I am constantly inundated with spam from supposed “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) companies that go something like this:

We are interested to get your website on first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Please get back to us for more details.

These are always the same, normally someone sitting in India using a Gmail account, not disclosing their website and claiming to be named “Bob”, “Anna” or any other American sounding name.  (On occasion it’s some bored college kid, trying to not get a real job, which I can respect, but I still am not going for it.)

To be fair, there probably are legit “White Hat” SEO companies out there, but the “Black Hat” crowd has muddied the waters so bad that it’d be hard to spot them.

Without going into all of that, I’ve came up with my own canned response that just as full of crap:

We have all the SEO we can handle AND are already on the 1st page of every site. We own half of the Internet.

But hey, if you want to sponsor us to help you get on the 1st page too, feel free to do so.

All joking aside, if you’re really interested in hiring someone for SEO, here’s one main fact that you need to know:

No one can guarantee you the #1 spot in any search engine.

Now with enough money, you can purchase the top spot for an ad for a specific keyword in the search engines, but that’s a different animal which has absolutely nothing to do with the SEO company/individual. Money talks & why pay someone else to spend your money for you?

Anyway, if you want to talk general “SEO” practices, I’ll leave that for Watershed Studio.  And before you ask, no, SEO isn’t an official service that we provide, mainly as a business choice due to the nonsense mentioned above.

In regards to blogging, if there’s one thing that drives me nuts (other than spam comments), it’s sploggers.  These people set up generic blogs, throw in Google AdSense and install a plugin that steals posts from your RSS feed and then publishes them as their own.  In some cases they link to your post, but that’s just as annoying in my opinion.

So tonight I found one such fool stealing my Twitter updates and had to leave a comment (because the coward has no contact info and didn’t even bother to remove the default “about” text and apparently doesn’t even approve *any* comments).

I’m not going to bother linking to their site as that would only encourage the behavior, but I’ll post my comment here:

Stop stealing my content and start writing your own posts! Sploggers like you are a cancer to the blogosphere.

And learn how to setup permalinks and update the “about” copy while you’re at it.

Am I out of line?  To me this is just totally redicilious.  I wish Google had some sort of policing in effect because you know that they can tell when there’s duplicate content. If they stoped paying these fools they’d have no reason to continue the practice.

I was searching for Halloween related news for Utter Oddcast’s October Oddness 2008 and was shocked by what pops up at Google.  Just check out this image and let me know what’s wrong with it.

Am I missing something here? One of these things is not like the others.

• Seems we have an election based on VPs…so many roads you could go down with that one. #
• I think my Firefox woes are fixed…seems to be an extension crashing it, though I don’t know which one… #
• But I’m having issues with Thunderbird now. Desktop hangs on d/l sometimes. Notebook won’t load the folders I imported. Vista? #
• My kids sneak off to eat apples and tomatoes (not together)…I guess that’s better than candy. #
• I’m happy to have a clean desk…now I can actually think when I’m working. Note to self: NO MORE CLUTTER!!! #
• Just realized trash is a day off due to the holiday. http://is.gd/2dir #
• The smell of veg. beef stew is in the air…fresh tomatoes and onions from the garden. @jeffstanger, you’re coming over tonight, right? #
• @PodcastPickle That’s funny. Sort of like mail from Google ending up in my gmail spam folder. in reply to PodcastPickle #
• @bnpositive how about Batman laying it down on the new “metro” Superman? in reply to bnpositive #
• @jeffstanger How about a Mystery Men 2 or Tick movie? in reply to jeffstanger #
• Anyone catch NBC’s “McCain Votes Against Vets” 1/2 second shot? Let’s assume it’s not intentional… #
• @bnpositive Which one? Both? We’ve got to have a viewing! in reply to bnpositive #
• OK, what did I just miss at the RNC? Anyone know what that was? #
• @CleisDesign Wondering that myself. in reply to CleisDesign #
• @OldManMusings What were they trying to sell? Funny nonetheless. in reply to OldManMusings #
• @nickilaycoax Honestly my gut is to remove gov from schools…but with gov funds (many local) that won’t happen in reply to nickilaycoax #
• @nickilaycoax I wouldn’t say better, but different. There’s no one way for kids to learn and that’s part of the choices out there. in reply to nickilaycoax #
• @dcagle Cool! in reply to dcagle #
• Not sure why I’m watching this…never watched a political convention in my life. Must be getting older… #
• Fight! Fight! Fight! Now that’s the America I’m talking about! Lets rumble! Break out the warheads! Whoo Hoo!!! #
• “Camera Pool” Ah…so no responsibility of any one network…guess that’s good sort of. #
• @bnpositive but were they made in America? If so, that’s creating US jobs… in reply to bnpositive #
• Enough talk of politics and schooling…I’m calling it a night on Twitter. #