No, I Won't Link to Your Spammy Article

https://www.troyhunt.com/no-i-wont-link-to-your-spammy-article/

by weinzierl • 6 years ago

84 41 6 years ago

troyhunt.com

teddyuk2• 6 years ago

He just comes across as an arsehole, this sort of nonsense has stopped me listening to whatever else he has to say.

What we all do with spam is ignore it.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 6 years ago

What we all do with spam is ignore it.

There are two kinds of people: those who ignore it and those who fight it. The former can afford it because of the efforts of the latter.

teddyuk2• 6 years ago

Lets fight the good fight for freedom from spam, or just use your spam folder.

barnabee2• 6 years ago

No, he doesn’t, he comes across as someone who is helping by trying to react to a serious problem in a way that, if we all did it, might go some way to solving it. I wish everyone would/could do something like this.

If you send me an unsolicited email you/your company goes on an avoid list and it would take a very strong, very personal recommendation for me to work with you after that.

Unsolicited email is targeted (or in some cases, pretty untargeted) advertising. It’s unprofessional, unpleasant and a hassle, and should be called out and heavily penalised whenever possible.

chongli• 6 years ago

if we all did it, might go some way to solving it

That's kind of the history of all the problems facing humanity, isn't it? If we could work together, we would solve all of them. But we don't. We have this complicated mixture of self-interested behaviour and collective policing via laws and social norms but it always seems like self-interested behaviour wins out in the end. Dedicated individuals will always find the cracks in the dam.

zdkl• 6 years ago

And how would I go about contacting you in a professional, pleasant and unhassling way if I genuinely have good reason to reach out and we have no prior connection?

What I hear from your conclusion is "screw anyone who isn't already in my network", and that sounds... sad?

WrtCdEvrydy• 6 years ago

Someone has upset troy today.

maallooc• 6 years ago

Wow, I hope I have self-esteem like him to react to a simple mass-produced spam like this.

gkoberger• 6 years ago

He's not really writing it for the bots emailing him, he's saying "this SEO growth tactic sucks, marketers should stop it!" in a creative way.

onion2k2• 6 years ago

I understand where Troy is coming from, and I agree with his point of view, but how is it that the community aspect of the web has atrophied away to dust?

Many years ago sending links to site owners and asking for a "linkback" was part and parcel of how you grew your website on the internet. When I got random emails they tended to be a bit less obvious than the brash "I think this would be good for your blog" and more "If you like this please link back.", but the fact that commercial SEO has ruined the process entirely is just so depressing.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 6 years ago

Many years ago sending links to site owners and asking for a "linkback" was part and parcel of how you grew your website on the internet.

Man, that was really a long time ago.

dylz• 6 years ago

I doubt he would mind linking to an actual, good article that was part and parcel of how you grew your website on the internet.

Based on the list of titles, they are all literal blog spam - worthless, useless trash that contributes nothing other than absolute rubbish on the internet, largely affiliate links, fraudulent VPN reviews for whoever is the highest bidder, etc.

mirimir• 6 years ago

Yeah, if I wasn't already overwhelmed by stuff to be depressed about, this would be just the thing to push me over the edge. But as it is, this ship sailed a couple decades ago.

nikanj• 6 years ago

Back then, those emails weren't clearly spammed to a pre-purchased list of "key industry influencer".

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

how is it that the community aspect of the web has atrophied away to dust?

You've answered it yourself. The web got commercialized. What was once a larger community became pockets of small communities desperately trying to hide from the cancer that is marketing, which has eaten most of the Web.

xupybd2• 6 years ago

I also understand what he is saying but the article has a petty tone. I really don't find it very endearing.

onion2k2• 6 years ago

No one would be endearing to someone who walked up to them and shouted in their face to demand attention. Spam is exactly like that, but as email.

user5994461• 6 years ago

It's not so much dead as it's been automated.

When you write a blog article (wordpres, medium and co), any link you point to will automatically get a notification that it's been linked to by your new article.

You can sometimes see list of comments each with a backlink at the end of a blog article, it's generated from that.

osobo• 6 years ago

No, I won't read this low effort blog post.

TheDesolate0• 6 years ago

Then why is this spam here?

lolc• 6 years ago

One of us solicited it!

apatters• 6 years ago

The concept is interesting, that he thinks he can penalize spammers by A) having a popular blog and B) shaming them.

In general I agree that hiring a bunch of digital marketers who go out and ask hundreds or thousands of sites to link to a blog post is not really a productive sector of the economy. I think most marketing is an unproductive sector of the economy. But it is necessary because of the way the economy works and in a lot of ways the business which shouts its vaguely targeted message into the void the loudest tends to win.

Maybe there is something to Troy's idea of "if you shout too many times and too loudly I will shame you." Wouldn't it be a better world if most business growth happened through organic customer referrals, as opposed to paid marketing?

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

But it is necessary because of the way the economy works and in a lot of ways the business which shouts its vaguely targeted message into the void the loudest tends to win.

That isn't really necessary, it's just a zero-sum game the economy is stuck in. A world of good could be done by enlightened regulators, if they would start curtailing the worst aspects of marketing and advertising space.

In today's world, you need a megaphone to have even a tiny chance of being heard in a space where everyone else is already shouting through megaphones of their own. If someone could step in and take everyone's megaphones away, maybe then we'd have a chance at having a conversation.

airnomad• 6 years ago

A guy from a company with probably the worst history of unethical or even illegal behavior in the industry, got all worked up about guys doing link building outreach.

gumby2• 6 years ago

He is unethical?

mattmein• 6 years ago

I wouldn't classify those emails as spam, as spam is unsolicited bulk email, ie untargeted emails going out to a large amount of people.

Personalised unsolicited email or any other type of contact can be an important way to make new connections, at least in my opinion.

gumby2• 6 years ago

They’re asking the blog owner to create SEO spam.

Deimorz• 6 years ago

I get at least 3 or 4 of these emails a week, and my site is a user-generated one along the same lines as HN or Reddit. They link to some thread vaguely related to a topic (e.g. VPNs, pets, gardening), usually compliment me on that "article", and ask me to publish their article on the subject too.

These aren't genuine requests. They're sending them to sites like mine where the request doesn't even make sense--the site isn't a blog, all they'd have to do is register and they could post any article themselves (I'd ban them immediately, but they could do it).

They're absolutely spam, and once you see a few of them you realize how formulaic they all are. There must be some tool that generates them, they usually just have some minor differences in words/phrasing (basically "spinning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_spinning).

jlgaddis2• 6 years ago

For many of us, the fact that it is "unsolicited" means it is spam. I really don't care if it was an e-mail sent out to 1000 random people or it was "targeted" to 20 people just like me.

If it's commercial and unsolicited, it's spam and I will treat it as such.

pmlnr• 6 years ago

It is spam. I get them as well. It's annoying.

janpot• 6 years ago

Totally get it. I wonder if diluting his page with irrelevant titles is going to have a negative effect on his own ranking.

alkotronikk• 6 years ago

I've heard about it. It's actually a SEO "strategy" called link building. You just spam sites with articles related to you, asking for a link to your page, which in return raises your credibility in search results and yields better position... in theory.

Cthulhu_• 6 years ago

Yup, and they have to do it like that because spamming links in comments no longer works because most commenting systems add a meta tag to the links so that search engines won't follow / consider them for ranking.

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

Also, blog comment systems these days often feature automated spam filters.

(Or petty bored admins like me; back in the days I had a wordpress blog, I once looked at the spam links I was bombarded with, identified the SEO company responsible, then went around them and mailed a customer of theirs, informing them of how their business is being promoted. It ended up with that customer dumping their SEO provider, which I found immensely satisfying.)

Rallerbabs• 6 years ago

I'm an SEO. I build links all the time.

SEOs like me don't give a rat's patoot if some guy throws a hissyfit about other SEOs contacting him for backlinks.

Whenever I do outreach, people reply with a quote on how much it costs. This is business, and I'm willing to pay.

I agree with him that those wanting a backlink for free are parasite moochers.

But the reality of the situation is that you can build great content and nobody will ever visit it if you don't build at least a few backlinks to yourself.

Build it and they will come?

Show me where, because it's certainly not in SEO.

I still gotta eat. So paid backlinks it is.

Troy can execute his evil plan. It'll fail. You think you're gonna get rankings & traffic from just including a few terms on an otherwise unrelated blogpost?

It isn't 2005 in SEO anymore.

If only it were!

No, I Won't Link to Your Spammy Article

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