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 Sonu who was using an @broadwayseoinfotech.com email address. That’s the domain of the company as well. It’s very unusual for SEO spammers to actually spam you from their real email!
The subject of the spam was “100% Guaranteed 1st Page Ranking” and went:
Dear Sir/Madam,
1st Page on Google Guaranteed!!
Is your Site Optimized with the Google latest methodology called LSI to Rank High???
Does your Site Rank Low???
Do you have less traffic on your site???
An end to this entire question. We provide a complete solution for your Online Business need.
We bring Traffic to Your Site and rank You Top with our LSI based Google’s Algorithm at Affordable rates.
Our Steps and the Activities to Rank You Smart
Ø Keywords Research
Ø Competition Analysis
Ø Optimized Content Creation
Ø Keywords Optimization
Ø Back Link Creation/Link Building
Ø Submission to Search Engines and Directories
Ø Submission to Article Directories
Please share me your website URL, keywords & WhatsApp, Skype Number which you would like to target.
Thanks & Regard
Sonu [name removed for privacy]
CEO & Founder
[contacts removed for privacy]
Fairly standard SEO spam. But it says “Is your Site Optimized with the Google latest methodology called LSI to Rank High???” and “We bring Traffic to Your Site and rank You Top with our LSI based Google’s Algorithm at Affordable rates.”
LSI stands for ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’ (although they don’t tell you that). It’s a way that computers can help to understand words in their context. It’s nothing new or special. More importantly, Google have publicly said many times that ‘LSI Keywords’ DO NOT exist and that ‘LSI’ IS NOT used by them!
So I’m not sure how they can have an ‘LSI based Google’s Algorithm’ when it can’t exist…
(If you want to find out more about LSI and how it’s not used in SEO, please read this excellent article about LSI and SEO on the Search Engine Journal…)
Anyway, I replied with the keywords – ones which my site already ranks VERY highly for:
Hi,
That sounds interesting. Please can you look at my site www.whychristmas.com and see what you think?
The keywords are:
Christmas Customs
Christmas Around the world
The Christmas StoryI can’t do a call and I don’t do Whatsapp, so please do things by email.
Thanks.
A couple of hours later, I got this obviously copy and paste reply from Sonu:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with a quotation for the search engine campaign proposed by us for your website as per your request.
Our service is a long-term solution to get your site rank high through organic search results as opposed to pay per click advertising. We are sending you the overall information of how we will be able to provide you with pro-active SEO maintenance, advice and regular SEO campaign reports. Here, we will discuss the existing search engine compatibility issues of any kind of website in great detail.
We have a team of highly innovative professionals providing you with get instant results to rise in the highly competitive market within your niche. We will help you to increase your visibility in all the major search engines by improving keyword rankings and boosting your real time website traffic with lots of back links which are always done through White Hat techniques.
Our pre-designed SEO packages give you an idea of the action plan suitable for your business. We will customize our services according to your SEO requirements. Our project analyzing team will first examine your website and your competition’s market rankings. We, along with our clients, discuss and outline goals from time-to-time in order to stay on track.
Our comprehensive SEO strategies comprise of On-Page and Off-Page optimization. We also give importance to any suggestions regarding the content, layout formatting, navigation requirements and overall structuring of the website given by the client.
Our Best Rates Starts $125 / Month for 1- 10 Keywords
Broadway SEO Infotech has satisfied various clients across the globe and we have been appreciated by utilizing our prompt website ranking strategies, instant yet successful results and unmatched determination to go beyond the client’s expectations.
Should you have any questions, please let us know. If you would like to proceed with consulting your website’s general requirements, you just need to choose the contact options that will be provided to you within this proposal. Most of your questions should be answered within this offer but don’t hesitate to find out more such as client testimonials and references.
To improve the search engine visibility of your website, we will look forward to hear from you when you’ve time after reading our proposal.
Sincerely,
Like I said, very copied and pasted and basically tell you nothing. Then, eight Minutes later I got the below:
Hi Sir
I am waiting for your next step
We will give you best result 4-5 month
If you are ready I will send you invoice
Can you share me your PayPal
WOW! They’ve basically told me nothing, haven’t said how my site is ranking, haven’t really had any meaningful contact or any discussion with me and they’re ALREADY asking for money!!!
I ignored all of that and just asked why my site needed their help and had they checked how my site’s ranking. Not un-reasonable questions to ask an SEO company…
Hi,
Please can you tell me why you think my site needs your help? What’s wrong with it now?
Have you checked how it’s ranking for those search terms already?
Thanks.
Within five minutes, I got this frankly amazing reply:
Hi Sir
Your keywords not ranked on Google Yahoo and bing
That. Was. It. No more details. Not only is that rather rude, it’s VERY VERY WRONG. So I decided to reply to Sonu, explaining just how wrong it was and also asking some questions about why he spams people…
Hi Sonu,
I’ve been a web designer and developer for 20 over years. I like to reply to SEO spammers (like you) 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!
You say that my site’s not ranked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Well… attached are screenshots from Google and Bing (and Yahoo uses Bing, as you should know) so I didn’t bother checking on there.
My site is ranked in the top two results FOR ALL THE KEYWORDS ON BOTH GOOGLE AND BING. I’ve attached some screenshots to prove this is the case. (I ran the searched in an incognito window so my search history couldn’t influence the results.)
That is really not hard to check. So why did you say my site isn’t ranking?!
Please can you also 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
In South Africa there is the Protection of Personal Information Act, which says you have to have consent to send people marketing emails, which you did not have: https://ispa.org.za/spam/
I am waiting for your next step.
(I added the last sentence as that’s what he’d put to me in one of his replies!)
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 how wrong they are about how my site ranks in the email. But to have everything out in the open, here are the screenshots I sent to Sonu:
So, yep it’s VERY highly ranked, but Sonu says it’s not ranked at all. Hmmmmmmm.
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 http://www.broadwayseoinfotech.com
For HTML Validation, my Christmas site has no errors. Their site has 16 errors and 38 warnings. That’s not too bad for an SEO spammer. However, they’re all basically ones to do with the theme they use (more on that below…).
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 6 errors and 90 contrast errors. My Christmas site has no errors of either kind!
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:
Performance: 59
Accessibility: 76
Best Practices: 92
SEO: 93
My site gets:
Performance: 96
Accessibility: 100
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 100
So my site is better across the board, and especially in ‘Performance’.
The Broadway SEO Infotech site does not use SSL/HTTPS (have a padlock). That is BAD these days. Using SSL/HTTPS makes your site more secure. Google has used it as a ranking factor for a couple of years now – you’d think that would matter to an SO company – but it seems not.
The logo on the site doesn’t have any alt text. That’s terrible for SEO and accessibility. Hmmmm.
The Heading 1 on the page is “We bring you new customers”. Erm, OK, that’s not very useful SEO wise.
The site uses an off the shelf theme ‘SEOWP’, a WordPress theme designed for SEO companies. I can tell this by looking at the site’s code.
I can also tell because Broadway SEO Infotech hasn’t bothered to change BASICALLY ANYTHING which comes with the demo content of the theme!
- All the menu items are the same.
- The about page contents is the same – including the demo staff members (which lists ‘Angela Leibius’ as the CEO and ‘Callum Bailey’ as the Founder – but Sonu’s email signature says that he’s both of those – oops!)
- The demo blog posts are the same.
- The demo ‘Services’ are the same.
- The demo ‘Projects’ are the same.
- The demo ‘Testimonials’ are the same.
The only things I can see that have changed are the logo (but haven’t put any alt text), email address, business address, phone number, social media links (although only the Twitter and Facebook ones go anywhere, there are ones for YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram that are useless) and a sentence of text in the footer. They’ve also removed the map on the contact page and the bottom section of the footer which includes the copyright info and links to a privacy policy and terms & conditions.
It’s one of the most lazy set-up of an SEO spammer’s site.
But that’s where the strangeness really starts…
I did find a LinkedIn account for Broadway SEO Infotech (so why isn’t it linked on their website?!).
It says that the business is ‘self employed’ but then says they have 9 employees (but if you have more than person in a company, it’s no longer a self employed one, right?).
The LinkedIn profile lists some of the employees. On the non logged in bit of LinkedIn, it lists four people. Two of the people have identical names but different jobs and two people with different names have the same profile picture. Three of the people also have the same surname/family name as Sonu!
Looking on their profiles, there’s more strangeness. They’re all written in the third person and all of the ‘activity’ snippets are basically the same SEO spam template which Sonu sent me. Like I said – STRANGE.
I also found Broadway SEO Infotech listed on a couple of other business directories.
On one it says they have five employees. These five people ALL have the same surname/family name as Sonu – yet Sonu isn’t one of them!
On another directory it says there are 33 employees. I can see a few names. Some are familiar ones and others are new. But the same ‘double photo’ is on one of the profiles.
From that directory, I could get a better quality version of the photo to run through a reverse image search. And… dun dun dunnnnn – that person DOES NOT work for Broadway SEO Infotech.
How do I know this? Because they’re a shoe designer and entrepreneur who has a completely different name to any of the ones in the various profiles which use her photo!!!
So, erm, yeah. All of the above seems totally trustworthy doesn’t it?! (Well, no it doesn’t.)
I really have no idea how many people might work at Broadway SEO Infotech.
However, the email address on the site is the one Sonu spammed me on (that’s very unusual in itself). It’s also a ‘personal’ one and Sonu say’s he’s the ‘CEO and Founder’ in the email signature.
This makes me strongly wonder if this is a one man company – and Sonu is all there is to “Broadway SEO Infotech” – no matter how many profiles are on various places like LinkedIn.
I could well be wrong – but it’s all VERY VERY ODD.
One thing I am sure about is that the subject of Sonu’s initial spam to me was “100% Guaranteed 1st Page Ranking” and that the first line of his initial spam was “1st Page on Google Guaranteed!!”.
There’s also a Heading 2 of “Appear On the Front Page of Google!” on the home page (although that comes with the theme’s demo content).
But they’re all saying something that Google says you shouldn’t claim to be able to do – and not to trust companies which make such claims:
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 Googled the phone number on the site and it also appears on the site of another VERY iffy looking SEO site for ‘I Rocks Technologies’. When I say iffy, I mean they can’t even spell ‘blog’ correctly! The domain for this site was registered in October 2021 (so only a few months ago). The one for Broadway SEO Infotech dates back to November 2011. More strangeness.
[Update July 2022 – Well, Broadway Infotech are still spamming. I had some spam from a ‘Julie’ using an @gmail.com account. I asked what company they were and she replied Broadway Infotech. I explained that I’d had a conversation with Sonu earlier in the year and again asked why they were happy breaking multiple international spam laws. It’s been well over a week and I’ve not heard back from them. Oh, and the phone number on Julie’s initial spam was the same one that’s on the iRocks/I Rocks site…]
Conclusion
Broadway SEO InfoTech (and iRock Technologies) are SEO spammers.
The subject of their spam, the first line of the spam, and their website makes a claim which Google say not to trust. That subject also breaks the CAN-SPAM Act.
They claim to use a special algorithm for Google – only Google says that doesn’t exist.
They said my site wasn’t listed for any of the keywords I asked about – even though the site is currently ranked either number ONE or TWO for them.
Their own site is an out of the box one, complete with all the demo content – they haven’t bothered to do anything meaningful to it.
Business listings of the company are ‘interesting’ to say the least with fake images being used.
So if Sonu (or anyone else at Broadway SEO InfoTech) says your site needs SEO help, the delete button might well be a much better option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…