If you have trackbacks enabled on your blog you have most probably had to deal with trackback spam at some point.

Most of the time I just delete the spam trackbacks and move on, but this morning I received one from what appeared to be a very legitimate web design company.

Surely these guys are not blackhats I am thinking, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

The email I sent to the web design company:

“Hi,

My blog was just spammed by someone pointing a text link to your URL – using trackback spam:

https://www.seoco.co.uk/blog/2008/01/03/
the-magic-seo-beans/#comment-1023

I wouldn’t normally contact the people who spam me but you look like a genuine company so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Trackback spamming is against the search engine guidelines and it is a very fast way to get your site banned from Google.

If you know nothing about this, then let me know and I will see if I can find out some more info for you. If you are paying a company to do this for you, drop them and drop them fast. If you are using some software to do this, stop using it.

Plenty of people who are a lot less forgiving then me would just forward this straight on to Google’s webspam team.

Best Regards

David Eaves”

The web design company’ response:

“Dear David,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to email me and bringing this to my attention.

I have started using a search engine company who I will be getting rid of as I received a similar email to the one you sent yesterday.

May I ask what your company charges for SEO services, we would like to do well for the phrase ‘Web Design’

Kind Regards,

Colin”

So as it turns out I may be getting an SEO or link building contract, thanks to trackback spam.