It’s bound to happen. You’ll receive an email from a friendly and helpful seeming person at a marketing company giving you a heads up that your website has some serious issues that are really hurting your web presence.

This is not the outreach that a legitimate marketing company does.

Ignoring the fact that that this type of cold calling violates both CAN-SPAM and CASL laws let’s look a little deeper.

First off, this email was not sent to you by a human. It was sent by a bot. These lead gen spammers utilize a template similiar to:

Hi [DOMAIN REGISTRANT NAME], I was looking at your website [DOMAIN NAME HERE] and I noticed a few things…

They use these templates send out emails utilizing generic or vague or unimportant results that an automated tool of theirs has picked up.

Why do they do this?

Because just like Nigerian Prince scams, it works. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have had to preemptively write this support article, or guide you towards it today.

What these spammers are doing is creating Fear, uncertainty, and doubt in you. If you’re scared something is wrong, you might reach out to them with a handful of money.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, cults, and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. - Wikipedia

Who are these people really?

9 times out of 10 they are actually faceless anonymous companies that are based out of India, Pakistan, Russia, and China. The true owners will be anonymous and hidden with no physical address listed. (Or a fake one that is utilizing a virtual office location or a PO Box.)

Maybe they know something Skunkworks doesn’t?

Extremely unlikely. Skunkworks spends a lot of money on professional tools that assess and monitor your website and send our staff daily or instant reports of any issues (that actually matter) with your website.

Usually the spammer’s own website is far worse than the website of their targets when run through Google’s auditting tools. (The only tools that truly matter.)

Often they make straight out false claims like We couldn’t find you on Google for your keywords or Your site quality is low or It’s not search engine friendly.

Some examples of SEO lead gen spam.

Considering the volume of clients that Skunkworks services, we see this spam on a very regular basis targetting many of our clients. The spam is often nearly identical because they’re sent by the same spam network operator.

Here is a small sampling of SEO lead gen spam we’ve collected in 2019. All spelling errors have been left intact.

Hi [REDACTED].com

In today’s digital world if you want to stay ahead of competition, you should always be prepared to overcome new updates by Google and be ready with new strategies to implement. 

I have a complete analysis report ready with me which shows your website needs immediate improvement. Some of the points are mentioned below: 

  • Due to poor and unauthorized link sites.
  • Relevant keyword phrases are not visible on first page listing.
  • Due to HTML validation errors and warnings present in website.
  • Your website is not search engine friendly.
  • Website content quality is not high standard.
  • Website is having on-page and on-site issues.

Our experienced Google Analytics professional understand all recent updates. We will prepare an advanced digital marketing campaign to generate maximum traffic and boost your search engine ranking.

For more details please reply. We have 24*7 supports, so you can contact any point of time with your website issues.

Best Regards ,

pong Burges

Most of those bullet points were nonsensical vague jargon but as far as validation errors are concerned Google has been telling webmasters that HTML validation has no effect on search ranking for over a decade now.

"Although we do recommend using valid HTML, it’s not likely to be a factor in how Google crawls and indexes your site." - Google

Hello [REDACTED].ca Team,

Hope you are doing great.

I feel so curious to know your thought and help you to expand your website’s promotional to protect and creating massive traffic for your business growth. I have visited your website and found some factors where we need to focus on for a better campaign.

Please find below some of the major areas:-

  • Key phrases selected for your site are not competitive enough to present you on first page.
  • On page and website issues are the major setback leading to non-performance on search engines.
  • Search based landing page relevance has been broadly ignored, leading to higher bounce rate.
  • Aggressive Social media promotion will help you to achieve brand visibility.

We will take all the responsibilities in making the website performance grow faster and you can dedicate your time & energy on new businesses acquisition.

This Email just provides you the glimpse of information, if you have any type of queries to discuss what latest technologies we have adopted and how it can significantly improve your online presence.

Let me know your thought and if possible give me the best time to make further discussion.

Kind Regards

Laura | Sr Web Analyst

PS I. If you are interested, then reply us Send your Proposal and Price list

PS II. If you are not interested, then send Remove or No

Completely nonsensical points filled with technical jargon.

Hi Sir, 

I am sorry to inbox you without taking your permission for this email. I have attached a file about my findings for your company [REDACTED].ca . showing few reasons that putting you in trouble to get maximum exposure through internet, along with your website and other few Profiles where there is a chance to get few lead of course .. 

  1. Reasons 1 }} I checked few of your keywords on Google ( Searched Keywords are attached in the email ) just to see how you are good with organic search , But I am sorry, I found your presence very little which is the main cause of loosing business. Just try to target 10-15 keywords what can add traffic to your website . We will be happy to do a keywords research and help you guide. 

  2. Reason 2 }} You are not following your competitors who are enjoying the 1st page . You should follow their Back links, Strategy , Website and try to stand one step ahead always . You will find the List of competitors in that attachment. 

  3. Reason 3 }} There are countless marketing tactics and strategies out there and Google now uses 200+ factors in their algorithm including social signals, user-interaction, and trust. You must figure out which ones to focus on first? You will find the Priority lists to fix in that attachment. 

  4. Reason 4 }} Plan to redesign your website as per the Industry demand, follow your competitors who are just redesigned their websites , adding best practice per new updates and users who are looking to use your services and landing to your website. I have added few website I liked the most and few feature in their website what are adding value and wining the user trust and increasing interaction. 

At this point if you see the value in working together, great. My name is Jessica Roy working with Runexe Solutions as a Business Consultant would love to talk and see if I’m able to take you on as our client. If you don’t want to move forward, that’s fine too and Just a No is good to go for me.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Jessica Roy

Business Development Manager

Note: - If you are not interested then you can reply with a simple “NO”, We will never contact you again.

Hello,

Can you handle 3-5 more Personal Injury cases per month on an ongoing basis? If not I can try a different lawyer in you area. Let me know.

Thank you for your time,

Wayne Stadler

Vagabond Media

Canada: 403.616.8224 | USA: 442.324.6780

This one targeted Skunkworks' Technical Director whose email had been scraped from our client’s website by a bot.

Dear [REDACTED].ca,

Hope you are doing good !

My experts were analyzing your website ([REDACTED].ca) and found that your website is not handling recent updates from search engines.

Also your traffic flow is poor from last couple of months due to some of the reasons. You might know about recent Google UPDATES like Phantom 3.0, Panda 4.2, and Penguin 4.0.

Google has completely dropped all authorship functionality from the search results and web master tools. So be careful on it and take the help of a SEO company to fix it.

Google wants its visitors to have the best possible experience and these factors play an important role in determining your rank in SERP:

We follow technically advanced and tested approach to adhere latest algorithmic updates. We will prepare an advanced digital marketing campaign to generate maximum traffic and enhance your ranking.

Best Regards,

Maria William

(Web Designer)

Disclaimer: Note: - This is a promotional email reminder and it doesn’t contains any spamming activity. We are sorry if you get email 2 or 3 times. You can simply reply with “remove or unsubscribe” so we will delete your email from our list. Thanks again.The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

The amount of ridiculousness in this one is just too much to cover.

Dear [REDACTED].com Hope you are doing good.

We’d like to inform you a very important issue regarding your website” [REDACTED].com” which is the reason why you are losing lots of traffic and conversion.

Your website is good in terms of design and content. However, it doesn’t follow Search Engine Guidelines – 2018-19. So, it has a very low visibility in organic search results.

We’ve done a thorough SEO audit of your website and found that it has a big potential to generate more revenue than what it might be earning at the present.

I strongly believe, our marketing campaign (Organic and paid) can help you to improve high visibility in organic search results and boost in conversion rate.

If you are interested in cost and recommendation, please reply to this email and one of our consultant will share the detailed proposal.

Regards,

Vincent More

Lead Consultant

Never trust a complimentary/uncompensated thorough audit via unsolicited contact

Hi [REDACTED].com,

Hope you are doing fantastic.

I am Willium Scott Sr. Web Analyzer having 9+ years of experience in Search Engine Marketing, Social media Marketing, Content Marketing, Pay-per-click, Video Marketing etc.

While analyzing your website, we tracked some pitfalls for which your website doesn’t show up within top search results on search engines including Google. In addition to the same, we found that [REDACTED].com is not able to achieve appropriate traffic/visitors for a couple of months.

I am quite impressed with your website - Business Concept, Content, Call-to-Actions and others. As a web analyzer, I can recommend few things to improve the website performance and I hope my suggestions will help business & your website.

My suggestions:

  • Publish Relevant Content (Blogs, Micro blogs, Article, Business Bio and etc)
  • Update Your Content regularly for quick crawling
  • Go for variation keywords and website optimization
  • Update Best Title Metadata, Description Metadata, Keyword Metadata
  • Go for Social media marketing for more engagement and social media traffic
  • Work on Page Loading speed and fix it to load within seconds
  • Go for Content marketing and Video marketing
  • Implement Latest Industry Specific Schema so you stand out as compared to your competitors’

not sure, if you can understand all above technical terms or not. Not to be worried, I will help to make you understand about the above points with brief descriptions.

If you have a technical team then I will wish you to go ahead and work on the above factors or if you prefer then I can help you to work on the above points.

If you are comfortable to go for a online meeting then please let me know. If you need to know about the cost then please revert back to my email and I will be happy to send you the quote with brief recommendation.

Thanks, I look forward to your reply.

Regards,

Willium Scott 

Web Analyzer

Too much ridiculousness to cover.

Hello [REDACTED].com,

How are you doing today?

I’m sure you have been contacted regarding this before but our value proposition is much unique. As a business owner, you might be interested to attract more visitors. So you might be wondering, despite having a proficient website, why you are not able to overturn your competitors from the Top Search Results. If you could spare a couple of minutes, I could provide you a concise idea about it.

To start with this is Erick Hill, A Digital Marketing Expert. While doing a search, found that [REDACTED].com is not on the 1st Page of Google. So thought you might be interested to know about the causation for the low performance of [REDACTED].com. Most recently Maccabee update has become the talk of the town. Phantom is the name given to random updates that Google brings every now and then. This means websites having a single un-natural link are going to be penalized.

Moreover, growing preference for Mobile-Friendly Pages to help website owner’s gain and hold more visitors to a website has been rolled out. So, we can help transform [REDACTED].com into one.

Why [REDACTED].com Needs Our Assistance:

  • [REDACTED].com has low Domain Authority and Page Authority.
  • Relevant keyword phrases are not on 1st Page.
  • [REDACTED].com has Coding Errors.
  • [REDACTED].com is having On-Page and On-Site Issues.

We can help address above Issues, and Place the website in TOP Search Results. I guarantee 100% satisfaction, as we only deal in White Hat Process.

Makes Sense!!! Drop us an email with your questions, we will answer your questions.

Have a Great Day.

Thanks & Regards,

Ivan Patel (Digital Marketing Expert)


Hi Erick Hill, Can you tell us exactly what the 1st page of Google is? Laughable.

Hello [REDACTED].com

My name is Amelia Rose, and I’m a SEO Specialist.

I was on your website and found, there are many scope of improvements in designing and development part. This will improve the overall usability and user friendliness of your website. 

If you are Interested I’d be happy to send you No Obligation Audit Report for your website, our package, pricing and past work details, if you’d like to assess our work.

We could lower that cost and not compromise on quality!

Hope to hear back from you soon.

Kind Regards

Amelia Rose! Business Development Manager

Note: Reply back with us Interested and get issue fixing plan now only at $199 (One Time)

Hello [WORDPRESS USERNAME] Team,

Hope things are fine at your end.

There are some delicate information’s about your website which I need to share with you. A well designed and error free website is always encouraged for better online business. Unfair means of optimization and not following Google webmaster guidelines can have negative impact. So, you should always leave your website on safe hands.

Successfully promoting a product or service is always been our cup of tea. Acquiring ample amount of experience after working with leading brands around the world, our Team can help you to fetch top rank on major search engines. Millions of competitor’s are indulging in Digital Marketing strategies to stay ahead of the race so things can be worked out by sharing ideas and implementing new strategies to achieve the desire goal.

There’s been a lot to discuss and work out for better results on your site. I would love to present a detailed analysis report of your website along with errors that your website has and ways to improve your Google rankings.

If you want I can fix up an appointment with one of my certified analyst for a free consultation on your website improvement. Alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and best time to call you.

Please feel free to reply me back for more information on our services and pricing.

Luis Jarrod

Digital Marketing Analyst

Ps: You may ask us to “REMOVE” to stop further correspondence.

Hi,

I am Irvin. Hope you are doing well,

I was examining your website www.[REDACTED].ca and see you have a good design and it looks great. But it was not ranking on any search engines for most of the keywords.

I was not finding your website on starting pages; I can help you do better on your ranking for all search engines if you can give us permission. We are the best service provider in optimization in your area. We also offer the most competitive rates for this service!

Let me know if you are interested and we will send your company a detailed cost for our services.

Kind Regards,

Internet Marketer.

Hi,

I am working for an Agency out of NY.

I found that there are growth opportunities that you are currently missing on your website. We can help you send a quick website analysis which list the errors.

Can I give you a call in the next few days to discuss or can I send the information along with a quote?

Best regards,

Rose Fox | MD

FoxPro LLC - WE deliver results

Headquarters: 111 E 14th St New York, NY 10003 Other Offices: Australia | New Zealand | UAE | Hong Kong | China Please notify me by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you want to cease receiving our email, please reply with ELIMINATE in the Subject.

Guess where their agency's headquarters is? A PO Box inside a UPS store of course.

Good day,

My name is Joseph, I was browsing around and came over to your site www.[REDACTED].com I see you have some great work done on your site but there are some problems which are spoiling your Google search rankings and resulting in lower traffic than it could get. You have 212 errors , according to W3C validator, which need to be solved right away if you want to index your site properly. Currently your site is listed at the 5th position of 4th page for keywords - Lawyer in Vancouver - which can be easily improved just by fixing those W3C reported errors.

If you are interested in our services please leave us your contact number and we will give you a call; we can find a solution at the best price.

We also offer:

  • PHP Development
  • Web Development (any platform)
  • Designing Services
  • SEO
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Mobile Application Development (iOS and Android)
  • Advertising Management
  • eCommerce Development (Scratch or using any CMS)

Regards,

Joseph

My Digital Repair

www.mydigitalrepair.com

This gall of this one is especially notable considering that it came from a company that:

  • Didn’t exist on the internet 2 months ago
  • Has no SSL
  • Scores lower on SEO than the client’s site with Google’s Tools
  • Has very poorly built pages.
  • Has only 2 SERP pages of indexed pages. As opposed to the client’s 10+ pages of indexed pages.
  • Uses default Wordpress admin username (old version of Wordpress) and then doesn’t block indexing of those author pages: http://mydigitalrepair.com/author/admin/
  • Has no physical address listed.
  • Registrant is hidden and business owners are anonymous and faceless.
  • No key citations (eg: Existence on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Google Maps, etc.)