How Not To Be a SEO Spammer

An anonymous reader writes "The head of Google's webspam team, Matt Cutts, has blogged about one of his colleagues receiving an email offering SEO services to help the web site www.google.com. The irony wasn't lost on Matt, who has blogged about these emails before. As this article points out, if ever there was evidence that the people who send many of these emails haven't done their homework, this is it."

Comments

This page should have more comments

[spoot]

It would make it rank higher organically with search engines.

Re:This page should have more comments

[cold fjord]

I will send you my bill for this comment.

Re:This page should have more comments

[ackthpt]

It would make it rank higher organically with search engines.

Well, here's one....

I had to go look up 'SEO' as I was drawing a blank on it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There, now I have some idea what the article is about.

Maybe someone could optimize editors on /. to make sure all acronyms are spelled out at least once in the article.

Re:This page should have more comments

[Joce640k]

The real LOL is that the department heads think spammers/scammers "do homework".

Re:This page should have more comments

[drinkypoo]

Because everyone on /. is a web marketer, developer, or designer?

Because the term is used everywhere, all the time.

trust me

[Anonymous Coward]

SEO is like Voodoo in some sense. It's not measurable because there's too many factors outside your control.
Is there traffic because the SEO is awesome, or is there traffic anyways. No one knows.

The only thing an SEO can say for sure is that we can make the proper on-site changes. Without ever
mentioning the word traffic - because that leads to false hopes.

Re:trust me

[pspahn]

Yes, it's mostly snake oil, but there is something to be said for properly implemented schema.org tags, well formed page names, and the rest of the stuff that makes your site not only bubble higher in the search results, but also provide useful links within your search results.

And by the way, you can indeed quantify SEO improvements. The only problem is that the SEO guy usually doesn't know how and ends up asking a developer anyway.

News for nerds, stuff that matters

[Swampash]

Next up: Slashdot reveals that some of those billionaire Nigerian princes aren't actually real!

Re:Well, there is some logic to it.

[AbsGeekNZ]

searching for "search" on nz.bing.com gives Google as the 5th result....bing no where to be seen!

Props, though.

[bill_mcgonigle]

The spammer managed to get ahold of a real human inside Google. No small feat.

Re:Props, though.

[Samantha Wright]

The machine learning researcher in me feels this comment is overly presumptuous and possibly discriminatory.

so i got an SEO phone call....

[acedotcom]

she wanted to boast my rank on google. i asked her how she found my business number and then pointed out that someone had to google it....which means my SEO is just fine. she then hung up.

Re:so i got an SEO phone call....

[Anonymous Coward]

I told them that when I needed SEO I would search for it and whichever company ranked highest would get the call.

Re:Well, there is some logic to it.

[wvmarle]

Then they give good results. If I use a search engine to search for search engines, I'm not interested in the search engine I'm searching with to show in the search results, as I found that one already. So that's six searches in one sentence :-)

well this is coincidence

[bitt3n]

so google gets an offer for SEO, and shortly thereafter google just happens to appear on slashdot?

I guess they opted for the budget package.