT Submission
7. Submitted PPT PromotionLocal Business Listings
Directory Submissions
Bookmark Submissions8. Social Media Optimization:
Business Profile Optimization
Improving Likes/Followers
Daily Posting
Improving Traffic Engagement and moreIf you think, everything is ok, then we will email to you the Agreement & Invoice on our company pad.
Some of our examples work: If you want to see more examples ,i will send you 100 + examples work ..
[I’ve removed these for privacy]
Looking forward to hearing something from you soon….
Thanks & Regards
So a pretty standard “we’ll do everything in the world” type email.
An hour AFTER this reply came in, they sent ALL THREE of the spams again (obviously just copied and pasted as they were identical, even down to the same fake names), through my contact form – even though they’d just replied to me!!!
Anyway, I replied again. Now they’d asked for some information straight away which is VERY sensitive security and privacy wise (like all my logins), so I certainly wouldn’t let them have that! (Why would you even ask for that so early…?!) and I also asked them to answer my, not unreasonable, question:
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. However, as I said in my first reply, I CANNOT do a call at the moment.
You asked for some details, here are my replies:
> Admin Details for website On-Page SEO work
Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!> Main Keywords from your side
Christmas Traditions, Christmas Around the World, The Christmas Story for Children> Targeted main areas and local areas
Global.> Access to available Social Media.
Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!> Google business listing access
Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons! [And also because I don’t have one but I’m not telling them that!]> Company name and address
These details are on the site.> Google Analytics & Webmaster Details (If available)
Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!> Top 3 competitors website
Why can’t you tell me this? My site is about Christmas information…I also asked you “What you do think is wrong with my site at the moment (both design wise and SEO wise)”, please can you answer that.
Thanks.
Then I got this email (directly to my email, not through the contact form) from ‘P’ but this time about reviews. (See I did say this would get confusing…)
Hello ,
We are planning to add USER REVIEWS FOR THE WEBSITE SERVICES you have on the website.
Research shows that people tend to buy products that have more positive reviews rather than products without reviews.
As a matter of fact, if you see Amazon and other shopping websites they use the customer reviews for the products as a tool for marketing. We would like to implement the same for your website.
Here is how we will go –
Develop a Section for the user to add reviews
Writing Positive (5 stars) Reviews for all the products
** We will write 100 Reviews for your productsPosting reviews on related products
Schema on Reviews
Option to approve reviews before going live.
and more…This will cost $449 + Paypal Charge Only (This is One time Charge). It will be a one-off fee. No additional charges will be added thereafter.
** If you need more than 100 reviews then please let us know the number and we shall estimate the price for you.
Here are some points why you should take this package for better marketing and conversion.
People like to buy a product if others have bought the same.
Reviews can boost your SEO with the help of Schema
The Reviews will make you more trustworthy
Reviews will help you have better conversion.
A direct impact on Sales
This is a one time fee. You don’t need to pay extra.
But I’ve never asked about that; and they’ve still not answered the questions that I did ask. (Also, this had the ‘Skype ID’ email in the footer.) So I asked again…
Hi,
I didn’t ask you for anything about ‘user reviews’. And if you look at my site you will see that I do not sell anything!!!
Please can you answer the question I’ve asked you – for the THIRD time now: “What you do think is wrong with my site at the moment (both design wise and SEO wise)?”
Thanks
That got me this one line reply:
If you seo services and design services let us know
Erm… OK. So I replied explaining what emails we’d got going (It must be tricky keeping track of all the spam you’re sending, when you’re a serial spammer like these guys…)
Hi
You emailed me and I replied to you this morning on an email about SEO with a subject “Professional Graphic Design important for Business”
Please can you check that and respond to that!
It was confusing as you then sent that email about user reviews, which I hadn’t asked about…
Thanks!
Then I got a reply back on the ‘main’ SEO email topic…
Hello
Thank you for your reply.
It’s alright we can communicate via email.
Coming to your answers,
>Admin Details for website On-Page SEO work
>Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!
Alright, but If I need to make any changes for the SEO and If I send the change to you will you be able to update that to the website?>Main Keywords from your side
>Christmas Traditions, Christmas Around the World, The Christmas Story for Children
I have got this, Thank you>Targeted main areas and local areas
>Global.
Okay, Thank you>Access to available Social Media.
>Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!
Okay, so the same goes for Social media, if I need to post or optimize something I will send them to you to update. Hope that’s okay with you!>Google business listing access
>Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!
Okay, We are good!>Company name and address
>These details are on the site.
Got it.>Google Analytics & Webmaster Details (If available)
>Sorry but I will not give this to you at this point. This is for security and privacy reasons!
How can I measure the progress then? I am not asking for direct access to the analytics and webmaster from you. Rather you could add my email id as a user so I can track the progress. I use SEMrush but it only shows search traffic but not explaining the details like analytics.>Top 3 competitors website
>Why can’t you tell me this? My site is about Christmas information…
I got this, Thank youI have been checking your past 6 months of search traffic and found they are declining. Check the Image below –
[There was an image from an SEO site which ‘guesses’ your traffic – although it can’t know. More on this below…]We need to Optimize the Onsite, technical SEO and build high authority backlinks to improve that search traffic. Need a chance to work on your website SEO.
Regarding the design, it seems fine at this moment till I get the data for the conversion, This can be measured from Google Analaytics.
Looking forward
Regards
Well, ok. So they still want my logins, even though I still basically know nothing about the company and haven’t agreed to work with them…
As for my site having less traffic over the last six months. Well, IT’S JULY. My site is about CHRISTMAS. July is as about as far from Christmas in the year as you can get. So this is not exactly surprising!!!
I then got another email from ‘P’ with some SEO/technical things about the site (it was also on a different email subject which didn’t help to make things clearer)…
Hello,
We Checked Properly whychristmas.com (it is HTML5)
Christmas Traditions, Christmas Around the World, The Christmas Story, Christmas Fun! – whychristmas?com
**Meta Title is “Length: 104 character(s)”.Make your title 50 to 60 Characters
**Need each page Unique Title & Use most Important keywords
**For Internal Pages start your title tags with your most important keywords.** Length: 157 character(s)
** Keep it short and to the point; the ideal meta description should contain between 230 and 300 characters (spaces included).
**Ensure that each of your web pages have a unique, straightforward meta description that contains most important keywords. These keywords are especially important because they appear in bold when they match the user’s search query (See the Google Preview below).
Alt Tag: Alt Attribute We found so many images without alt tag.
Example:
https://www.whychristmas.com/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
https://www.whychristmas.com/share/whychristmas.jpgKeyword Consistency:
*** Not GoodNeed to Target Proper keywords
HTags Errors (Headings Tags Tag) –
[There was a table showing that my home page has one Heading 1 and 4 Heading 4s.]Copy Content: We found copy content from your website. PLease check bellow
[There was an image, showing a list of pages on the site and ‘matching words’.]
Touchscreen Readiness:
**Make the most important buttons/links large enough to be tapped easily.Mobile Frameworks: No mobile frameworks have been detected. –
** Mobile or responsive frameworks are an important part of website optimization as they assist developers in creating applications which are applicable to multiple devices.Deadlink Checker: Error 19
[There was an image showing a list of ‘dead links’ on the site.]
Website Speed Tips :
Mobile Speed: 76/100
[There was an image showing a result from Google’s PageSpeed Tool]
Desktop Speed: 96/100
[There was an image showing a result from Google’s PageSpeed Tool]
Website Performance:
[There was an image from Google’s Lighthouse Tool]
Schema.org Markup: Not Found
Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/whychristmas**Need attractive cover photo
**Need more Fb notes
**Need post more better picture and quality content with #tagTwitter™ Account:
https://twitter.com/whychristmas**Need attractive Twitter cover picture
**Need more tweets use #tag
**Need more re tweetsInstagram Account: Not Found
Youtube Account:
https://www.youtube.com/user/whychristmas
**Need more subscribers (Only 269 subscribers)Blog: Not found a Blog on this website.
Note: If you want to solve this problem then we can help you at affordable price. If you give us a chance then we can prove ourselves to you. Please let me know. After your conformation we will start the work.
If you have any messenger ID(s) then that will help us to discuss.
We are always Available on –
Skype: [removed for privacy but it was different to the Gmail one before!]Will wait for your reply.
Regards
Lots of things there, which we’ll look at below!
The next day (and before I could reply to ‘P’), I had some more spam come through the contact form… This time it came from ‘willams david’ (a name we’ve come across before – more on this below!), with the subject “This year we have revised our price for SEO, Web Design and Development. …” and went:
Hello
May the New Year [IT’S JULY] bring joy, peace, and happiness to you and your family.
This year we have revised our price for SEO, Web Design and Development.We have tried to work for you last year but due to some reason, we couldn’t get the job from you.
This year we are hopeful to get the job from you and show you progressive results.
Possible to talk via whatsapp or skype messenger ? So we will discuss more .I want to do a video call and show our office to all.It’s for trust .. We are also available on Zoom and Google Meet for project discussion.
Please reply to us back to get the revised quotation.
Looking forward
Regards
This spam had a phone number in the ‘country’ field, which makes me think a bot rather than a real person sent it. The phone number helped lead to an interesting discovery (more below…!) This spam was also sent from an IP in Kolkata.
I then got another email from a different ‘David’ (using the ‘Skype ID’ email) with more info about the speed of my site. I’ve won’t put it here as it just duplicated lots of things from from ‘P’s email.
So I replied to ‘P’ and David number 2…
Hi ‘P’ and ‘David’,
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!
On your last email, you had these speed assessments:
>Google page speed Checker > Mobile > 78 (Need to Increase)
>Google page speed Checker > Desktop >Error
>webpagetest.org >> Speed Is Poor Need To ImproveWell, when I run the test on PageSpeed, I get over 90/100 on mobile and 99/100 on Desktop. So both VERY fast and certainly no ‘error’ on desktop! (I know these scores vary a bit depending on the time of day/server/dns latency but you get a good guide.)
And on webpagetest.org my site gets and ‘A’ for speed across the board – i.e. THE BEST SCORE IT GIVES!
Let’s look at your site on those tests shall we?
On PageSpeed you get 64/100 on Desktop and 31/100 on mobile.
And on webpagetest.org you get an A, two Cs, a D, an F and an X. So not very good then.
You want to tell me how to make my site faster, when:
1. It’s already REALLY fast and
2. It’s MUCH MUCH faster than your own site.
REALLY?!
Please can you tell me why you spammed me multiple times via my contact form? And Why did you spam me this morning again, WHEN WE’VE ALREADY BEEN TALKING OVER EMAIL? And why do you use gmail accounts and not your domain emails?
And I know all of the spam came from you, because it’s all from IPs in Kolkata and have your phone number on them!
Why should I (or anyone) trust or use a company that spams from multiple random accounts and very clearly fake names?
Why should I (or anyone) trust or use a company that’s got multiple sites (Top 10 SEO Rank/COD Media/Brand Netizen – they’re all you aren’t they?!)? Oh and you’re also connected with SEO Ground/Aotwo Web & Technology Pvt. Ltd. aren’t you?!
Why should I (or anyone) trust or use a company that’s got multiple sites, none of which are set-up very well. Yet you want to tell me how to run my site!
PLEASE STOP SPAMMING ME FROM ALL YOUR COMPANIES!!!
I then got another email from ‘P’ saying they were waiting for my reply. So I said, I had replied and pasted in my above reply. Two days later… I GOT ANOTHER EMAIL SAYING THEY WERE WAITING FOR MY REPLY!
So I replied (again), saying that I’d already replied twice and pasted in my initial reply (again).
I’ve not heard back after that one…
Their Report & Recommendations
As you can see from my final email to ‘P’, I refuted some of their claims. But let’s take a look at what ‘Top 10 SEO Rank’ said about my site:
We Checked Properly whychristmas.com (it is HTML5)
This is true (and good, although they don’t tell you that!). They don’t say there are no validation errors (which you want), unlike their site… (more on this below)
Meta Title is “Length: 104 character(s)”.Make your title 50 to 60 Characters
Yes the home page’s meta title is a bit long at 104 characters. However, the word Christmas is in the first 60 characters three times! The length is primarily what’s shown on search results, so ideally you want all of that to ‘show’, but being a bit long doesn’t really ‘hurt’ you as such.
Need each page Unique Title & Use most Important keywordsFor Internal Pages start your title tags with your most important keywords.
They already are! (So this is irrelevant.)
Length: 157 character(s)
Keep it short and to the point; the ideal meta description should contain between 230 and 300 characters (spaces included).
Hmmm, it’s normally recommend to keep it at 160 characters – I’d say that 230 to 300 is really too long! So this is WRONG.
Ensure that each of your web pages have a unique, straightforward meta description that contains most important keywords. These keywords are especially important because they appear in bold when they match the user’s search query.
They already do! (So this is irrelevant.)
Alt Tag: Alt Attribute We found so many images without alt tag.
Example:
https://www.whychristmas.com/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png
https://www.whychristmas.com/share/whychristmas.jpg
This is just WRONG. All the images on the site have relevant alt tags – even if they are ’empty’ (which is used for purely decorative images). What’s worse is that the two images they list CANNOT have alt tags as they are found in ‘meta’ tags – and so DO NOT have alt tags.
This is either complete ineptitude on Top 10 SEO Rank’s part as any SEO company should know that – or they’re just lying and making errors up…
Keyword Consistency:
Not Good
Erm, OK. Well actually not ok because this is wrong. My site is full of relevant keywords!
Need to Target Proper keywords
Again, the site does – so WRONG and irrelevant!
HTags Errors (Headings Tags Tag) –
[There was a table showing that my home page has one Heading 1 and 4 Heading 4s.]
My site uses headings thought out the site appropriately and where needed. Saying there are ‘errors’ just because a page doesn’t have any heading 3s, etc., when not needed, is just WRONG.
Copy Content: We found copy content from your website. PLease check bellow
[There was an image, showing a list of pages on the site and ‘matching words’.]
I think they mean ‘duplicate’ content – not ‘copy’ content… Their image gave no idea what they were searching for. So this is irrelevant at best in this context.
Touchscreen Readiness:
Make the most important buttons/links large enough to be tapped easily.
They are. (So this is irrelevant.)
Mobile Frameworks: No mobile frameworks have been detected. –
Mobile or responsive frameworks are an important part of website optimization as they assist developers in creating applications which are applicable to multiple devices.
This is WRONG. There’s no ‘framework’ on the site to make it mobile friendly – because it’s not needed. You can use normal HTML and CSS to make a site mobile friendly – and mine is.
Deadlink Checker: Error 19
[There was an image showing a list of ‘dead links’ on the site.]
OK… well first off there were 17 not 19! I have quite a few links out from my site to other sites (about Christmas things). I check these a few times each year, and especially in the run up to Christmas.
Several of the ‘dead’ links were because videos on YouTube I’d linked to had been made private and a couple of embedded photos from Flickr had been deleted (you get two errors for each Flickr image due to how they’re embedded).
It took me five minutes to fix things. Now there are 3 errors – and that’s fine! These errors are because the servers they are on block things like dead link checkers, even though the links are just fine.
So simply giving a number of ‘errors’ from an automated tool doesn’t always tell you the full story…
Website Speed Tips : Mobile Speed: 76/100
[There was an image showing a result from Google’s PageSpeed Tool]
Well this is odd. When I run this test, I get 92/100 on mobile! This is MUCH better than their site…
Desktop Speed: 96/100
[There was an image showing a result from Google’s PageSpeed Tool]
When I run this test I get 99/100 of desktop! This is MUCH better than their site…
Website Performance:
[There was an image from Google’s Lighthouse Tool]
The image showed my site got these scores on Lighthouse:
Performance 75/100
Accessibility 100/100
Best Practises 87/100
SEO 93/100
However, when I run the test, I get:
Performance 87/100
Accessibility 100/100
Best Practises 93/100
SEO 93/100
Oh and my site is A LOT better than their site (more on that below).
It’s funny how I get consistently better results than them… You can get slight changes on these tools due to when you do the tests and how busy the internet is, etc. but to get numbers which are different they gave is a bit odd.
Schema.org Markup: Not Found
This is because it’s not needed! Schema is a special kind of code used to contain information about things like events and products. I don’t have them on my site, so I can’t use Schema!
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/whychristmas
**Need attractive cover photo
**Need more Fb notes
**Need post more better picture and quality content with #tag
Twitter™ Account: https://twitter.com/whychristmas
**Need attractive Twitter cover picture
**Need more tweets use #tag
**Need more re tweets
I’ll reply to both of these in one. The cover pictures are nice screenshots of my site. I’m very happy with them. During December (you know Christmas time) there are lots of posts, they could have easily seen this!
Instagram Account: Not Found
Yes. This is because I don’t want one!
Youtube Account:
https://www.youtube.com/user/whychristmas
**Need more subscribers (Only 269 subscribers)
I’d like some more subscribers too, but I’m not very active on YouTube, so I’m quite surprised there are that many!
Blog: Not found a Blog on this website.
Just like Instagram, I don’t want or need one…
So the only ‘real’ issue could be the dead links. However, none of the dead links were ‘internal’ (which is where you get big SEO problems) and they were quick to fix.
All of their other items were irrelevant, wrong, or in some cases – both!
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://top10seorank.com/
For HTML Validation, my site has no errors. Their site has 46 errors and 33 warnings! (Remember they said they’d go HTML validation checking on their long list. Shame they’ve not bothered on their own site then.)
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 46 errors and 7 contrast errors (which is fairly terrible). My site has no errors of either kind!
Using the GTMetrix speed test tool their site gets:
Overall Grade: B
Performance 87%
Structure 74%
My site gets:
Overall Grade: A
Performance 100%
Structure 100%
So my site is perfect and that score is actually quite good for SEO spammers!
However, their Lighthouse score of 25 is, erm, less good…
There’s no alt text on their logo. This is pretty terrible and an SEO basic. And remember they said I had issues with image alts – well, hmmm, yeah. Their logo is also in a Heading 5 tag – you shouldn’t do that.
They’ve got two Heading 1s – you shouldn’t do that. A page should only have one Heading 1.
There are links to ‘Terms and Conditions’ and ‘Privacy Policy’ pages in the footer. Only the links don’t go anywhere! (Looking in their sitemap, there are pages in existence, only there’s nothing on them!) Can you see why I didn’t want to give them my logins..?!
They’re also collecting full IP info over Google Analytics with cookies. But they don’t tell you that anywhere. This breaks multiple international privacy laws including GDPR.
In the footer, there are some social media links. The Twitter link goes to what looks to have been a personal account, only it’s been suspended. That’s not odd or concerning at all…!
There’s an Instagram icon, only it goes to a Tumblr site (which has nothing on it…)! There also a Pinterest link – there’s nothing on that either!
And they say I need social media help?!?!?
On their about page, there’s a heading ‘App Development’ with a line of text under it – only it’s filler latin text. So they can’t even change some basic text on their site…
I ran their site through the dead link checker as well. They have 21 errors (so more than mine) and basically of all them are to do with how their site is set-up (badly). Interestingly, a number of them are linking to another site (brandnetizen.com) which will come into play later in our investigations…!
So overall, the site isn’t set-up very well at all. But that’s just the start of things…
On their home page it says they’ve been in business since 2007. However, their domain was registered in October 2019!
On their about page it says “We are serving Search Engine Optimization services since 2007. It has been 8 years now…” Well, 2007+8=2015, so hmmmm.
And a Google of that sentence shows that it’s also on the site for another SEO company ‘COD Media’, who’s website appears to be basically IDENTICAL to the Top 10 SEO Rank site; and who are also in Kolkata. The COD Media domain was registered in April 2019. COD Media have got a Facebook link on their footer. The Facebook page was also created in April 2019.
Looking at the ‘Top 10’ portfolio page, I can find some of the sites listed and some have ‘made by’ type text for COD Media and also for another company – brandnetizen.tech…
And guess what… the sentence we Googled above also appears in the blurb on a links site for ‘best web firms’, for an SEO company called ‘Brandnetizen’!
AND a Google of the phone number which was on the bottom of the ‘user reviews’ email from ‘P’ and on the ‘willams david’ spam shows it as being on the footer of sites saying they were ‘made by’ Brandnetizen (and I’ve never seen phone numbers put in ‘made by links’ on sites before…)!
Oh, and guess what, Brandnetizen is also in Kolkata and the domain brandnetizen.tech was registered in February 2021!!!
And remember those dead links on the Top 10 SEO Rank site? Well, they went to brandnetizen.com (not .tech!). The .com domain was registered in July 2013 but now appears to be unused (although it’s not expired).
Googling brandnetizen.com turns up a few sites created on the likes of blogspot and wordpress.com to drive traffic to brandnetizen.com from 2016/2017.
If that’s not enough evidence, one of the opening lines on the ‘Top 10’ site is:
“The Name “Top 10 SEO Rank” refers to a connection between Brand, Internet and Citizen”
That makes no sense for “Top 10 SEO Rank” but it does make sense if your company is called “Brandnetizen”!
And on the ‘Top 10’ testimonials page, there are some testimonials with ‘Brandnetizen’ in them!
On the contact page of the brandnetizen.tech site (which is actually a bit better than the Top 10/COD sites but then it doesn’t have a Heading 1 tag…) is an address and phone numbers in London.
Googling these shows they’re for an SEO agency in London! The Indian number from the email and web site footers is NOWHERE on the site…!
The Brand Netizen site uses an off the shelf theme and those contacts are the ones in the demo content which comes with the theme… It seems that the theme company uses real contact/addresses in their demo sites, which is a bit odd in itself.
So Brand Netizen can’t be bothered to change the contacts in the theme they got for their site. This means that an SEO company could get calls from a site for an SEO company in India!!!
So we appear to have a spammy company that likes to send out multiple spam and also runs multiple spammy SEO companies!
BUT WAIT – THERE’S MORE!!!
On the ‘Top 10’ Testimonials page, there are two ‘Web Design Development’ testimonials with little pictures next to them. Running reverse image searches on the photos show that those same photos are used on testimonials belonging to another SEO spammer we had contact with in April – SEO Ground! Can you guess where SEO Ground are located – it’s Kolkata…
One of the testimonials is for a ‘Joe’ (a photo of a man). The reviews are different, but the photo’s the same. The other is for a ‘Andrea’ (a photo of a man). Well, on the SEO Ground, ‘Andrea’ is called ‘Kathleen’, although the image file name on the SEO Ground site is ‘Andrea’!
Also on the SEO Ground site it says (just like Top 10) that the company started in 2007 but (just like Top 10) the domain wasn’t registered until 2019 – that seems to sound familiar!
BUT THERE’S STILL MORE!!!
Remember that email from ‘willams david’? Well, the spam I got from SEO Ground came from ‘David Willams’ – the names are the other way around but he still can’t spell his name properly!
AND STILL MORE!!!
Also on the ‘Top 10’ testimonials page are ‘App Development’ reviews (although several of the apps no longer exist). The links to the apps on the Google Play Store, show that all the apps were made by a company called ‘Aotwo Web & Technology Pvt. Ltd.’.
Well… the SEO Ground domain was registered by ‘Aotwo Web & Technology Pvt. Ltd.’!!!
Conclusion
So here we have a network of at least four SEO spammers from Kolkata…
They all hide behind Gmail accounts with fake names.
None of them seem to know how to put their own sites together – but want to tell you how to run your site.
So if Top 10 SEO Rank / COD Media / Brandnetizen / SEO Ground say there’s something wrong with your site, the delete button might be a good option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours..