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 “Jay” who was using an @gmail.com email address with his name, and a bunch of numbers in it (always the sign of a legitimate company…).
The subject of the spam was “Re. Your whyeaster.com errors.”. I’ve never had any dealings with this company before, so the ‘re’ at the start is to try and trick you into thinking you have. Naughty. The spam went:
Dear business owner of whyeaster.com.
You can’t expect your website to increase your revenue with so many errors. Many business owners get puzzled as their website isn’t performing well, while others’ are flourishing. That’s unfortunate, but not your fortune!
Now, I will show you the number of broken links, pages that returned 4xx status code upon request, images with no ALT text, pages with no meta description tag, not having a unique meta description, having a too long title, etc., found in your whyeaster.com. Too many issues to worry about!
If this is something you are interested in, then allow me to send you a no obligation audit report.
Thank You,
JayDigital Marketing Analyst
Note: – Ask for a quote.
Click here to unsubscribe
A fairly typical spam template. The ‘Click here to unsubscribe’ link took you to a link from a service called ‘Yet Another Mass Mailer’ which allows bulk emails to be sent via Gmail. We’ll see if that stops the emails or actually confirms that my address is real, so I’ll actually get more!
Anyway, I replied:
Hi,
This sounds interesting. Please send over the audit report.
The next day I got a reply from Jay. This time using an @explotechweb.com email address. It went:
Hello James,
Thanks for your response.
I have done a deep analysis of your website https://www.whyeaster.com/ and found some major errors that I am sending below.
1- We have located images with missing ALT attributes.
Status: Number of images: 13
Missing alt tag: 5The “alt” attribute provides a text equivalent for the image. If the browser cannot display an image the alt description will be given in its place.
2- Web Analytics
Status: Not Found
3- Lack of proper landing page
There is no proper landing page where a customer can invest more time and can attract towards your services. We can design it.
You can visit our website here: https://explotechweb.com/
Please let me know if you have any questions. Looking forward to your response.
Thank You,
Jay
Digital Marketing Analyst
I replied to Jay pointing out that basically everything in his email was incorrect and asking some questions about his email practices…
Hi Jay,
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.
Let’s look at what you say…
Alt images. No, you’re wrong. All the images on my site have ‘appropriate’ alt tags. Not all images need content in alt tags. If an image is purely decorative, the image SHOULD have an empty tag. That is correct for accessibility.
Analytics. No, you’re wrong. I do use analytics. But a privacy friendly one – you can clearly see this in the site’s code! (Unlike yourself who use Google analytics and set cookies without telling people; that breaks the law in many countries around the world. Simply anonymising the IP isn’t good enough.)
Landing pages. No, you’re wrong. The home and section pages are landing pages. They attract attention and lead to other content.
So all of those points are wrong!
But back to being spammers…
Please can you also tell me why you think it’s ok to spam people (from a random Gmail account) 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/
So you and your company are spammers and breaking the law all over the world.
Please do not spam me again.
Within 30 minutes I got another email from Jay’s spammy gmail account:
Hi,
I know that you are busy,
Kindly treat this as a gentle follow up mail as I was wondering if you have gone through my previous mail; please let me know your views so that we can take this forward.
Waiting for your response.
Oh dear. Jay doesn’t know how to use his ‘bulk emailing’ software properly to stop it sending out reminders… But I replied to this one as well.
Erm, Jay. We’ve been communicating already. I said you’re a spammer. I was right.
It’s been well over a week now I’ve not heard back from Jay… Yet another SEO company that can’t answer some basic data privacy questions!
I’ll post an update if I ever do get a reply.
Their Report & Recommendations
I basically dealt with all the ‘major errors’ in my email reply to Jay.
However, the fact he couldn’t find my analytics by looking at the code, makes me think he ran my site through a VERY basic SEO tool and might not have even bothered to visit my site…
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://explotechweb.com/
For HTML Validation, my Easter site has no errors. Their site has 6 errors and 49 warnings. These basically come from the theme they’re using and have hardly done anything to.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 6 errors and 30 contrast errors (again more or less from the theme being used). My site has no errors of either kind!
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool their site gets:
Performance: 39
Accessibility: 88
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 93
My site gets:
Performance: 99
Accessibility: 100
Best Practices: 100
SEO: 100
So my site is better across the board, and especially in ‘Performance’.
Their site is very much based on the demo content that comes with the theme they’re using. The theme is called ‘Engitech’.
The logo for Explotech is basically the one that comes with the theme. It looks like they’ve just edited it and have replaced ‘Engi’ with ‘Explo’. I frankly even wonder if they chose the name ‘Explotech’ as that could easily work with the theme…!
There’s no Heading 1 on the home page. That’s really not good for SEO. But there’s none on the theme’s demo site either. So the theme creator could have done better, but so could have Explotech!
There’s also no privacy policy on the Explotech site. This one is down to Explotech alone! This is also a very bad thing and is against the law in many countries around the world.
In the theme’s demo content there’s a ‘counter’ showing how many clients/projects they’ve had, etc. They have bothered to change the numbers, but they don’t add up! They claim to have been business for 6+ years. But their domain was registered in late March 2022. So just over a month ago at the time of writing! Hmmmm.
Another part of the demo content are some testimonials. They’ve not bothered to change these at all. Oh dear. Double hmmmm.
In the footer of the site there are links to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Their Facebook page was created on the day that Jay replied to me (again proving their ‘6+ years’ is rubbish); the Instagram has two posts, one being their logo and the link to LinkedIn doesn’t go anywhere!
On their contact page there are two addresses, one in New York and one in Bhubaneswar (the home to many an SEO spammer). On their Facebook page, there’s only the address in Bhubaneswar. The address in New York is formatted very oddly, in a way that no person in New York would do. It’s for an office block on 3rd Avenue. I’m 99.9% sure that Explotech do not have an office there! Triple hmmmmm.
They’ve got a blog on their site with five posts. Four of these are identical and are what comes with the theme as demo posts! The one that isn’t demo content seems to have been (ahem) ‘borrowed’ from another Indian web company (a seemingly large and very legitimate web company). Quadruple hmmmmm.
On their ‘prices’ page, they list what you’ll supposedly get for your money. On all their plans, the 2nd item is ‘Duplicate Content Check’ – what like the four identical posts on their own site? Oh dear… (The first item is ‘Website Technical Audit’ and there’s a section called ‘Technical Error Analysis and Fixation’ – more things they don’t appear to have bothered to do for their own site!)
Conclusion
Explotech Web Solution are SEO spammers.
They send out spam, from behind random Gmail accounts and don’t seem to know how to use the software which sends out the spam.
They appear to be somewhat less than truthful about the age of their company.
They haven’t been bothered to really do anything on their own site and seem to have ‘borrowed’ content from others.
So if Explotech Web Solution says your site has ‘errors’ and needs their help, the delete button might be the best option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…