Hi everyone, as an interesting and cautionary tale, I just wanted to post a bit of web site feedback we received today, with parts redacted to avoid rewarding this person. As it says on the Search Engine Optimization documentation page, there are a lot of "snake oil" salesmen in the SEO business, and these are the kind of tactics they are using to game the system and trick sites into linking back for them to try and improve search rankings for their clients. At least two of the provided links were to legitimate web sites, so all of this effort was used just to try and get us to link to one or two sites that may have a page of content that's semi-related to safety, but the overall purpose of the site is something completely different.

The site that was listed as part of the email address looked like a vanity domain name. I visited it, and it did seem at first glance to be a legitimate site, but upon closer inspection I saw that there is no real detail about her as a person or her class (no school name, district name, locations, dates, etc. that could be independently verified). Also notice the vague reference in the message to "some sort of prize will be given...". All clues that this whole thing is bogus.

So just remember, good content is the first and best way to achieve SEO!

Nancy [redacted]
nancy@[redacted]

Greetings from New York and Mrs. [redacted]'s 4th grade class!

I hope it's ok that I'm contacting you directly! My class is currently working on Safety unit and as part of an assignment, the kids have to go out and find an educational website/article(s) on a related topic of choice, along with a list of websites to share them with. My job of emailing their lists is just getting started as you can imagine...

The links page on [the site] was on one of the students' lists ([redacted]) and her suggestions  for you can be seen below ranked her order:

1) "At Home Fire Hazard Prevention"
[link redacted]

2) "A Kid's Guide to Fire Safety at Home"
[link redacted]

3) "Bullying"
[link redacted]

4) "Keeping children safe takes education - for motorists and for children"
[link redacted]

Her suggestion is to add these resources to your links page ([our site]/links.aspx) so that others may benefit from them as well. Some sort of prize will be given to those students with the most implemented suggestions.

Thank you for considering playing a role in our project, and please let us know if you post the links :)

Have a great day!

Mrs. Nancy [redacted] (and [redacted])