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…
I dealt with some spam from Excellent Rank about my Christmas site earlier in the year. Well, they’re still at it and WORSE THAN EVER.
Get your brain in year because keeping track of all the spam they’ve sent me recently is quite something… Let’s go!
The first spam came into my Christmas site from a ‘Brittney’ who was using an @webtechresearch.com email account. The subject was “Re: whychristmas.com SEO at Low Cost: Interested?” (The old ‘put a re at the front to try and make it look like you’ve been in contact before trick…)
I’m leaving the full names of the spammers in this time as I’m 100% sure they’re all fake.
Well, Brittney’s spam went:
Hi whychristmas.com Team,
I noticed something interesting while going through your website whychristmas.com.
It’s apparent that you have used AdWords marketing to promote your business in the past, however, your website does see some organic search traffic here and there. Now, I believe I can help increase that portion of organic traffic significantly at whychristmas.com.
I believe you would like to come top on searches for keywords related to whychristmas.com… I found a number of SEO issues such as broken links, page speed issues, HTML validation errors, images with no ALT text on your website, that’s stopping you from getting that traffic.
How about I fix those, and also promote you through engaging content on relevant places on the web (read, social media).
I guarantee you will see a drastic change in your search ranking and traffic once these issues are fixed. Also, this is one time..
Is this something you are interested in?
If yes, please allow me to send you a no obligation audit report and quote.
Hoping to hear from you and take this partnership ahead.
Kind Regards,
Brittney RaapBusiness Analyst…
PS 1: Please answer our email with “Interested” or “Not Interested” so that we will know the status of your inquiry and act accordingly. If you are interested then I will send more details on our “corporate identity”, “company profile”, “why you should choose us?”, “Price list”, “
There’s a bit of everything in this SEO spam. “You’ve used Google ads” (nope), “There’s lots of errors” (nope), “Only I can fix it” (nope).
Anyway, I replied to Brittney with “interested” but didn’t here anything in 8 days…
But was I did get 8 days later was more spam from an @webtechresearch.com account! This time it was from ‘Melissa’ – although they left ‘Robert’ in the spam template! The subject was “Revamp Your Online Presence with Digital Marketing Solutions” and it went:
Dear whychristmas.com,
I’m Robert, a sales manager and I hope this message finds you well. Our team specializes in digital marketing, and we help businesses like yours drive traffic, increase leads, and grow online.
We’ve achieved remarkable results for our clients, who saw a 50% increase in website traffic and a 30% increase in conversions within the first three months of working with us. Another client saw a 70% increase in leads generated through their website.
At whychristmas.com, we tailor our solutions to meet your unique needs, and we’re committed to your success. If you’re interested in learning more, please contact me directly to schedule a call.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Melissa| Business Development Manager
P.S: Reply back with us “Interested” and get the best SEO Proposal and quote for your website.
P.S: This is our marketing strategy. We use Gmail id/Marketing mail ID, after a reply, our sales team will follow the corporate company email.
As well as leaving “Robert” in the spam template, they also forget to take out the PS where they say they’re using Gmail, even though they weren’t. Oops!
About 15 minutes after the spam from ‘Melissa’, some more spam from ‘Kathryn’ using an @webtechresearch.com account arrived!!! The subject for this one was “whychristmas.com : We will fix it at least possible cost.” and it went:
Hello whychristmas.com,
Hope you are doing well.
I was looking for Keywords and found your website is Not listed on top Google. If you were on page #1, you’d get so many prospects/new clients every day. Most of your targeted keywords are on pages #3-5. You’re so close! Do you mind if I sent an SEO Package and Price list of your site to see why you’re not on page #1?
I can send the past work details And Website Audit Report in a couple of hours. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I have more than 10 years of experience in digital marketing.
Can I send it over?
Look forward to your reply.
Kind Regards
Kathryn| Business Development Manager
P.S: Reply back with us “Interested” and get the best SEO Proposal and quote for your website.
P.S.: Don’t want to receive these emails in the future? Then reply to this email with ‘Unsubscribe’ in the subject line
P.S: This is our marketing strategy. We use Gmail id/Marketing mail ID, after a reply, our sales team will follow the corporate company email.
Ooooh, look – they left the Gmail bit in again! Oh and my site is number one Google for lots of search results…
Well, I again replied to Kathryn with “interested” because why not.
Three days later I got a reply from a ‘Sam’ at Excellent Rank. Aha, so they’re using webtechresearch.com to send out spam… Sam’s reply went:
Hi,
Thank you for your reply.
My name is Sam, and I am thrilled to introduce myself as a Senior Manager at Excellentrank.com, a digital marketing company that has been providing highly effective SEO services for over a decade to customers worldwide.
I received your email from my colleague Kathryn, who informed me of your request for an SEO audit and a price quote for your website. I am delighted to inform you that I will be conducting a comprehensive analysis of your website, and I will provide you with a detailed audit report and a competitive SEO price quote in my next email.
Please allow me some time to complete the report to ensure that we deliver accurate results. In the meantime, kindly acknowledge this email so that we can proceed with our communication.
Thank you for choosing Excellentrank.com as your SEO partner. We look forward to helping you achieve your digital marketing goals.
Best regards,
Sam William
Digital Marketing Specialist
Four days later (not yet having heard yet from Sam) I got ANOTHER email from a @webtechresearch.com email about my Christmas site – only this time it came into my main business account (I also get ones about my Christmas in there as the email was in WHOIS searches.)
This time it was from a ‘Daniel’. The subject was “Increase your whychristmas.com traffic.” and it went:
Dear Business owner of whychristmas.com,
Hope this email finds you well.
While looking for Keywords, we found your website on Google. It showed up on the 3rd page of Google. You’d receive much more traffic if you were on page 1. The majority of your targeted keywords are found on pages 3-5. Your website is very close to being on top! We could send you a list of SEO Packages and Prices for your website to check why you’re not on page one.
We can email you the previous job specifics if you’re interested. Reach out to us if you have any queries. Our company has been helping companies for more than 10 years.
Waiting for an early response.
If you are interested I can show you the report & I’d be happy to send you our package price and past work details.
Thank you in advance.
Best Regard,
Daniel Halbert | Web Consultant……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Note: – Our next conversation will be on my corporate Email ID. If this is something you are interested in, please respond to this email. If this is not in your interest, don’t worry, we will not email you again.
No ‘Gmail’ bit left in this one, but it’s quite similar to the template from Kathryn…
Well, I replied to Daniel with “interested” because let’s see if these spammers can actually work out that they’re already in contact about this same domain, only using a different email address!
The next day I had an IDENTICAL email from Daniel. Only this time it was for my Easter site. I also responded “interested” because let’s see if Daniel can work out that I’ve already replied to him about a different site!!!
And the day after that(!) I had another email from Kathryn, into my Christmas site, even though I’d already replied to her… So I replied to her again, copying in Brittney, Melissa (or is it Robert?), Sam and Daniel (although Daniel hadn’t emailed me via this account, but I thought it would be rude not to include him…!)
Hi Kathryn,
I replied to your email of two days ago. Sam has also already replied to me from that Reply that I did you! They said they’re doing a report. I’m looking forward to what Sam’s report says…
James
Does your brain hurt reading all this yet? Mine does!
Later that day, I got a reply from Sam – well two actually about an hour apart. The text of the emails were identical and they both had the same .xlsx file attached.
Why they sent this as an Excel file, rather than a PDF, I do not know. PDFs can be opened by basically anyone. Excel files, not so much.
So do Excellent Rank actually know what they’re doing?! (No. But more on that below…)
Anyway, I replied to Sam with some questions…
Hi Sam,
Thanks for the report. Although I’m not sure why you sent it twice!?
I’ve been a web designer and developer for 20 over years. I reply to SEO spammers to see what ‘services’ they offer and the things they say and use to get clients. And are you guys are some spammers!
My site has also been on the web for over 20 years. It gets over 20 MILLION page views every year (although your report says it gets no traffic), so it’s always interesting to get emails, from out of the blue, telling me what ‘errors’ it has…
You say my site has no backlinks. But ahrefs says it has over 77k. Your site has 366 it total. (I think you might want some more backlinks…)
You say my site needs to load faster. However, Google’s PageSpeed gives my site 100/100 and your site 54/100. I can give you some speed time if you’d like…
I have some other 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?
Your initial email was IN BREACH OF ALL the pieces of anti-spam legislation listed below (and many others from around the world).
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/ (Under UK law, I am an ‘individual’ as I’m a Sole Trader, not a Ltd Company.)
For the USA (where your site says you’re based), you are breaking several aspects of CAN-SPAM compliance: 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-combattrelepourriel.ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-anti-spam-legislation/en/getting-consent-send-email (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 do not meet: 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/
In France the Trust in the Digital Economy Act says that you have to have consent to send marketing emails, which you did not have: https://www.culture.gouv.fr/en/Thematiques/Industries-culturelles-et-creatives/Dossiers-thematiques/Le-spam/Le-cadre-juridique-La-legislation-francaise-en-matiere-de-spam
For The Netherlands, the Dutch Telecommunications Act says that you need consent to send people marketing emails, which you did not have. It also says that the true identity of the party should be disclosed up front, which you did not do. https://sherloc.unodc.org/cld/document/nld/1988/telecommunications_act_of_the_netherlands.html?
I look forward to getting your answers to my questions.
Thanks.
Five days later I got some more IDENTICAL spam as I got from Kathryn, this time from a ‘Terry’, although it was signed ‘Tarry’, this time using an @digibem.com email address. My suspicions were aroused thinking “It’s Excellent Rank again isn’t it?!”, so I replied.
Can you guess what company replied to me two days later… Yep, Excellent Rank.
This time it was ‘Ray Pal’ who replied (I wonder if he’s related to Pay Pal?!) with the same stalling email that Sam originally sent me. (He also spelled Terry as Tarry!)
So I replied to Ray, copying in Sam, because I’m polite(!) and asking Ray the same questions as I’d asked Sam…
About an hour later, I got a report from Ray (who also sent it twice like Sam). It was basically the same as the one which Sam had sent.
So I replied to Ray again, asking the same questions asking why they were spammers!
About an hour later I got this response:
Hello Team, [rude I signed it James]
Thanks for the reply , we are not spam any one. we are SEO services provider.
A per our email marketing send the mail every customer. If any one showing interest then we discuss.
if you have SEO requirement then let me know or other question ask me.
Thanks
Ray
That’s really not written like someone who’s a native English speaker, even though Excellent Rank claim to be based in the USA (they’re not).
I replied explaining what spam actually is, because Excellent Rank really don’t seem to get it…
Hi Ray,
YOU ARE SPAMMERS. Here’s the definition of spam from the UK Government (I I’ve in the UK): “Spam emails are emails sent to you without your knowledge or consent, which often contain marketing.” [https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/spam-emails/]
I have had SEVEN emails from Excellent Rank over the 20 days. They were send WITHOUT MY CONSENT and came from two domains, which are not your main business one.
I have asked your staff members on numerous occasions not to email me, yet you continue to do so.
THAT IS SPAM. Please can you explain to me why you are happy to break the laws of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, The Netherlands and many other countries?
I then got this reply (twice…)
Hi,
Thanks for update
Well, that really doesn’t say much or answer my questions does it? So I asked again.
Hi Ray,
Does this mean that you’ll never spam me again? And you’ve still not told my why you’re happy to break the laws of multiple countries. Can you explain that, I would actually like to know how you justify it…?
Thanks.
It’s been well over a fortnight and I’ve not heard back from Ray, David or Nitte. If I do, I’ll post an update on here!
Their Report & Recommendations
Time to look at the report they sent a total of four times(!) There were 24 items (rows) on the report. So buckle up, cos I’m listing the good and bad (well they say bad anyway…)
1 Title Tag / The <title> element provides a short piece of text describing the document. The title is very important as it shows in the window title bars, bookmarks and search results. Title should be between 60 to 80 characters long.
Found / Needs to be optimized for relevant keywords
All the title tags on my site are optimised. Very. Also how do they know what words I’m targeting when they haven’t asked me…
2 Meta Description A good meta description acts as an organic advertisement, so use enticing messaging with a clear call to action to maximize click-through rate. They allow you to influence how your web pages are described and displayed in search results.
Found / Fresh Description of the Home page needs to be written
No it doesn’t. The home page description tag is already very optimised (see above!)
3 Headings / Use your keywords in the headings and make sure the first level (h1) includes your most important keywords. Never duplicate your title tag content in your header tag.
Issue Found / H4 onwards heading is missing and other headings also needs to be optimized based on the targeted keywords
WRONG. First off it’s fine to have title contents in the main heading tag. Secondly, heading tags should be used appropriately. There’s no rule that you need them all the way down to the heading 4 level. Utter rubbish.
4 Alt Attribute / Alternative text allows you to add a description to an image. Since search engine crawlers cannot see images, they rely on alternative text attributes to determine relevance to a search query. Alternative text also helps makes an image more likely to appear in a Google image search and is used by screen readers to provide context for visually impaired users.
Found / Nice Work
YAY! And an SEO spammer that doesn’t say that the site is missing alts, when it isn’t – that’s unusual…
5 In-Page Links / A page’s link juice is split between all the links on that page so lots of unnecessary links on a page will dilute the value attributed to each link. There’s no exact number of links to include on a page but best practice is to keep it under 200.
Issue found / Status: FAILED [10 errors]
Erm, WHAT?! My site has about 230 pages in. These are all listed on the site map page (as you would expect). There’s no way there’s 10 pages with over 200 links on it. Also, Google only really cares if you’re a link farm with pages and pages with only links on them. It can work out when pages look iffy. Mine don’t. WRONG.
6 URL Resolve / Search engines see www.domain.com and domain.com as different websites. This means they could see a large amount of duplicate content, which they don’t like.
Issue Found / Your site’s IP 104.21.10.19 does not redirect to whychristmas.com
Erm, no it doesn’t. This is also NOT AN ISSUE. SEO spammers seem to love this old myth of ‘one site per IP’. Google has said many times that this is a myth and should be ignored. And if you’re wondering, Excellent Ranks’s IP is 151.106.96.10 and it doesn’t go to their site either!
7 Robots.txt /A robots.txt file allows you to restrict the access of search engine crawlers to prevent them from accessing specific pages or directories. They also point the web crawler to your page’s XML sitemap file.
Found / Nice Work
YAY!
8 XML Sitemap / XML sitemaps contain the list of your URLs that are available to index and allow the search engines to read your pages more intelligently. They can also include information like your site’s latest updates, frequency of changes and the importance of URLs.
Found / Nice Work
YAY!
9 Broken links / Broken links send users to non-existent web pages. They hurt a site’s usability and reputation, which impacts SEO.Fortunately your page doesn’t contain any broken links.
Not Found / Nice Work
YAY! (Most SEO spammers also go after this one when there’s not a problem…)
10 Schema.org / Schema.org is a set of vocabularies used to add meaning to the information on a webpage in a way that is readable by machines (Google).Schema.org includes attributes for entities, relationships between entities and actions.
Issue found / Not Good
Erm, what’s ‘Not Good’?! I’ve got Schema code on my site, where it’s appropriate. WRONG.
11 SSL Secure / Modern websites tend to be SSL secured (HTTPS) as it provides an extra security layer while logging in to your Web Service. In 2014, Google announced that an HTTPS (vs HTTP) website would receive an extra boost in their ranking.
Found / Nice Work
YAY!
12 Image Optimization / Optimizing your images can yield the greatest performance improvements and impress your website visitors. Lighthouse helps to identify issues that could frustrate users when the page loads, like images without dimensions. By not specifying an image’s width and height, you could be causing a layout shift on your page.
Issue found / Not Good
Again, what’s ‘Not Good’? It would be really helpful if they’d tell you wouldn’t it?! Anyway, the images are optimised, this is WRONG.
13 Analytics / Web analytics let you measure visitor activity on your website. You should have at least one analytics tool installed, but It can also be good to install a second in order to cross-check the data.
Not Found / Needs to Install at least one Analytics, i.e., Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
WRONG. There’s analytics on the site. If they’d looked at the code, they’d have seen it. I just don’t use Google Analytics, I use a privacy friendly one that their auto scan doesn’t detect… Also having (or not having) analytics on a site has NO direct SEO effect.
14 Custom 404 Page / Custom 404 error pages are an opportunity for you to reduce customer frustration and link to other pages on your site.
Found / Nice Work
YAY!
15 Backlinks Score / The backlinks score is calculated by looking at a combination of link signals. This includes the overall number of backlinks together with the number of linking domains, as well as rating the overall quality of the backlinks pointing to a website. The quality assessment is based on the linking pages.
Issue found (Bad score 0) / Not Good
This is SO WRONG that it’s laughable. Checking my site on the ahrefs backlinks checker (one of the biggest and best ones) it’s got over 77 thousand backlinks. Their site has 366 – not 336 thousand, just 336. Erm, yeah.
16 Traffic Estimations / Website traffic is important for many reasons. The more people see your site, the more potential customers you will have. The number of visitors to your website becomes the number of opportunities your business has at giving an impression, generating qualified leads, sharing your brand and building relationships.
Issue found (Bad score 0) / Need more high qualith links [oops spelling error on their template there…]
Again WRONG and totally laughable. I guess they don’t think over 20 MILLION page views each December counts for much then?!
17 Facebook Page / Facebook is a vital part of modern digital marketing – no matter what type of business you have. Use Facebook Insights to optimize your Facebook posts to maximize engagement and website traffic.
Found / NIce Work
YAY!
18 Twitter Account / Create a Twitter account for your brand and link it with your website to prevent brandjacking and help make your social media marketing more effective. Here are a few tips to help create a Twitter promotion plan. [There were no tips.]
Found / Nice Work
YAY!
19 Instagram Account / There are over 800 million Instagram accounts active every month, and 500 million of those are active every single day. This means that when it comes to content, you’ve got about 800 million potential sets of eyes ready to enjoy your content.
Not Found / Not Good
This is true. It’s also not an SEO issue. I don’t want an Instagram account. So I’ve not got one. No. Big. Deal. IRRELEVANT.
20 / LinkedIn Account / With 562 million users, LinkedIn is all about building networks and connections. It’s not only about who you know, but about who your connections know.That’s the real power of LinkedIn for business: the ability to tap into existing connections and grow your brand through word-of-mouth.
Not found / Not Good
Again true but see above. My site is about Christmas information. It’s not a ‘business’ – thus being on LinkedIn would be completely IRRELEVANT.
21 Google map listing / Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets, real-time traffic conditions, Not Found / Not good (Need listing a Google map)
Nope. IRRELEVANT. The site doesn’t have a physical location. If you spent more that 60 seconds on the site this would be very obvious.
22 HTML Error / HTML Error Appears. When an HTTP 404 appears on your screen, it means that although the server is reachable, the specific page you are looking for is not. The web page is either broken, or it no longer exists.
Issue found /Not Good
WHAT?! A 404 page is NOTHING TO DO with HTML errors. I mean, do they not know the difference?!?!? Anyway, my site DOES NOT have HTML errors (unlike their site…) WRONG.
23 Website Speed / Web performance refers to the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on the user’s web browser. Web performance optimization, or website optimization is the field of knowledge about increasing web performance.
Issue Found / Need to optimize mobile site speed perfomance [oops more spelling issues]
Ahahahahahahaha. This one is so WRONG that’s it’s laughable. My site gets 100/100 on Google’s PageSpeed tool. Their site gets 54/100. Hmmmm.
24 Blog Page / A blog, short for weblog, is a frequently updated web page used for personal commentary or business content. Blogs are often interactive and include sections at the bottom of individual blog posts where readers can leave comments.
Not Found / Not Good
Yes, my site doesn’t have a blog. It doesn’t need one. IRRELEVANT.
So out of the 24 items, I’m ‘good’ on eight of them according to Excellent Rank.
However, as we’ve seen, all of the other 16 ‘issues’ are either WRONG (some of them are so wrong it’s comical) or completely IRRELEVANT to my site.
Oh dear…
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…
I had spam from the domains webtechresearch.com and digibem.com. Both domains were registered within a month of each other in October/November 2022 which is very similar to tactics from Webtrolive – the last SEO spammers we looked at.
The webtechresearch.com domain just has a Godaddy holding page on it now. However, doing a Google of ‘webtechresearch.com’ shows a result from Feb 5th 2023 (but still in Google’s search cache) of a Canadian ‘health and safety’ site which had ‘Developed by iJENTECH’ on it. So I’m guessing they used the domain as a development site at some point! BUT they didn’t stop Google from indexing a site they were developing – oops. (And is iJentech – an SEO company in Bhubaneswar also connected to Excellent Rank!?)
As I type, the digibem.com site just has an error page, but in Google’s cache there’s a dodgy SEO site for a company called “Digital Web Firm” but that’s got text about Excellent Rank on it!
What are the chances?! And in my previous dealings with Excellent Rank, the initial spam came from ‘Digi Web Firm’ – I spot a pattern here!
The main Excellent Rank site has changed a bit since the last time looked at it. However, it’s still full of basic HTML and accessibility issues as well as having dummy latin text popping up on various pages!
They’re also still using the same fake address in the USA (which is for a park in New York), when they’re clearly based in Berhampur, Odisha, India.
Conclusion
Excellent Rank are SEO spammers. And wow do they ever spam!
They used a number of fake domains to send out their spam.
The report the sent me was pretty terrible. All of their ‘errors’ were either wrong or irrelevant.
When asked to explain the issues with the report or about why they spam, they can’t answer satisfactorily.
Their own site is full of basic HTML errors and fake information.
So if you get an email from an email from webtechresearch.com or digibem.com, pressing the delete button is very good option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…