Need telephone answering services? Don't ask Frontline!

I've just had an interesting conversation with Mark Jones over at Frontline (frontlinecom.co.uk), due to a Simon Carter (likely a fake name) spamming the hpHosts blog to advertise Frontline's website.

Mark confirmed they'd hired an Indian based SEO company to market for them, and when told about spamming, said he would advise them not to spam the hpHosts blog again, but would NOT tell them to stop spamming. Why you ask? Well Mark informed me that SEO IS spam, and "it works though doesn't it?".

As I told Mark, there's two kinds of SEO, whitehat and blackhat (just as there is with everything else). Blackhat involves spamming, scamming and just about everything else you can think of, to market a company and thus, make the spammers/scammers, some money, and of course, make money for those they're spamming for. Whitehat on the other hand, is completely the opposite, and involves modifying your site for better indexing by search engines, and link trades etc, with other like sites. There's alot more to it, but I'll save going into that and point you to the following, that provides information on both;

Whitehat SEO

http://www.whitehatseo.com/
http://www.seowhitehats.com/
http://www.ahfx.net/weblog/55
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/

Blackhat SEO

http://www.blackhatseo.com/
http://seoblackhat.com/
http://websearch.about.com/od/seononos/a/spamseo.htm

Mark also mentioned that spam is not against the law. Wrong again Mark. Spam IS against the law, and has been for quite some time;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3120628.stm
http://www.wiredsafety.org/gb/law/spam/index.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/10/uk_antispam_law_goes_live/
http://www.out-law.com/page-3916

Whilst I was writing this, I received the following from Mark. He's CC'd me a copy of the e-mail he's sent to the spammer responsible, in this case, "Dr. Anuj Gupta" at nexpider.com.

Hi Anuj

We have had a complaint for this guy about you spamming his blog.

Please can you not spam it in the future?

Also please be ultra sensitive when spamming blogs with frontlines details as this is a respectable legitimate company that does not wish to offend anyone.

Please bare this in mind when perusing the 'spamming' aspect of seo regarding frontline.

Mark


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Frontline Telephone Answering Service
Mark Jones
IT Manager
2 The Belfry
Whiteley Hampshire PO15 7FJ

mail: MarkJones AT frontlinecom.co.uk
www:
tel:
fax:
mob:

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This message contains confidential information and is intended only for anuj AT nexpider.com, [REMOVED], DavidJones AT frontlinecom.co.uk. If you are not anuj AT nexpider.com, [REMOVED], DavidJones AT frontlinecom.co.uk you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify MarkJones AT frontlinecom.co.uk immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. Mark Jones therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version.

/edit 07-12-2009

E-mail addresses obfuscated ("@" replaced with "AT")