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 is a bit different to my normal SEO spammers. It’s from a Guest Post Spammer. I’ve been getting more of these, so I thought it would be good to see what they say…
The email came from an ‘Ethan’ who was using a Gmail account with ‘linkbuilder’ in it. That’s not iffy at all… The spam email subject was the url of my Christmas site “https://www.whychristmas.com/” and the email went:
Hello Dear,
How are you?
I need is site=https://www.whychristmas.com/
I need a paid post on your site with a permanent do-follow link please tell me the posted price and link insertion price
Awaiting your reply
So I did a little reply saying no thanks…
Hi,
As it clearly states on the site, I DO NOT have ads or guest posts/articles on my site.
I first made the site for some teachers who came to me complaining that they couldn’t find a site that was child friendly and “wasn’t trying to sell the kids something”!
Happy Christmas!
James
Now I thought that my email was pretty clear. But it seems not as I quickly got this reply from ‘Ethan’…
Hello Why
How are youPlease check my new site I m admin
[list of four sites]
I’m waiting for your positive response.
So I did another reply, again making things pretty clear.
Did you read my reply?
My name is James and not ‘Why’.
I SAID I DO NOT HAVE GUEST POSTS.
But it seems it still wasn’t clear. As Ethan replied:
Hello James
I m reseller please check my website. I need a guest post and link insertion on this website .[four more random sites]
i ‘ m waiting for your positive response
I was getting a bit annoyed by this point (little did I know what was to come). So I thought ‘time to ask about the company and call them out…’
What part of I DO NOT HAVE GUEST POSTS do you not understand?
Do you have a business website (the company you work for)?
And ‘Ethan’ told me!
Yes i have my company website please check guestpostkey.com
I am working for Guest Post, but I am wondering if you can give me a post or a link to advertise it.
Now the site didn’t actually tell me much (more on this below) so I asked some more rather basic questions:
I looked on your site but there’s no one called Ethan on the team. Do you work there?
Where’s the company located?
And guess what, Ethan didn’t answer but just sent MORE SPAM!
[four more random sites]
waiting for your reply .
I was really beginning to lose my patience by now…
What are you doing? I asked you about what your name is and where you are located and you just send me random links. Please answer my questions!
That got my a slightly more sensible answer:
I am guestpostkey.com company employee. onThis company member is [gmail address with Atiya in it]
Me Member Contact No. [removed for privacy] Pls Check Me Company Website If you doubt you can do it with my team members contact.
But I still had no idea who they really were. So I asked again.
I said I’d already looked at the site.
So are you Atiya? Why does this email say Ethan?
And you still haven’t answered where the company is based. How long has it been in business?
Which got me this one line reply from ‘Ethan’:
Send me your whats app number
Erm. No. Not gonna happen. So I asked AGAIN.
Sorry but I don’t share my private contacts with people I don’t know.
Please can you just answer my questions. They are not complicated.
- What is your real name.
- Where is the company located.
- How long has the company been in business.
Any respectable business should have this information freely available.
90 mins later and I got an email. But not from ‘Ethan’. Now the emails came from Atiya who he’d mentioned in a previous email… It had the subject ‘Hello Sir’ and went:
Hello dear,
How are you?
I am atiya please check business website name guestpostkey.com
I tried asking Atiya the questions – her name is actually on their site, so I thought she might know the answers…
Hi,
Did Ethan give you my email address? Can you answer some questions which Ethan refused to?
They are not complicated.
- Where is the company located.
- How long has the company been in business.
The next day I got another email from Atiya with the subject ‘Greetings of the day’
Greetings Of the day,
I am ” Atiya ”
I am admin on this site & instant post and link insertion allow
[13 random links]
Waiting for your good response
You could not make up this level of correspondence! So, guess what, I asked YET AGAIN.
Hi Atiya,
I asked you some questions yesterday Please can you answer them?
Did Ethan give you my email address?
Where is your company located.
How long has your company been in business.
I NEED to know the answers to these questions before I will have any further correspondence with you.
Guess what the reply was the next day…
Yes please check my business website name guestpostkey.com
my mail id [removed for privacy]
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. These guys are like a track stuck on repeat! So I politely asked again…
Yes I know that.
Please can you answer some simple questions for me. This is the fourth time I’ve asked you and Ethan these very simple questions.
Where is your company located.
How long has your company been in business.
Why can’t you answer those very basic questions?
And I got an unexpected answer:
From my company Pakistan, my company will be 2 years old, new.
WOW!!!! THEY ACTUALLY ANSWERED THE REALLY BASIC QUESTIONS! But I had more…
Thank you for finally answering those questions!
Now I have some more…
Please can you tell me why your company thinks it’s ok to spam people, from random email accounts, to get business?
is your company happy breaching multiple international laws like CAN-SPAM, PECR and many others around the world?
Also, have you or your colleague Ethan visited my site? As I told Ethan when he first contacted me:
“As it clearly states on the site, I DO NOT have ads or guest posts/articles on my site.”
Yet both he and you have continued to email me! Why?
But they still didn’t get it as this was the reply:
I don’t need any articles on sites, I have my own websites. I need post & link insertion on my websites. Do you need websites?
Slowly pulling my hair our at this point, I tried to make my point YET AGAIN.
NO. I’ve told you and Ethan multiple times that I AM NOT interested in your links or ads.
So why do you keep emailing me?
Also please can you answer my questions:
Please can you tell me why your company thinks it’s ok to spam people, from random email accounts, to get business?
is your company happy breaching multiple international laws like CAN-SPAM, PECR and many others around the world?
And finally it seems to getting through.
ok sorry I will not send you any of my mail.
They’d still not answered my questions, asking again time!
OK. Thanks!
However, are you willing to answer my questions:
Why does your company thinks it’s ok to spam people, from random email accounts, to get business?
is your company happy breaching multiple international laws like CAN-SPAM, PECR and many others around the world?
Breaking the law doesn’t look good does it?
But it seems that they don’t like answering as to why they spam as the reply to that was this one line:
I’m not interested.
I’d basically given up trying to get through to them at this point, so I just tried to end things nicely, as that’s the kind of guy I am…
OK.
I wish you well and hope that your company will learn about international anti-spam laws.
Happy Christmas and may God bless you.
Which got this final reply.
And the same to you.
So we ended on a nice exchange, yet Atiya would not explain why Guest Post Key spam people…
Oh but that WAS NOT THE END. 11 days later ‘Matt’ from Guest Post Key SENT ME MORE SPAM. So Atiya’s claim that they wouldn’t sent any more emails was rubbish.
I’ve frankly given up trying to converse with these spammers. I just hit delete and hope this post will show just what level of spammers they are…
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://guestpostkey.com/ – it was registered in August 2022, so about three and a half months. So when Atiya said the business was less than two years old, it’s sort of correct but not in a good way…
Their site has 19 HTML errors. Not great, but actually not bad for spammers.
Using the ‘WAVE’ Accessibility Testing Tool, their site has 33 errors and 8 contrast errors – hmmm not so good.
Using Google’s Pagespeed score, their site gets 19/100. Very not good. (My site gets 100/100!)
The theme they’re using in called ‘seocify’ and it’s a favourite among SEO (and now guest post/link) spammers. The theme comes with lots of pre-made layouts (which is why spammers love it as they don’t have to do much work) and Guest Post Key are using ‘demo three’.
How do I know this? Well it’s because they’ve left ‘Home Three’ in the meta title of the their home page. This is terrible as the meta title is one of the most important things of SEO!
At the bottom of the home page are some dummy testimonials. They’ve not bothered to change any of these…
They’ve left all the dummy blog posts in place (with 2018 dates on them) and have added one post about how great guest posts are in September 2022.
They’ve got several ‘services’ pages – but they’re all the same – full of rubbish dummy text.
They’ve left the copyright in the footer as the same as on the demo content.
They have actually put their real names and faces on the ‘Our Team’ page – but none of them are called Ethan! (But one is called Atyia.)
And of course, there’s no privacy policy or terms & conditions pages – both of which breach multiple international laws…
Nowhere on the site does it say where they’re located. But on their LinkedIn page, it says they’re in Faisalabad, Pakistan – as Atyia said. This also fits with the names of the people on their ‘Our Team’ page. So they’re being honest on there at least…
Guest Post Key, like many a spammer, appears to have done the bear minimum when setting up their own site. And what they have done is generally fairly terrible.
Yet also, like many a spammer, they want you to trust them to make your site better. Hmmmm.
A search for ‘guestpostkey.com’ allows me to find their LinkedIn profile. It’s got one update from two months ago. Hmmmmm.
The only other ‘real site’ I can find connected to Guest Post Key (it says it’s made by it in the footer) is a junk blog site with a .co.uk domain. It was registered at the end of March 2022. I guess this site is where they post some of their ‘links’ and ‘guest posts’. Funnily this site wasn’t one of the MANY which Ethan and Atyia sent me (even though I didn’t ask them to).
The junk blog site also opens junk ad sites whenever you click on anything – YUCK.
I doesn’t exactly inspire confidence about Guest Post Key (apart from the whole spamming thing) that the only site the’ve put them name on is SO JUNKY.
(It also seems that many of the Guest Post Spammers I’ve come across are in Pakistan. I couldn’t actually care less where they’re based – only that they’re spammers. But it is interesting…)
Conclusion
Guest Post Key hide behind fake names and Gmail accounts when sending out spam.
Trying to get a straight answer out of them is like trying to get blood out of a stone.
Their own site is next to useless and it seems like they’ve barely done anything on it.
The only site I can find that’s actually connected to them is BAD. VERY. BAD.
So if Guest Post Key want to offer guest posting or linking services to you. I’d hit that delete button as soon as possible.
But the choice, as ever, is yours.