Today, I’m taking care of Dominic my 10 month old son.. and while he sleeps I decided to do some link analysis of some sites in Australia in the Acne niche (working for one of my customers). While doing my research I discovered something interesting.

I found a very nice site called “Ashley Centre” . Ashley Centre has a BIG marketing company called: Well, please visit the site and check the link in the footer. This big Marketing company is for sure is a BIG FISH in the SEO/Marketing/PPC company… one of that companies that you consider a “real company” (not like me lol ) .
In their website, in their case study claim that they have worked with Ashley Centre for over 6 years… and when you visit this marketing agency website , you think… “gosh this guys know what they are doing” .

That’s why when I did the link analysis I was expecting to find solid links… serious links from web 2 sites, from authority sites, etc.

But, oh boy I was wrong: What I found was WordPress Spam… oh yeah… not the kind of of WordPress Spam that says “hey nice blog, good article bro!”… but instead the one that says

“Acne Treatment: For Acne Treatment, Acne Tests, Acne diagnosis, Acne Symptoms & Natural Acne Treatments Melbourne Australia; contact The Ashley Centre in Melbourne. ”

Obviously the wordpress post they posted HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ACNE… and they where taking clear advantage of the fact that the post was auto-approved. Mmm the true nature of the real blog spammer!

So my reaction? Well, I decided to contact them… because, they are a SERIOUS company, charging SERIOUS bucks.. they can’t just be spamming like any Nigerian Spammer spams my wordpress blogs every single day…

So this was my email:
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Hi Guys

Gabriel here, from NSW…. I was looking at your site and I noticed you work with

“The Ashley Centre”

I noticed this mainly because I have found some wordpress-blog spam aiming to target the keyword Acne Treatment .

Examples:

http://blogs.lvc.edu/green/post/Sustainable-Dining.aspx

and

http://www.kyleheon.com/articles/2009/09/18/xml-caching-in-asp-net-can-be-dangerous-to-your-health

In fact I found many other examples.

I’m curious if this is part of Alkemi Link building strategy? WordPress blog spam… ? Your comments have no relation with the posts and clearly they are spam.

Can you please clarify this for me?

Thanks guys!

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The good thing is that I got a reply pretty fast and here it is:

Hi Gabriel,

I appreciate you bringing this to my attention….

(Based on the legal disclaimer I can’t add anything more)

But overall they say… hey Gabriel, thanks for letting me know… OMG I had no idea…

* Yeah Right !

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So my conclusion: Mmm … it seems regardless how BIG the company is and how important THEIR CUSTOMERS are… many SEO companies in Australia seem to have very little idea about how to provide value link building.

I know what you are thinking: “Hey, but they can prove to you they can rank a site in 1st position.

Yes.. you are right… but by spamming wordpress blogs, they just leave a trail of easy links for any competitor to find, match and follow…

is that all there is?

Is that the REAL marketing strategy of a Top SEO company?

So what do you need to learn from this is:

1. If you are an SEO expert… don’t be a lazy b*st*rd and do your job properly. Don’t go out there and spam wordpress posts about Sarah Palin when your clients website has to do with Liposuction Services. Be smart, do a proper effort, build web 2 sites, post good articles, send links to that articles, increase the PR of your own web 2 pages, get your PR featured in a serious authority site…  and avoid leaving a trail of auto-approval blogs .

2. If you are a company looking to hire a “BIG marketing company” well do your homework… just because they have an CEO and a cool fancy office in Sydney CBD, it doesn’t mean they have any clear clue about Link Building or SEO…

* Update: I just check on this “Marketing Agency” website and they also do link building for Optus Business Solutions… and guess what? Yep… more WordPress Spam..  LOL this guys are simply amazing!