SEO Spam Scam Watching In Texas

In 2004 I made a website for an older guy up in Tacoma. It was an e-commerce site. This guy was a handful. One thing after another. I made the website deal in August. He flew me back up there the following November. Because they couldn't get their email working. I had his website ready to go live in October. I told him it would take awhile for Google to properly index it. One week later he was whining that he'd had no online sales.

Then someone told him that you to have a certain amount of keywords, and certain meta-tags. I told him that this is no longer the case, that Google and the other search engines make their own judgment about content, that you can get penalized by jimmying the system with bogus meta-tags that did not match the content.

He sold things like Market Spice Tea and Space Noodles. By month 4 I had several of his products Googling at #1 and flying out of the store. This happened not due to doing some tricks with keywords, it happened because I injected a lot of specific content about the products.

Today I got an email from a relative I've not heard from in a long time. Offering to help this very blog you are looking at, telling me "Might I suggest you optimize DurangoTexas.com, Get some relevant ads up there and quit wasting space! Optimize your tags and drive some traffic to the site. It's time to make money!"

I was appalled. He was referencing this blog, but using my Eyes on Texas domain name to reference it. He told me I should at least specify the ads that are running. Which tells me he has no idea what he's talking about. Google generates those ads, the only control I have is placement and whether I want to allow image ads.

I think this blog has over 1400 postings now. Most people come to a single post after this blog shows up in a search.For instance, it shows up high with all sorts of search strings involving the Dallas Cowboy Stadium, and right now, Texas Earthquakes. And unfortunately, The World's Biggest Butt. Which, admittedly, brings up really bad ads.

There is a lot of website info out there with warnings to beware of SEO Spammers. According to one, the #1 indicator that it's a SEO Scam Spam is that they contacted you via email.

Anyway, that's the end of this day in Texas, a SEO Scam Spam from my dear little nephew.