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 the email came in from an ‘Elena’ who was using an @dwrtechnology.com address that included the word ‘seo’.
The subject of the spam was “See how to improve your website rank.” and went:
Dear Sir/Madam, [even though it came into my james@ email…]
Hope you are doing well!
I am here to alert you that you are having a lot many issues on your website jpc-design.com and it does require some SEO on it. Don’t panic and take wrong decisions. Just sit back and relax. We are a leading SEO company that deals in both on-page and off-page issues.
We can also see that your website is jpc-design.com is listed under the Google sponsored listing for which you pay a significant amount. But sometimes this sponsored listing or PPC creates bidding wars. You pay for every single click on it. It definitely hurts! So, why not try organic SEO for your website and boost its growth?
I guarantee our team will give you successful results above your expectation. Our main AIM is customer satisfaction and timely reporting. You can check our client reviews on our website as well. It’s our pleasure that most of our clients remain with us for more than one year.
I also prepared a Free Analysis Report for your website. If you are interested I can show the report.
Waiting for revert mail…
Warm Regards,
Elena
Marketing Manager,
DWR Technology Pvt. Ltd.
Well first off, I’ve NEVER had a ‘Google sponsored listing‘, so that’s rubbish straight away! I’m also not sure what ‘revert mail’ is… But I replied because you know me and SEO spammers…
Hi Elena,
That sounds interesting. Please send over the audit report!
James
The next day I got the below reply. This time from an @dreamwebrank.net email address.
Hello There,
Thanks for your interest in our initial email.My name is Elena and I represent Dream Web Rank Technology Pvt. Ltd. To know more www.dreamwebrank.com
If you use what’s app or Skype, please send me your’s or add me [Skype and Whatsapp removed for privacy] for fast communication.
We will offer you guaranteed first-page Google Rankings for all of your Keywords. I will suggest you to go for SEO promotion we will bring all your keywords in first rank for sure.
I have attached Our SEO Ranking Portfolio along with audit report. kindly have a look at it.
Let us fix all the issues on your website and promote your business in your targeted region which would boost your online presence. Also, we will promote your business over social media which would further enhance your online reach
Our SEO Package starts from:
SEO 110USD /Month for 12 Keywords+ SMO weekly 4 postings in all social media sites with 120 backlinks.
Work Report: We will send you the bi-weekly work report with all the details work done during that time frame as well as ranking status, so that you can track the progress of work.
In Brief, You can check out our SEO Service includes:
Onsite SEO: Google Analytics Goal Setup, XML Sitemap, Website Form Validation, Broken Link Fixing.. etc
On Page SEO: Title, Meta Tags, Header, Landing Web Page Creation, Mobile SEO, Social Media, Blog Integration.. etc.
Off-Page SEO: Link Building, Article, Blog Writing & Posting, Directory, social Bookmarking submission, Competitor’s Backlink Anaysis & Submission, Local Listing..etc
Social Media Promotion: Promotion on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn, Pinterest, Image Sharing.. etc
If you are interested, you have a chance to earn yourself a business for life. Do share your thoughts either via Email or skype and I would be glad to proceed further.
Awaiting your response.
Regards,
Elena
Sales Manager,
DWR Technology Pvt Ltd.
Plot No: 425, Nageswar Tangi
Bhubaneswar, India
[Contacts removed for privacy]
Now you might have spotted that Elena said “We will offer you guaranteed first-page Google Rankings for all of your Keywords”. Well, Google has something to say about cliams 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?”
Hmmmmm. First they said I was paying for ads, when I don’t. And now they’re making ranking claims which Google says to be aware of. Not a good start is it?
The next day I got the following from Elena with the subject “Any Update ?”:
Hello There,
Hope you are doing well.I hope you received my last email. Do you have any updates for me regarding that?
Awaiting your response.
Thanks,
Elena
So I thought I’d ask some questions to them…
Hi Elena,
Please can you tell me why you think it’s ok to spam people – breaking multiple international anti-spam laws, such as CAN-SPAM in the USA and PECR in the UK (there are similar laws in other countries including Canada, Australia and Singapore).
Do you think it’s ok to spam people to get business?
Also, please can you tell me why ALL of the ‘not good’ items on your report are either untrue, misleading or irrelevant to SEO?
Thanks.
I’ve not heard back after that one… Yet another SEO spammer that doesn’t like answering questions!
Their Report & Recommendations
There was a PDF file attached as the ‘Analysis Report’. It was broken down into three sections: Existing Technical Factors, Existing On Page Factors and Off Page Factors.
Each of these sections then had different items with each have a ‘Factor’ (i.e. the title of the item), the ‘Importance (why ?)’, ‘Value (if any ?)’, ‘How Does Your Site Score’ and ‘Action (if any ?)’.
I’ll go through the items it says my site is ‘Not Good’ for.
Existing Technical Factors
Domain Age – The older the domain, the better will be the ranking in Search Engines.
This is true (to an extent). They also correctly listed my domain as being registered in February 2004 and it’s due to expire in February 2026 (so in four and a half years time). But in the action column it says “Please extend your site registration for maximum possibleyears whichwould enhance the reliability of your site for its visitors.” So having a domain that’s been registered over 17 years and is due to be renewed in another four 1/2 years is somehow ‘Not Good’ for domain age?!?!? That is baffling and simply WRONG.
Reverse IP – 350 other sites hosted on this server – Search Engines like clean and static IPs..
This is total rubbish and an SEO myth and has been so for YEARS (https://www.seoblog.com/2017/09/dedicated-address-improve-rankings/). And it’s also something that seems to be in every ‘report’ you get from Qtonix (the worst of the SEO spammers and this report is formatted in a VERY similar way to the Qtonix ones…)! Again, this is WRONG. (I use Cloudflare for my site – more on this below – and so Dream Web Rank, so if I’d get a ‘Not Good’ for this, so would they…)
Existing On Page Factors
Meta Title – Brief and relevant title is highly appealing to Search Engines and visitors alike.
They said i have one (because I do!) and in the ‘Action’ column it said “The title you have incorporated needs to be more descriptive regarding your products, services and with some targeted keywords. Your title should be 60 to 65 characters.”
Well 60 is the recommend limit and my title is 56 characters. So I’ve got a ‘not good’ title because it’s 4 ‘characters short’. That is total rubbish and WRONG.
Meta Description – Brief and relevant description is highlyconsideredby Search Engines and visitors alike.
Again they say I’ve got a description (yay) but in the ‘Action’ column it says “Your description needs to be more descriptive with some targeted keywords and the services that you provide. Your description should be 135 to 150 characters.” My description is 145 characters long – SO WITHIN THE NUMBER THEY SPECIFY YET I GET A ‘NOT GOOD’… so, yeah, WRONG.
Meta Keywords – Brief and relevant keywords are highly considered by Search Engines.
I get a ‘Not Good’ because I haven’t got a meta keywords tag and I haven’t. Do you know why I haven’t? BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T BEEN USED BY GOOGLE SINCE 2009! Google said back then not to bother with the tag. So yet again WRONG.
Off Page Factors
Availability of search facility – Not Present
There’s a search button throughout the blog – where it’s needed (the only other pages on the site are the home page, the about page and the contact, all of which are in the main navigation.). This is WRONG.
Broken Links – 10
Hmm, OK, there were some broken/missing links. When I checked, there were 8, not 10… And the funny thing is that 7 of the 8 were links to the sites of other SEO spammers which are no longer online! The other broken link was to a page about GDPR from the UK government which has moved. I’ve sorted all these out now. However, it should also be noted that ‘external’ broken links like this have no direct on the SEO of a site… This is IRRELEVANT (to SEO).
The next row in the report gave me a ‘Good’ although it’s wrong! They said I have social media sharing buttons on the site – but I don’t! Oops…
Ensuring quality of back links – Major search engine accord high value to links rich in content.
Erm, ok. Fine. That’s good SEO stuff. However, I get the value of ‘1000’, which is just plain odd (and we’ll see it again later). This just seems like a made up number to make you think you need them to get you backlinks…
Live support – Not Present – Live chat or live help is important for better communication.
Erm, hmmm, yeah, OK. Well, it’s the first time I’ve seen this being claimed as an SEO issue! Having live support could be of some help if you’re a big company that needs to offer live support. I don’t on my site. This will have NO EFFECT on SEO. This is IRRELEVANT.
The next line is just plain odd… I get a ‘Not Good’ for Image Alt-tag. However, the ‘Value’ column says they’re ‘Present’ (because they are – that’s good!). Yet the ‘Action’ column says “You can install the Google Analytics to track the visitors.” We’ll see this ‘Action’ again shortly… I think this row is just a mistake in their report. But it’s quite a big one. Hmmmm….
There’s a row for ‘Html Validation’. It says there’s 1 error. Only there isn’t an ‘error’ on my page. There’s a ‘warning’. There’s a big difference between the two. The ‘warning’ is a really annoying thing that I can’t do anything about due to how my site works. There are seven ‘errors’ on their site though…
The next row is another confusing one. I get a ‘Not Good’ for Headings, even though they say they’re present (because they are). Again, they seemed to have really got in a muddle about things!
Google Analytics – Not Found – Google Analytics is a tool, which lets you see how many people visit your site and how they interact with it.
Yes, Google Analytics does do that. However, I value the privacy of the visitors to my site, so I use a privacy friendly analytics tool. Also having Google Analytics on a site has NO effect on SEO. So this is IRRELEVANT. (This is the row where the stray ‘action’ from above should only have been…)
Link Popularity – Greater number of quality back links boost your site’s ranking.
Agani, general sound SEO advice. However, again I got a ‘Value’ of 1000. And in the ‘Action’ column this also said I needed to install Google Analytics! Their report really is a bit of a mess isn’t it?!
The last row in the report is Browser Compatibility. I get a ‘Good’ (yay!). However, it lists the browsers that your site needs to be compatible with as: 1. IE 6.0, 2. Mozilla, 3. Chrome. Well… IE6 had it’s last release in April 2008. IE7 was actually released in October 2006. IE6 hasn’t been a browser you should care about for at least 10 years. My Mozilla, I take it they actually mean Firefox (Mozilla is the company which makes the Firefox browser).
OK, fine check on Firefox and Chrome as they still exist and are very relevant browsers. But listing IE6 on a document these days is frankly, astonishing and really tells you all you need to know about the quality of this report…
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://www.dreamwebrank.com/
For HTML Validation, my site has no errors. Their site has 7 errors and 9 warnings.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 21 errors and 79 contrast errors, again, not exactly good. My site has no errors of either kind!
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:
Performance: 21
Accessibility: 68
Best Practices: 80
SEO: 92
My site gets:
Performance: 99
Accessibility: 100
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 100
So my site is MUCH better across the board, and especially in ‘Performance’.
Remember that I mentioned Cloudflare above? Cloudflare is a service which helps with site speed and security. I use it on this site and on my of my other sites and those of my clients. Only getting a 21/100 for Performance, when you’re using Cloudflare is really quite something (in a not good way)!
The alt text on their logo is ‘logo’. That’s really not good for SEO, accessibility or usability, it should be ‘Dream Web Rank’.
They have NINE Heading 1s on their home page. You should only have one. This is an SEO basic.
They have some social media icons in the site’s footer. One is for Google+. However, that service closed nearly 2 1/2 years ago. But then the copyright in the footer still says 2017 – so perhaps that helps explain that then…
There are three ‘Latest Blog’ posts shown on their home page. Only these posts don’t actually exist! They look like they do from the home page, (there are title/photos/dates and a few words of the opening paragraph) but the links to them don’t actually go anywhere. They’re also all have dates in January 2017…
I really have no idea what they’re doing on the home page if they don’t actually exist. I’ve tried Googling the opening lines as well and they’re only on the Dream Web Rank site. This is one of the most odd and ‘?!?!’ things I’ve seen on the site of an SEO spammer.
There are email address in the header, footer and on the contact page. But of course they’re not actually linked so you can’t easily use them… There’s also their logo in the footer. Only it’s not sized properly and crops really badly.
They have a ‘Privacy & Policy’ page but the contents of it are next to worthless. It really doesn’t tell you anything – at least not enough to comply with most privacy laws around the world like GDPR.
In Elena’s email, and in the site’s footer and contact page is an address in Bhubaneswar – so we know they’re located there.
There are some testimonials on the home page of the Dream Web Rank site and next to them are pictures of supposedly who left the quotes. The testimonials might all be genuine. However, the ‘people’ very much ARE NOT. They’re all stock images!
Googling these testimonials, shows us another site for Dream Web Rank at dreamforweb.com (which was registered in November 2012) On this site, they claim to be a top SEO company in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Although we know they’re 100% in Bhubaneswar. So that’s, erm, interesting…
There’s also another Testimonials page on their main site. This also uses the same names and stock photos as on the home page. However, the names are with different stock photos! There are also additional names and photos on this page. I think some of these additional photos might be genuine, but others certainly aren’t… (At least two come from Twitter/Instagram accounts with completely different names.)
I really don’t understand why SEO spammers feel the need to use fake photos (and names?!) next to testimonials…
Elena also spammed my from yet another domain dwrtechnology.com which was registered in February 2020 and he replies to me came from another domain dreamwebrank.net which was registered in August 2020.
What is it with SEO spammers and having lots of domains?! It’s probably because they don’t want their ‘main’ domain to get a bad reputation from spamming people…
Conclusion
Dream Web Rank Technologies are another SEO company that uses multiple domains for their emails and spam.
Their spam contained flat out lies and their ‘report’ was full of errors (both structural and factual) and misinformation.
Their own site leaves a lot to be desired in how it’s put together.
And they make claims in their emails which Google says to beware of!
So if Dream Web Rank Technologies send you an email, the delete button might be a good option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours..