It doesn’t matter if you’re a car dealer or a third party advertising company for used cars, the odds of getting somebody to naturally link to your site is pretty slim.

Many car dealers are so focused on keywords and meta tags they forget one of the most important aspects in search engine optimization which is backlinks.

If you don’t have links from other websites (especially links from related content sites) pointing to your website you simply will not show up in many search engine queries.

Many companies are forced to purchase links from relevant websites in order to help their rankings. If you read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines you will see that Google makes it clear that:

…… some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

We have a network of auto related websites, and we do not buy or sell links. If we did and Google caught us, we would be penalized and never show up in their search engines, which can be the kiss of death for any website, since Google accounts for about 80% of internet traffic.

Tonight I was checking one of my blog comments waiting for my approval. This is what I got:

Hello,

My name is Jamie Vanderhorst from lemonfree.com.

We are currently looking for advertising opportunities with qualified partners.

I came across your site blog.used-cars-fl.com and found your information and website very useful. I would like to buy a link: “corvette for sale” off your page http://blog.used-cars-fl.com/ – the link would point to (I deleted the link, but it was pointing to their website with the anchor text “Corvettes”.

In return, I’d send you $19.00 via PayPal for the link.

Let me know what you think of this deal.

Best,
Jamie Vanderhorst
Marketing Representative
lemonfree.com

Patrick Bennett and I have worked hard getting this site to rank and get some quality traffic. What really burns me is that they think they can buy us for a mere $18.00?

There is nothing a despise more than black hat SEO, which is what this is. As my duty, I am forced to report them to Google via Google Webmaster Tools.

In case there are other out there frustrated by Black Hat SEO Tactics, Matt Cutts from Google tells you what to do here.

Canned SPAM

I’m not sure if there is anyone on the planet who never tried canned Spam, whether you like it or not. I was never a big fan making sandwiches out of Spam, but if you fry it up until it just starts burning right after the bubble appears it goes very well with eggs.

Just over 30 years ago Spam only meant one thing, a peculiar canned ham product that was pretty popular. Now most of us think of “Internet Spam” when we hear the word.

I’ve been doing some research on who coined the phrase “SPAM” from various internet sources. I have found 2 different answers, and I have no idea who is correct.

1) I read a forum comment by a man named Edward Falk. He said it was originated in 1985 :

The original use in a computing context was in 1985 when someone harassed a Pern MUSH by echoing “SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM…” repeatedly while the users were participating in a significant (for them) online event.  He was kicked off by the administrators, but afterwards was known as “that guy who spammed us”.  The term stuck, and the rest was history.

This seems to be possible because of the number of articles I found related to the origin of the word “SPAM”.

2) The rest of the internet community seems to think it was derived from a Monte Python skit. I personally buy the first one, but I can now see the relation to the Monte Python Video:

With this new definition of spam, I often wonder if this was a crisis for the company that makes Spam, Hormel Foods? Today, SPAM can be seen as an almost dirty word within the internet community. However, when I hear the word “Spam” coming from people like Matt Cutts from Google, (Head Of Google’s SPAM TEAM) I cannot help but to also thinking of having slighteley burned SPAM and eggs for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I’m sure this did kind of freak them out, even to this day. They actually have a comment about SPAM on their website (you really should read this).

What made me think of this SPAM post was the keyword “Spam”. I’m sure the makers of canned spam were forced to work extra hard to be sure they rank well on the keyword “SPAM”. If you Google the term, it will show over 223,000,000 pages. Now this is a word used every day in tweets, blog posts, emails, etc…

I would like to congratulate Hormel Foods for effectively owning the Keyword “SPAM” on all three major search engines.

If you are still not sure between the difference of Spam & Spam (spammer), maybe this will help:

This is a fried SPAM & Egg Sandwich. I highly recommend trying one.

Internet SPAM is tough to photograph, so here is a photo of a spammer:

Edward “Eddie” Davidson

Last year Edward Davidson was sentenced to 21 months in Federal prison, and fined $714,139 for being the alleged “King Of Spam”.

Lucky Matt, gets to travel the world, then work for the most desired company to work for on the planet.

PS: Matt, please don’t de-index me for pulling your covers

Click Image To Enlarge

Today I received an email from a woman named Daisy Morris who apparently works for a black hat search engine marketing company. If you look at the screen shot of the email I received you will see that she is trying to get people to do a “three way link exchange”. This is heavily frowned on by Google. Many websites do link exchanges (You link to mine, I’ll link to yours) but they don’t hold much weight for Search Engine Optimization because Google and others know you are linking to each other. This woman is offering a link from a “pagerank 5″ website if you link to a different website. This way it would appear to not be a link exchange. This practice can get you de-indexed in Google which can put you out of business. Of course, it’s not easy for them to catch you.

My SEO Quake Toolbar Says It (Click To Enlarge)

The kicker is this woman and this company are scammers. They have a fake Pagerank! Click here to learn about how people fake their pagerank. She is emailing thousands of people trying to get links to a site that Honda owns. I highly doubt this company works for free, so I am assuming they were hired by Honda.

Amateur webmasters who don’t stay up with the latest still think having a massive pagerank will help you in Google. Well, it will a little bit but not like it used to. Do a search for anything in Google then check the pagerank of the first 5 pages that come up and you will see what I mean.

So what this woman is saying is she will give your website a link from her “Pagerank 5 Website” if you link to a Honda site (you can see the url on that email). It would be a great deal if she was legit, but she’s a fraud preying on the naive.

Busted! (Click To Enlarge)

How could I tell? The first thing I look at on any website like that is how many links are pointing to that site. There are “0″ so it’s impossible to have a pagerank so I dug a little deeper and checked it’s PR out on a fake Pagerank Checker website (for lack of a better word).

To dig even more deeper I wanted to know who they were working for. That’s an easy task these days thanks to the WHOIS. If you look at the website that the fraudster wanted me to link to, you will see it’s owned by Honda Motor Europe LTD. I wonder if Honda knows they have a pirate marketing firm working for them scamming people into linking to a Honda owned website?

There is nothing I hate more than black hat SEO tactics, but when this company is also committing fraud against people with false pretenses, I think it’s a shame.

Whois Record For Domain In Question

Notice I didn’t link to any of the sites I was talking about. Why? I’m not going to provide them with any links. You can look at the URL’s on the email and type them in and you’ll see what I mean.

To learn more about Black Hat SEO, read my other article here.