About This Site

When SEO Goes Bad

Jay Plouff (Maria Wilson)
Justin Taylor
Amanda Moss

Here's an email I received on 21 May 2012. Normally I don't respond, but you can read my response below.

You know, I don't really like outing people. In fact, I admire people that go an extra mile to try to provide a valuable service and I appreciate a low-key humble approach. If they are legitimate.

Unfortunately, there are many so-called SEO specialists that obviously have very little experience that simply relentlessly promote themselves. They make absurd claims and lie! Then after the scam is widely discredited, they change their contact information and keep trying.

The lesson is this: Examine unsolicited email. Search the web for their name, telephone number, email address, subject line and message phrases. Find what others have to say. I am certain you'll find a wealth of history and reviews. On the Internet, nothing ever happens just once.

Resources

Jay Plouff (Maria Wilson) Email

Headers:

From: Jay Plouffe <seo.websitedevloper@gmail.com>
To: Barry@Coilgun.info
Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 21:26:16 +0530
Subject: Organic SEO - Coilgun.info
Delivered-To: barry@coilgun.info
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Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=e89a8ff256323ac58504c08df176

Message:

Coilgun.info Team,

I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Coilgun.info.

  1. Your website Coilgun.info is not ranking top in Google organic search for many competitive keyword phrases.
  2. Your website profile is not available in most of the Social Media Websites.
  3. Your site has 8 Google back links, this can be improved further.

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.

Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings. Being at the top left of Google (#1- #3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company's website traffic and online reputation.

Sounds interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you.

--------------------------------------------------
Best Regards,
Jay Plouffe
SEO Consultant
239-205-3053
--------------------------------------------------
PS1: This is onetime email and you may ask us to “REMOVE” you from our mailing list.
PS2: I found your site from online advertising but did not click.
PS3: We operate 24 x7. I will be happy to send you links to price list,money back guarantee, client rankings, client testimonials, “How we are different from others?”, and “Why should you choose us?” on receiving a response from you.

Barry's Response

From: Barry <barry@coilgun.info>
To: Jay Plouffe <seo.websitedevloper@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Organic SEO - Coilgun.info
Sent: Mon 5/21/2012 12:49 PM

You are both lying and incompetent:

  1. My website IS ranking in the top three for all my keyword phrases.
  2. Why are you looking for social media profiles for an engineering notebook.
  3. I have over 5,000 backlinks according to Google Webmaster Tools. Not sure which crappy tool you're using to determine backlinks, but your claim of "8 Google back links" tells me you don't know what you're doing.
  4. You did not find my website through advertising. I don't advertise. Big lie there, “Jay”.
  5. Your email is identical to the discredited “Maria Wilson” spam campaign.
  6. Your own company is nowhere to be found in Google (much less at the top), and you yourself have no profile in social media websites nor any backlinks.
  7. However, a Google search found that your email message is comment-spammed into thousands of blogs. Is this how you propose to make “improvements”?

I invite you to demonstrate the value of your services (or your incompetence) by sending your “free audit report.”

I will publish this on my blog. So, now that your credibility is shot, what’s next?

Thanks, Barry
coilgun.info

Stay tuned; I'll update this when (if) I hear anything back.

Three-Month Update

As of 7/30/2012, there is no response from "Jay Plouffe". However, I have received several interesting emails from other people experiencing this ongoing spam campaign.

As of 8/19/2012, still no response. But I received a virtually identical spam message from "Maria Wilson" for another domain I own.

Six-Month Update

As of 12/12/2012, still no response from anyone (not that I expect it at this point). But now the lying and incompetent "Sophia Nelson", 301-859-4903, SEO Consultant, is also spamming the same note to people, too.


Justin Taylor: Bad SEO Copycat

They must be finding some real suckers. I just received a copycat email from another Bad SEO "consultant". They just don't learn, do they.

Headers:

From: Justin Taylor <justin.webseo2@gmail.com>>
To: customerservice@fmejeans.com
Date: Wed 2/6/2013 5:53 PM
Subject: Gain Organic Traffic:Fmejeans.Com :PS
Delivered-To: Delivered-To: barry@fmejeans.com
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Message:

Hi Fmejeans.Com Team,

I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough organic & social media traffic on your website.

I would like to update you that your website is still not ranked on the top pages of Google SERPs for your popular keywords (Products). Your loss is your competitor's gain i.e. the traffic which could have generated quality sales for you goes to your competitors as they rank well in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) organically.

Reasons:

  1. HTML and other on-page errors are present on your website.
  2. Low number of internal and external quality links present on your website.
  3. Duplicate or low quality contents present in your website without any regular update.
  4. Need to update fresh contents on your website and blogs as per the latest Google guideline.
  5. Broken Links and Poison words might be present in your website.
  6. Social media profile needs to be updated regularly.

Long gone are the days when Google used to give priority to websites of keyword based domains or websites with huge number of links. Now Google counts each and every detail to verify if your website is relevant to the keywords you are promoting for. A single un-wanted link or a duplicate content can lead your website to be penalized by Google.

We are a leading website promotion company providing online promotion, SMO, Reputation Management, Content (both web and promotional content) fixing services to clients. We have a team of 240+ SEO professional working 24*7. Our team of dedicated Google Analytic and Adwords certified professionals excel in promoting and increasing the visibility of a website in various search engines (including the latest Google Panda and Penguin updates), which will directly help in increasing traffics for your website.

Unlike other SEO companies we do not believe in talking rather we believe in delivering what we promise to our clients. We provide guaranteed services or money back-guarantee to all our clients who consider working with us.

If you are getting rigid by paying a huge amount in PPC then Organic listing by using white hat technique will be definitely a right choice for you. As the rate of conversion is more in organic listing as compared to PPC, eventually it will be an absolute gain for you.

This email just tells you the fraction of things we do, our optimization process involves many other technical factors which can be sent to you on your request. If you would like to know more about our services then please write us back else you can give us a call us in our number below.

P.S: - This is our marketing strategy that we use the Gmail account. Once you reply us back, the next communication I will do is from my corporate email ID.

Let me know your thoughts and looking forward to work together.

Best Regards,
Justin Taylor|Senior SEO Advisor
PH. No: (217) 650-7095
Skype: justintaylor888

------------------------------------------------
Note:
1: This is a onetime email and you may ask us to "REMOVE".
2: If you are interested I will send more details on our "corporate identity", "company profile", "why you should choose us?", "Price list", "money back" etc. in my next mail.

Fraud and Scam:

  • If "Justin Taylor" is so fucking good, why does he mask his company name and email address.
  • "If you are getting rigid" - yeah sure, SEO always makes me rigid. Not.
  • "Once you reply us back" - with English this bad, they are not qualified to search engine work us able.
  • 217-650-7095 is a landline in Atlanta, IL 61723 (near Bloomington and Springfield) served by Level 3 Communications LLC.
  • "Team of 240+ SEO professional working 24*7". Not fucking likely, unless they're fucking you.
  • This exact note has been comment-spammed into thousands of websites and google groups and forums. For example, here and here and here and here and many more. Just search on the phone number (217) 650-7095 or Skype id justintaylor888.
  • A "white hat" SEO will not resort to comment spamming like these idiots.
  • Read this entertaining slam on "Justin Taylor" and his robotic minions of fraud.
  • This website shows that "Justin Taylor" and "Jorge Conner" have identical contact info.
  • One website reports that 217-650-7095 is assigned to Jorge Conner, <jorgeconner8790@gmail.com>, an SEO company in Bhubaneswar, India. Really? You should email Jorge and ask him about Justin.
  • The whole tone of this note is "this is all so complicated that you'll never understand it". It's demeaning and disrespectful of potential clients.

Amanda Moss Email

Here's another copycat email from a Bad SEO "consultant". It has more grammatical errors than earlier notes.

Headers:

From: Amanda Moss <nancylee8555@gmail.com>
To: barry@coilgun.info
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 02:13:37 +0000
Subject: Important Information For Your Website :Coilgun.info :ZS
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=089e015372367fe59f04e9732ee3
Delivered-To: barry@coilgun.info
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Message-ID: <089e015372367fe5b504e9732ee6@google.com>

Message:

Hi Coilgun.info Team,

Hope you are doing fine.

I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough organic traffic & most often you stick to Ad words to get more traffic which is quite expensive and the chances is high of getting a spam traffic as well.

Let me tell you that your website still does not organically rank on major search engine�s first page for most of the popular keywords, which means people searching for your products are not able to find your website and you are losing traffic.

Some of the major factors which can be overcome for your website to rank well in SERP organically and increase your social media presence are:

  1. Seems like your website carries a lot of technical errors which prevents search engine to crawl and index your website properly.
  2. Your website needs a proper keyword selection and optimization.
  3. Your website is not well furnished with enough quality and theme based back links.
  4. Your website should be more inclined towards Social media promotion and a regular updates in major social networks.
  5. Missing quality web and promotion contents (Article, Blogs etc.) which is preventing your website to gain more authority and ranking in Web Market.

In the present day scenario it's very essential to take a proper care of your website and keep it updated with fresh and original contents. There are many additional improvements which can help your website to gain more traffic and visibility. If you are interested to learn more and curious to know how we can help you to improve your website to get a higher traffic, then I would be glad to provide you a detailed proposal for your website.

Our clients' consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are on the top of Google. Being on the top of Google is the best thing you can do for your sales and online reputation. This email just tells you the fraction of things we do, our optimization process involves many other technical factors which can be sent to you on your request. If you would like to know more about our services then please write us back else you can give us a call us in our number mentioned below.

P.S: - This is our marketing strategy to use a Gmail account. Once you reply us back, we will communicate with you through our corporate Email ID.

Let me know your thoughts and looking forward to work together.

Best Regards,
Amanda Moss
Senior SEO Advisor
Skype:webmarketing.sales

Note:
1. This is a onetime email and you may ask us to REMOVE.
2. If you are interested I will send more details on our corporate identity, company profile, why you should choose us?, Price list, money back etc. in my next mail.

----------------DLM-----------------

Barry's Response

From: Barry <barry@coilgun.info>
To: Amanda Moss <nancylee8555@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Important Information For Your Website :Coilgun.info :ZS
Sent: Fri 10/25/2013 06:30 AM

Hi Amanda,

Please tell me more about your company, your prices, and in detail what exactly you can do to improve results.

Many thanks, Barry

Stay tuned; I'll update this when (if) I hear anything back.

Fraud and Scam:

  • Differences from previous notes are highlighted in yellow.
  • This is now totally content-free, with no attempt to sound custom nor analytic. "Amanda" dropped details like "your site has 8 Google back links."
  • Weak sales pitch: "Amanda" does not mention a free website audit report.
  • Known spammer: Searching for "nancylee8555@gmail.com" returns one result to The Sisters of Spam, a list of email addresses that are known to defraud or trick recipients.
  • Cloaking: This email is more successful at hiding its origin. There is no telephone number to search. The IP addresses are hiding their geography.
  • Searching on the Skype id found identical spam here and here and here and here and here and here. And many more.
  • A hilarious critique is found on No Clean Singing.
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