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 spam came in from a ‘Steve Perry’ who was using a gmail.com account with his name and a bunch of numbers in it. (I often remove the last name of spammers, but I’m 100% sure this is a fake name, so I’m leaving it in.)
The subject was: Boost Web Standing : whychristmas.com
Hello whychristmas.com Team,
It’s my pleasure to be in touch with you.
While going through your website my technical Team came across some major flaws which are strongly opposing your site to get recognized. We know the value of your time and money, so we came up with some suggestions which will make your site known to everyone.
Methods of Promoting websites are getting critical every day. One can overcome this situation by heading towards the right direction with proper guidance from an expert.
Better placement in major search engines and Social media sites Google prefers completely error free and flawless websites. Proper Keyword selection and placement. Quality contents have to be posted on regular basisMobile responsive design does not limit itself to a few specific devices. It’s a responsibility to ensure your website remains responsive across all devices old and new irrespective of browsers.
Given a chance we can share our ideas and implement a new approach to achieve the desired goal for your website. I would also love to present a detailed analysis report on your website. We can mutually work on your website to get the best shape so that you can always match up with the updated algorithms.
If you find this interesting, feel free to email/call us for more details about our service, pricing and more…
Alternatively you can let us know your best number and time so that we can open for a teleconference.
Steve Perry
Digital Marketing Analyst
Fairly standard SEO spam. They really like your site, but there’s lots wrong with it. And they really want to help you make it better… Only of course it’s all rubbish. (And what does ‘Methods of Promoting websites are getting critical every day’ actually mean?!)
Anyway, I replied…
Hi Steve,
This sounds interesting.
Can you tell me more about what’s wrong with my site?
Thanks,
James
A few days later I got a reply from a Kevin (I’m pretty sure this is a fake name but I’ll leave his last name off just in case…!). Kevin was using an @protechzi.com email address.
Hi James,
Thank you for asking for more information and a proposal for your website.
We just make a preliminary analysis on your website using an online tool and found your website has a decent score in terms of on-page SEO, You can check : https://iwebchk.com/reports/view/whychristmas.com
We can tell you more by making an in-depth analysis if you wish to subscribe to our service.
You can also consider my proposal if you wish to improve more of your keywords ranking and also maintain those ranking in top spot forever.
Please read on further to see my proposition and allow me your best time and contact number to have a further discussion. You may visit our website to learn more: www.protechzi.com
How does this service help your business ?
The primary objective of this service is to promote your website on leading search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to improve your search ranking in order to get you more organic traffic.
Higher search rankings: Your web pages will appear more frequently and in higher positions on SERPs (search engine results pages) Increased organic traffic: More visitors will land on your web pages through search engines (so you don’t have to pay for traffic) Increased brand awareness and authority: Your brand will appear more frequently which increases your visibility and leads to your website being used as a resource by other websites and publishers Increase in number of leads and sales: As your website appears in front of a larger audience, it becomes a silent salesperson that can collect leads and drive sales from online searchers Long Lasting results: When you improve a site’s SEO, the work often creates long-term improvements and compounding returns that can get better over timeSEO is a long-term practice that works best over time. SEO strategies that are implemented today should be given at least six months to show results. Once that value kicks in, strategies continue to work.
SEO Ranking Factors
Google uses over 200 factors to rank webpages for SERPs. As part of our partnership, we will assess and prioritize many of these factors to improve your site. Some of those factors include:
On-Page Optimization :
Meta Title Optimization Keyword Placement Image optimization Google Analytics Setup Xml Sitemap Creation Breadcrumb Navigation Customize 404 Error Page creation Browser Compatibility issues Google Crawling Errors Analysis Page Loading Time Optimization Internal Linking Meta Description Optimization Image Alt-Tag Fixing Google Webmaster Tool Setup IP Validation W3C Markup Validation HTML Sitemap Creation Social Media Integration Advance Google Analytics Setup Blog Integration Duplicate Content Fixing Meta Keyword Optimization Canonical Issues Fixing Header (H1/H2) Anchor Text Linking Broken Link Optimization Analytics Setup Robots.txt Creation Website Form Validation Image,Video Site Map CreationOff-Page Optimization :
LBD Creation Upto 5 Keywords Directory Submission Bookmarking Submission Blog Posting Blog Commenting Reciprocal Link Creation E-Book Submission PPT Video Promotion Article Submission Business Listing Press Release Submission PPT Submission Review Submissions Content Submission Paid Link creation Infographic Distribution Classified Ad Posting PDF / Doc Submission Profile listing Image Sharing Local Directory Submission Review Posting Review Posting Paid Blog Posting (on demand)Social Media Optimization :
Facebook Account Setup Facebook Wall Updates Facebook Timeline Design Video Promotion Content Submission Blog Commenting Twitter Account Setup Twitter Updates Coupon Submission Image Sharing Review Submissions Google Plus Business Page Setup Pinterest Account Creation Custom Pinboards Pin Images Facebook Product PageOur Plan of Action
To improve your website’s SEO, our strategy resolves these issues through the followings strategies.
Because SEO is an ongoing task, our plan will include an initial set-up phase and ongoing monthly plans.
Strategy
Description
Full Site Audit
We perform a complete audit of your website’s onsite SEO, offsite SEO, and technical SEO.
Keyword Research
We research up to [x] keywords to find the best opportunities for connecting with your target audience and appearing in search.
Competitor Research
We assess your client’s competitors to see how they are performing and what you need to do to top them.
Technical Optimization
We implement technical upgrades that help your site meet the requirements and best practices set by Google.
Content Strategy
We expand site depth and build additional on-site content through a blog and targeted landing pages.
Link Building
We gain links back to your website.
Time Frame to achieve Page one ranks:
This process is called Google organic ranking, so the word “organic” indicates that it won’t happen overnight. As per the Google process it may take sometimes to get you on Google top page. But being said that your ranking should start improving from the very first month of your SEO campaign. So gradually we can show your website ranking on the top page for most of your keywords.
Our recommendation :
Low Competition keywords: 2-3 Months Medium Competition keywords: 3-5 Months High Competition keywords: 5-6 MonthsOur pricing structure:
As I mentioned above it may take sometime to give you the actual result but still we don’t want you to be engaged with any contract. So you can just try our service for a month and if you are happy with the result and improvement then you can proceed for next month.
Pricing depends on the number of keywords you want to optimize and the number of social media accounts you want to work. Each keyword takes the same amount of work to optimize so the more number of keywords the higher the price.
Web Start
Cost: $300/m
Keywords : 15-20
Man Hour :80
Back links up to :120
Content :06
Social media :3(a/c) we will promote your website on leading social media sites lie Facebook, tweeter and LinkedIn.
Error fixing :freeTo know more about the deliverable please visit : https://www.protechzi.com/seo-pricing/web-start/
Web Traffic
Cost: $200/m
Keywords : 10-15
Man Hour :50
Back links :80
Content 04
Social media :2(a/c) we will promote your website on leading social media sites lie Facebook, tweeter and LinkedIn.
Error fixing :freeTo know more about the deliverable please visit : https://www.protechzi.com/seo-pricing/web-traffic/
Or you may try
Web line
Cost: $150/m
Keywords : 6-10
Man Hour : 30
Back links :60
Social media :1(a/c) we will promote your website on leading social media sites lie Facebook, tweeter and LinkedIn.
Error fixing :freeTo know more about the deliverable please visit : https://www.protechzi.com/seo-pricing/web-line/
What can we guarantee:
We have no contract. It's all monthly due to the organic nature of this promotion. You can cancel the service at any point of time if you are not satisfied with the service or result. We guarantee the improvement in your keyword ranking at the end of the very first month of your campaign or your money back no questions asked. Any process we execute on your website we take your prior approval so that you can keep a track of our work. You will process the payment through PayPal so you can trust because its 100% buyer protected. We will give you a dedicated project manager so that you can get in touch at any point of time. Initially, we will provide you an in-depth report on your website which shows your current standing of your website like, your current keyword ranking, links crawled by Google, the number of average visitor inflow etc. and then we will provide you a fortnight and monthly progress report. You can compare the report or check it manually to see the progress and your ROI. We will be able to take care any kind of website issues while you continue your SEO campaign with us.You can always call me on my below number to clarify your doubts. I will be happy to provide more information so that we can start a healthy business relationship.
We never want to lose any of our prospective clients for any reason. You can always come back to me if you are not happy with our deliverable, pricing or process. I have a solution for you.
Looking forward to your further response.
Thanks and Regards
Kevin Cox | Sales Consultant
Phew! Now that’s one LONG email!
But I had some questions…
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the report. I see my site gets 81.5% on that report. I also checked your site and it gets 72.2%.
So isn’t it actually your site that’s more in need of SEO help?
I reply to SEO spammers, like yourself, to see what they say to get business.
My site gets over 20 MILLION page views every year, so it’s always interesting to get emails, from out of the blue, telling me what ‘errors’ it has…
I have some questions for you.
Please can you tell me why your company thinks it’s ok to spam people, from random email accounts, to get business?
Why does your site say you’re in New Jersey, when your business is registered in India?
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, although you’re not), you are breaking several aspects of CAN-SPAM compliance: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/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,
James
Later that day I got a reply, with some interesting answers…
Hi James,
Thanks for your long email and surprised to me that you take too much time for spammer.
However I could have ignored your email to respond but again have some free time now.
1- There are many factors which you cannot avoid just to get that 100% score. it is more important to focus on how your site can do better for your visitors if you are not fully focused on organic traffic. We are into a business which is very hard to be ranked it get business. But still our sites are ranked for many local keywords.
Please can you tell me why your company thinks it’s ok to spam people, from random email accounts, to get business?
Yes, first I would say that the word “spam” may be discovered by people like you or similar. There is no spamming, it is a business and we reach people to find out if they need our service.
There are many people who come and do business through this emailing and other means of marketing. So if you understand how business is done, then don’t ever use a word spam. It is just an approach, if you don’t like simply ignore and delete or block or drag into junk folder. Don’t wast your time writing long emails asking useless questions.
Why does your site say you’re in New Jersey, when your business is registered in India?
Yes, we are in New Jersey, but our origin is in India. We have been doing business for the last 10 years and we have many clients from the USA only. And they really talk good about us.
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).
Yes, we are happy to show the world that we breached your law, we have stolen everything through an email….if you think so then we really take pleasure doing that. As I said bunch of people have no job but to keep on an eye on an email account, disgusting !!!
I would take a break now because I am not as free as you.
I would rather advise you to take your focus off this very big crime of spamming and spend that time elsewhere.
Cherish.
So Kevin doesn’t explain what my site is already better than their one, he says ‘There are many factors which you cannot avoid just to get that 100% score’ – THAT MAKES NO SENSE.
Kevin claims not to be a spammer but then says ‘Yes, we are happy to show the world that we breached your law, we have stolen everything through an email.’ This might be an attempt at a joke, but it’s not a funny one. And Kevin’s answer to spam is that I should ‘simply ignore and delete or block or drag into junk folder. Don’t wast your time writing long emails asking useless questions.’
So he clearly doesn’t think that multiple international laws apply to them…
He also says that their origin is in India but now they’re in the USA. Yeah, that’s not how off-shore business works… Also ‘And they really talk good about us’ is TERRIBLE English…
Also notice that Kevin signs-off his email with ‘Cherish’. That’s a VERY unusual word to use in American English, but it’s common term in Hindi. hmmmmmm.
So I asked for some more explanations…
Hi Kevin,
I’ve been replying to spammers, like yourself, for many years. So I just have to copy and paste things in my long replies, just like you!
You say ‘There is no spamming’ but then say ‘we are happy to show the world that we breached your law’. So which is it?
I can see that Protechzi Digital Media Private Limited was registered in Cuttack (on 23 Aug, 2016) and your business office is in Bhubaneswar. (That information took me 10 seconds to find.)
I’ve also checked the New Jersey Business Directory, but I can’t find any record of ProtechZi, which is a legal requirement for doing business in NJ. Can you explain this to me?
I too am busy. I have to deal with multiple pieces of spam a day…
Best wishes,
James
Well it’s been well over a week now and I’ve heard nothing more from Kevin. I guess that ProtechZi are yet more SEO spammers that can’t/won’t answer basic questions about their business.
Their Report & Recommendations
The report was a web page from an online SEO checking site. My site got 81.5%. Not bad. But when we look more carefully at what it scored the site down for, the issues are erm, not really there!
It gets a ‘Medium’ on the overall Social Media section where it says I have 0 Facebook or Twitter mentions. Well that’s wrong for a start. During December the site gets A LOT of engagement on those two platforms!
It also scores a ‘Medium’ on the Facebook section. It says the page has no likes – IT DOES. It says there’s no engagement – THERE IS. It also scores the page low because it’s not ‘verified’. Well it’s a total pain to get verified! Being verified will also have ZERO effect on SEO.
In the Twitter section it gets a ‘Low’ because ProtechZi are using the free version of the site and it only does Twitter checks if you’re paid – THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM. So why is my site ‘marked down’ for it?!
The home page scores ‘Low’ on ‘Keyword Density & Consistency
SEO-content’. Well the home page is a glorified landing page. I’m not surprised about that. If you check a ‘proper’ info page, it’s fine!
It scores ‘Low’ for web analytics because this auto tool can’t see the privacy friendly analytics tool I use – THIS IS WRONG.
It gets a ‘Medium’ because the auto tool can’t find a certain size of favicon, although it’s very much there – THIS IS WRONG.
It gets a ‘Low’ for having an email on the site. It says it’s not protected. IT IS.
So we can see that all the ‘issues’ that this auto tool found are basically WRONG.
Oops.
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 domain is at protechzi.com which was registered in January 2015.
Their site has 1 HTML error – that’s VERY good for SEO spammers! And it’s a stupidly simple one that the ‘Top web design & SEO Company USA’ (as they claim to be) should really know about.
Using the WAVE Accessibility checking tool, this site has 5 errors and 6 contrast errors. Again good. And again their very simple ones they should have fixed…
Using the Google Lighthouse speed test tool the site gets:
Performance: 50
Accessibility: 87
Best Practices: 96
SEO: 85
My Christmas site has 0 HTML or Accessibility errors and gets 100/100 for all four items on Lighthouse.
I also thought it would be interesting to put their site through the tool they used on my site. Well, they get 72.2% – so nearly 10% less than my site. Yet they want to tell me how to run my site. Hmmmm.
The alt on their logo is ‘logo’. Don’t do that. It should be ‘ProtechZi’.
The use html headings out of order. Don’t do that.
On their about page are some Testimonials. Only they all have the same person’s image next to them. And that’s a stock photo. Because of course it is… And the image is auto generated because it changes if you re-load the page! The testimonials might all be real. I don’t know. What I do know s that they’re using fake photos – which isn’t good.
There’s a Privacy Policy page, only it doesn’t really say anything and certainly wouldn’t pass most pieces of privacy legislation around the world.
As in their email, on the site, they claim “We guarantee on your keyword ranking from the end of the very first month of your SEO campaign.”. Only Google says not to trust anyone who makes claims like that…
It says on their home page that “PROTECHZI Is One Of The Top SEO Company in USA”. Not only is that grammatically bad, it’s also not true.
On their contact page, there’s a list of ‘Service Areas’. This is just an SEO spammy list of places in the USA. It includes Florida (all of it) as well as various cities in Maryland and Virginia.
But they also have an address in New Jersey, yet this is the only place in New Jersey in their ‘Service Areas’. That seems ‘odd’…
The address in NJ is for an office complex. And guess what, you can get ‘virtual’ offices there…
They also have a US phone number, only that’s in Massachusetts. Again, odd…
They have social media links in their footer. The one to LinkedIn goes to a non-existent profile. I did find their ‘real’ one, where it says they’re in NJ…
Their Facebook page says they’re in the USA. But their Twitter profile has their location as New Jersey but says “Protechzi in one of those most innovative and trusted #Digital service providing company in India and serving many overseas clients globally.” Now we’re getting to the truth.
I’ve also found several business listings for them as “Protechzi Digital Media PVT Ltd”. PVT Ltd is an Indian business type and NOT a US one!
And… their listing on The Economic Times, the financial section of the Indian Times, confirms this. Their registered office is in Cuttack, Orissa and their listed business office is in Bhubaneswar, Orissa (the home on many an SEO spammer).
They’re also NOT listed in the official New Jersey business directory.
So we’ve got yet another SEO spammer flat out lying about where they’re based. I’ve said it on numerous occasions…
Conclusion
ProtechZi are SEO spammers.
They send out spam from random email accounts.
They seem to think that international laws don’t apply to them.
They’re location is rather ‘clouded’ at best and I can find no evidence of them having any business listings in the USA whatsoever.
So if you get an email from ProtechZi, the delete button might well be the best option.
But, as ever, the choice is yours…