simplyled.co.uk, and Burton and Sons in general, don't want your business.

[reddragdiva]

Forgot to post these before. Enjoy.

---

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:41:49 +0530
Message-ID: <cafhpadhyja+o3clfmiy4fmwjhog-w4qw3jrum7co+dweecah5q@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Urgent Link Removal from http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/566099.html
From: Gareth Hoyle <gareth@simplyled.co.uk>
To: dgerard@gmail.com

Ref: http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/566099.html

Hi

My name is Gareth and I represent http://www.simplyled.co.uk/. It has come
to our attention that your site may be linking to our own in a manner which
we believe may be mutually harmful in SEO terms. For this reason, I would
be very grateful if you would please remove all links to this site at your
earliest convenience, letting me know that you have done so.

It may be that a third party has maliciously or abusively added our details
at some point in the past, and I apologies for inconveniencing you in this
way. However, as my email address shows, I represent
http://www.simplyled.co.uk/ directly and it is our express wish that all
such links be removed as soon as possible. If you represent any affiliate
websites which are also linking to us in this way, would you also be so
kind as to remove our details from those sites, also?I am really very
grateful for your cooperation in this matter.

Many thanks
Gareth
http://www.simplyled.co.uk/

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Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:43:11 +0000
Message-ID: <caj0tu1f+z9osn5pvq6cmgn4ruvtsvycomkru7k=hyvaixp5kcg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Urgent Link Removal from http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/566099.html
From: David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>
To: Gareth Hoyle <gareth@simplyled.co.uk>

It's a comment posted by someone I know, who is *actually one of your
satisfied customers*, so it's pretty clear that you didn't read the
post before sending the email.

This suggests

(a) (ungenerously) you have been knowingly paying for blog spam, and
*now* it's biting your search rankings

(b) (slightly less ungenerously) you have bought services from the
"snake oil" variety of SEO merchant, who will tell you all manner of
made-up magical things you can do to increase your search ranking,
other than actually having good content people want to link to.

in either case, (c) you're posting from a generated list without reading it.

This is, of course, quite foolish.

However, I shall be absolutely sure to post that you don't want people
linking to you or buying from you, and emphasising that
simplyled.co.uk, and Burton and Sons in general (with a list of all
sites), is quite definitely in foolishness classes (a) or (b). I will
be sure to make sure the news spreads as far as possible, possibly
with an amusing image macro on Facebook.


- d.

---

Comments

[hirez]

AHAHAHA!

We (Well, I say 'we'. Given it's less IT Ops and more IT Op these days, I probably mean 'I') have been seeing a lot of these of late.

They've been ignored at first and offered similar sarcasm if they persist.

[reddragdiva]

The important point is to cc your responses to someone in the company who would be displeased by such rampant brand destruction, if you can't post publicly.

[(Anonymous)]

TEH INTARNETS, HOW DO IT WORK?

--Huey

However, as my email address shows, I represent

[(Anonymous)]

I have an email address ending in '@gmail.com' - that must mean that, as my email address shows, I represent google directly.
(sheridan)

[vayshti]

o_o

I was a repeat customer as well.

Did they respond to your reply with a suitably grovelling email?

[reddragdiva]

They didn't reply at all in March; let's see what they say today.

[reddragdiva]

But do feel free to email info@simplyled.co.uk to ask if they want you to buy anything from them again, or to buy from someone else who actually wants word-of-mouth!

[(Anonymous)]

Are you *sure* Gareth is working for SimplyLED? I suspect that he's working for a competitor and is trying to reduce SimplyLED's rankings by asking blog owners to remove links to SimplyLED. Like you, I run a personal blog where I posted a few links to SimplyLED. "Gareth" has contacted me 3 times asking me to remove links from my site to SimplyLED. Each time, I have sent him the response forwarded below. This morning I also contacted SimplyLED to ask if they can confirm whether or not Gareth is working for them. I've blogged about Gareth's contacts and a web dev friend of mine says that these types of email are quite a common form of "black hat SEO"... i.e. try to damage your competitors' search engine rankings. http://jack-kelly.com/emails_requesting_i_remove_links_from_my_site Anyway, here's the reply I sent "Gareth"... --------------- Dear Gareth, I am happy to remove the link to http://www.simplyled.co.uk/ from my site if necessary. However, before I do that... (Forgive me for being paranoid and ultra-sceptical but...) How do I know that you're not working for a competitor to http://www.simplyled.co.uk/ who is trying to decrease the ranking of SimplyLED on search engines? I see that your email address comes from the domain simplyled.co.uk but we all know that it's trivial to fake the "from" address of an email. Please can you confirm that if I was to contact SimplyLED directly then they would confirm that you are working for them? I understand that the Google Penguin search engine algorithm update update targets "black-hat SEO techniques" such as participating in link schemes. However, I must emphasise that my website is just an "organic" blog. I was not paid to accept links from SimplyLED. If you feel that SimplyLED has been unfairly targeted by Google then please complain to Google using their Penguin feedback form. Again, I'm really sorry to be so very sceptical about this. I just want to make sure I'm not being duped. Warmest regards, Jack ------ Gareth hasn't answered any of my questions.

[reddragdiva]

Hmm, it's possible. I tried phoning SimplyLED yesterday and they said they'd email me back promptly and haven't. Today I'll be printing out the correspondence and sending it to them by post, asking for a reply by post.