SEO Spam Email: Interactive Mission

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 a ‘Green’ (which very much seems like a real name…) who was using an @gmail.com email address with their ‘name’ in it as well as a several numbers. You know, the sort of email that looks very legit… (not)

The subject of the spam was “1st page Of Google !!” and went:

Hello,

I am working as Online SEO Consultant. We are an online Marketing firm based New Delhi India.

As per the trends in your industry – over 80% of people search for your products/services online and buy the same. These rankings also influence other channels of Sales as well.

It would be recommended if you go for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your site which would increase your web visibility and generate better prospects traffic on your website.

“There is a simple equation that is applicable to the online world”.

Ethical SEO -> Better Traffic -> Higher Sales.

Just wondering, if you would be interested improving the position of your website for the key terms your clients would be using to search your services.

In case you require any additional information, it shall be our pleasure to furnish the same. No obligations.

Do let me know if you are interested and I would be happy to give you details about our services, price list and offers.

I look forward to your reply.

Regards

Green

Hmmm, they mention “Ethical SEO” in their spam. You know the sort of ‘ethical’ spam that breaks multiple international anti-spam laws… Anyway, I replied:

Hi Green,

That sounds interesting. Please can you look at my site www.whychristmas.com and see what you think?

Thanks.

The next day, I got a reply from Umesh who was using an @interactivemission.com email and it went:

Hello,

Thanks for the email.

Be informed, this is Umesh of Green colleague working as Business Manager – Sales at Interactive Mission: https://www.interactivemission.com/ at best and affordable SEO, SMO, PPC, ORM Web Design & Development (ASP, ASP.Net, Java and PHP development) and Mobile Application ( IOS and Android) services providing company located in India.

Interactive Mission is an India (Noida) based Best and affordable Digital Marketing (SEO, SMO, PPC, ORM ) , Web Design & Development (ASP, ASP.Net, Java , PHP development , AngularJS , Node.JS and Reacts) and Mobile Application ( ios and Android) services providing company located in India . We provide high quality services to our offshore clients in UK, USA, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Germany, France, Europe and all over the world. Our company is more than 7 years old and have successfully executed more than 2000 SEO projects. We have qualified SEO team having 10 +years of experience.

I would like to update that we have expert team that works on brand development, driving traffic both via organic SEO and paid PPC techniques. Our team also work on social media for generating traffic and sales for your website. We also help build and promote a keyword based content culture in your marketing team which helps you in long run via regular press realizes and blog .

I have gone through your mail in detail and we are happy to work on your website and checked website URL https://www.whychristmas.com/ We can provide you the top rankings in the time span of 3-6 months that increase the visitors on your website and directly it will boost your business, During my quick analysis I have prepared a report based on the current potential of your website. Please find the analysis below:-

Meta Title and Meta Description:- we have checked Meta Description and Meta Title are Good

Content page :- Your website page has a very low content need to fix it.

Google Analytics :- We have find could not detect an analytics tool installed on your page. need to fix it.

Backlinks :- Your website have very low backlink. need to fix it.

On-Page:- We have found 54 total links. 15% of your links are external links and are sending authority to other sites. 20% of your links are no follow links, meaning authority is not being passed to those destination pages. need to fix it.

SEO Friendly :- Your webpage contains URLs that are not SEO friendly! need to fix it.

Mobile Friendly :- we have check visually demonstrates how your page renders on different devices. It is important that your page is optimized for mobile and tablet experiences as web traffic comes from these sources. need to fix it.

Google Analytics :- we have find Google Analytics script is not detected on this page. your site’s visitors and traffic sources, Google Analytics and I help diagnose potential SEO issues. need to fix it.

Google Mobile Pages :- we have checked page does not appear to have AMP Enabled. need to fix it.

social media page:- Facebook Activity ,Twitter Activity ,YouTube Activity LinkedIn not Activity need LinkedIn page .

While doing quick analysis of your website I observed that your website is related to Some gay dating related Business. So, it need more important to do Online promotion of your website as a SEO Campaign to increase the visitors and it will be beneficial for your business. I am Offering you the SEO service for promote your website, SEO helps to place your website top in the Search engine(Google, yahoo, Bing), It helps to increase visitors on your website that directly helps to boost your business.

According to website Current status and requirements I suggested you the 25 keyword package for your website. And the Cost is 290 USD/Month. We have the team of SEO experts and we will do activities according to website Current status and requirements and in a definite time frame we will achieve the task. In the further Conversation I will update you the activities that will do by our technical team. Let me know your view for further process

For further discussion in detail Please add me on Skype at: [removed for privacy] or please provide me your Skype Id and I will add you . You can also add me on the What’s app [removed for privacy] for further discussion

Please feel free to email/Skype me in case of any query/suggestion/Whats App.

Waiting for your positive response.

Thanks ,

Umesh [name removed for privacy]

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff. But I’m not sure that “press realizes” will help much. Press releases would probably be more useful…

Well, I decided to reply to Umesh explaining more about me, that he was a spammer and why basically everything he put in his email was wrong…

Hi Umesh,

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!

Please can you tell me why you think it’s ok to spam people to get business?

Your initial email was IN BREACH OF ALL the pieces of anti-spam legislation listed below.

For the UK (where I live) you are not allowed to sent marketing emails to an individual without their permission – you did this: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/electronic-and-telephone-marketing/electronic-mail-marketing/

For the USA, you are breaking several of these guidelines for CAN-SPAM: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

For CASL in Canada, you need consent to send electronic marketing – which you did not have: https://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00008.html (You also need other business identifiers in the emails, which your emails do not have.)

The Anti Spam Act in Australia has similar conditions for consent and identity, which your emails also met none of: https://www.acma.gov.au/avoid-sending-spam

Let’s look at what you said about my site:

Meta Title and Meta Description:- we have checked Meta Description and Meta Title are Good
Thanks! Most SEO spammers say they are wrong!

Content page :- Your website page has a very low content need to fix it.
The home page of the site is actually one of the least entered pages via search engines (even though it’s normally one the first two pages of Google for just ‘Christmas’!). The site has LOTS of pages about Christmas, and that’s how most the vast majority of people actually enter the site using search engines. So this is not actually applicable in my case.

Google Analytics :- We have find could not detect an analytics tool installed on your page. need to fix it.
This is wrong. I use an analytics tool on the site. But it’s not Google Analytics, it’s a privacy friendly one. It’s quite easy to find if you view the code!

Backlinks :- Your website have very low backlink. need to fix it.
According to Ahrefs, my site has nearly 80,000 backlinks with an 84% dofollow rate. Using Ubersuggest from Neil Patel, it says my site has nearly 85,000 backlinks from over 11,000 domains and that both of those are ‘Great’. But you’re saying my backlinks are bad? That doesn’t seem to make sense to me…

On-Page:- We have found 54 total links. 15% of your links are external links and are sending authority to other sites. 20% of your links are no follow links, meaning authority is not being passed to those destination pages. need to fix it.
The external links are going to other of my sites – so that’s ok. The ‘nofollow’ links are social media sharing ones – which is the correct thing to do – so that’s all ok!

SEO Friendly :- Your webpage contains URLs that are not SEO friendly! need to fix it.
Hmmm, Yes, there are some underscores in some of the URLs on my site. It’s now thought that hyphens in URLs are better. But when I created the site back in 2000, the reverse was thought to be the correct thing to do! And anyway many of the pages with underscores in them are #1 on Google for their respective results out of several million results so they can’t be hurting the SEO much…

Mobile Friendly :- we have check visually demonstrates how your page renders on different devices. It is important that your page is optimized for mobile and tablet experiences as web traffic comes from these sources. need to fix it.
My site is just fine on mobile devices. This is simply wrong.

Google Analytics :- we have find Google Analytics script is not detected on this page. your site’s visitors and traffic sources, Google Analytics and I help diagnose potential SEO issues. need to fix it.
See above!

Google Mobile Pages :- we have checked page does not appear to have AMP Enabled. need to fix it.
My site isn’t a news site, so AMP are not relevant or appropriate to it!

social media page:- Facebook Activity ,Twitter Activity ,YouTube Activity LinkedIn not Activity need LinkedIn page .
My site isn’t a business and so LinkedIn is also completely irrelevant to it!

You also said “While doing quick analysis of your website I observed that your website is related to Some gay dating related Business.” This is so wrong that it’s actually mind boggling. My site is very obviously about Christmas. It is very much NOT a dating site. I honestly have no idea how you could ever think that my site has anything to do with ‘gay dating’!!!

So your analysis is basically either wrong or irrelevant! (Apart from when you say my site’s meta tags good – because they are.)

As you can probably tell, I’m not interested in your services.

Please do not spam me (or hopefully anyone else) again.

It’s been well over a week now I’ve not heard back after that one…

I’ll post an update if I ever do get a reply.


Their Report & Recommendations

I covered basically everything they said was ‘wrong’ with my site in my email reply. As you can have seen, they were basically wrong about everything.

Having to two ‘no Google Analytics’ errors is just shoddy (and doubly wrong of course).

However, saying my site is about ‘gay dating’ is really quite incomprehensible. I honestly have no idea whatsoever how you could think my Christmas information site is anything about ‘gay dating’.

An alternative is that this was a copy and paste reply with a list of things that always need ‘fixing’ – but the fact that they said the metas were ok (which they are but most SEO spammers say they’re not) makes me think it’s not.

However, either way, very odd and very wrong.

But let’s look at their site and see what it looks like…!


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.interactivemission.com/

For HTML Validation, my Christmas site has no errors. Their site has 10 errors and 2 warnings. (That’s very good for an SEO spammer!)

Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 29 errors and 35 contrast errors. My Christmas site has no errors of either kind! (That’s not so great.)

Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:

Performance: 56
Accessibility: 73
Best Practices: 77
SEO: 91

My site gets:

Performance: 96
Accessibility: 100
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 100

So my site is MUCH better across the board, and especially in ‘Performance’.

There’s no privacy policy on the site – that’s not good and breaks multiple international privacy laws like GDPR. As does the fact that they’re using cookies and collection full IP information for Google Analytics, but don’t tell you that.

Many of the images on their site are squished and squashed out of ratio and just look odd! This doesn’t seem great for the “best website development and digital marketing company in Noida, India, that you can trust” which they claim to be.

In the site’s header, there’s a ‘Sechdule to Talk’ button. But that ain’t spelt right!

It’s interesting that in his email, Umesh says that “we have check visually demonstrates how your page renders on different devices. It is important that your page is optimized for mobile and tablet experiences as web traffic comes from these sources. need to fix it.” It’s a shame they’ve not done that on their own site as it’s a mess. The site’s header and footer break badly from any size of an average laptop down (so most people using the web).

As well as their address in Noida, on the contact page, there’s also an address in South Africa. This is for an office complex, but you can also have a ‘virtual’ office address from there.

In the footer of Umesh’s email, it also listed a ‘sister site’, so let’s look at that as well.

That site is https://www.interactivewebtech.com/

For HTML Validation, that site has 3 errors and 1 warnings. (They are all really silly errors as well that should be caught and fixed…)

Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, that site has 42 errors and 41 contrast errors. (That’s also not so great.)

Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool that site gets:

Performance: 55
Accessibility: 78
Best Practices: 69
SEO: 90

So consistent with their main site – but not great…

Just like the main Interactive Mission site, it’s got lots of squished images and the header and footer break when the page is resized!

There’s no South African address on this site. But there are ones in Hawaii and the UK!

The address in Honolulu, Hawaii, is in a shopping district and is an address used by many ‘virtual office’ companies. (It’s also got a stray letter at the start of it before the main street address.)

The UK address is in a new office complex in Gloucester, and guess what, they also offer virtual offices!

So I’m not actually convinced that Interactive Mission have ‘real’ offices anywhere other than Delhi…

You might also remember that the subject of the initial spam from Green was “1st page Of Google !!”.

Well, Google has something to say 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?”

Conclusion

Interactive Mission are yet SEO spammers who happily spam from behind random Gmail accounts.

They’re another SEO spammer who’s spam makes a claim which Google say not to trust. And that subject also breaks the CAN-SPAM Act.

They’re another SEO spammer who says things about your site which are basically all wrong. And in their case they can’t even get the basic content of the site correct!

So if Interactive Mission say your site needs SEO help, you finger being interactive with the delete button could be a good thing.

But, as ever, the choice is yours…

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