SEO Experts?
Ok this is a little odd. A couple of week ago I did a post on Aussie SEO Experts and then I did a follow up video the next day. Basically I was pretty annoyed because I had received email spam from this company offering SEO services. I know, I hear you, we all get heaps of these emails everyday. Usually though those emails are from other countries. I was getting it from Australian SEO companies. The very same day I got another spam email purportedly from a Sydney SEO Company called SEO Next.
Who is Damon Rosier?
Whilst the Aussie SEO Experts email and the one from Smart SEO that I received earlier in the year do seem like real email spam from these SEO companies, the one from SEO Next though gets a little weird. I decided to call SEO Next and asked to speak with Damon. I also asked for permission to record the conversation and publish as a podcast and permission was given. The guy I spoke to had never heard of Damon Rosier or the other guy listed in the email. You can listen to SEO Next Interview it’s only 1.9MB.
I then did some further digging on the contents of the email and found this post http://www.jimmo.org/another-dubious-seo-company-impactfulseo-com/ . He got the same email but the company name and the senders name were different. I then looked at the physical addresses listed in the email and the one that was common between his email and mine was 490 Crown Street Surry Hills. When I checked this out Reactive Media was listed at this address and they also have an SEO Company called Reseo. I’ve know the founders of Reactive, Tim Fouhy & Tim O’Neil for nearly 20 years. We used to work out of the same offices in Melbourne. I have the utmost respect for these guys and know they would never be into email spam. They don’t need to. Nor would the guy that heads up Reseo, Chris Thomas. One of the few Melbourne SEO guys I respect.
The company that spammed jimmo.org, Impactful SEO has a very dodgy website and lists the Reactive address as their Sydney office. This is a rabbit hole that gets deeper and deeper. I emailed the Tims last week but have not heard back from them as yet. I decided to dig deeper on on this Damon Rosier character as he has a Google+ Profile. However no LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profile. So I decided to do a Google Image search.
Upload Image To Google Image Search.
Did you know you can upload and image to Google Image search and it will find similar images? It’s pretty cool. I did a screen cap of Damon and uploaded it here. It turns out Damon is fake. The photograph is a stock photo from AgeFotoStock.com .
As you can see Damon is also know as Karli Yani, Loris Gundry and my favourite Reuben Ruiter. I’m not sure what the SEO play is here but I would hate to be a business using a fake G+ account. I’m fairly sure that violates the TOS and you could have a lot taken down.
Sorry SEO Next
It seems I owe SEO Next an apology as it looks like they are being framed? Why though? It makes no sense. Reactive also seems to be a victim of this weird SEO marketing technique? Can you shed any light on it? Have you got similar spam? Please leave a comment below if you have something to offer.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
