What are some examples of unethical SEO practices used by PowerDMARC?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Backlinko shares that article spinning, the practice of rewriting existing articles to create 'new' content, is considered unethical because it often results in low-quality, unoriginal content.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that some companies engage in aggressive and irrelevant outreach, promising value but delivering spam, which is unethical. They also use 'personalized' emails which are generic.
Email marketer from Forbes shares that using AI to generate content without proper oversight or transparency about its AI-generated nature is unethical as it can mislead readers and dilute the quality of information.
Email marketer from Moz shares that buying links is against Google's guidelines and can lead to penalties, so it is considered unethical. Buying links artificially inflates a website's authority.
Marketer from Email Geeks states that PowerDMARC copied their entire knowledge base word for word, including images, in the early days.
Email marketer from Bruce Clay shares that cookie stuffing is considered unethical. This involves placing affiliate cookies on user's computers without their knowledge.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that using Private Blog Networks (PBNs) is an unethical technique, because they're made for manipulating search rankings instead of providing true value. Google frowns upon PBNs.
Email marketer from NeilPatel.com says that engaging in negative SEO, such as building spammy backlinks to a competitor's site or hacking their website, is an unethical practice aimed at harming their rankings.
Email marketer from Ahrefs explains that comment spamming involves leaving irrelevant comments with links on blogs and forums to build backlinks, which is an unethical and ineffective SEO tactic.
Email marketer from Search Engine Watch stated that participating in link schemes designed to artificially inflate a website's popularity is an unethical practice.
Email marketer from Search Engine Journal shares that doorway pages, which are created to rank for specific searches and redirect users to another page, are unethical. These pages provide a poor user experience and attempt to manipulate search rankings.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks confirms that link exchange tactics are still prevalent. Also offers to “helpfully” translate our content into other languages, and notifications of broken links and an offer to replace the link to point at their SEO spoo instead.
Expert from Email Geeks notes that PowerDMARC's practices also violate CAN-SPAM.
Expert from Email Geeks shares an example of PowerDMARC engaging in spammy link exchange requests from a gmail address, indicating potentially unethical SEO practices, and they were open about the company running the SEO campaign while using throwaway gmail addresses.
Expert from Word to the Wise discusses PowerDMARC's odd behavior, including outreach from multiple Gmail accounts and inconsistencies in their messaging, suggesting potentially deceptive practices.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests there are many low-quality SEO services being sold to companies, regardless of whether they are actually effective.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from W3C considers content scraping, which involves copying content from other websites and publishing it as your own without permission, is unethical and can lead to legal issues, is generally considered an unethical practice.
Documentation from Google Search Central notes that keyword stuffing, the practice of loading pages with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate search rankings, is a violation of Google's guidelines. This is an unethical practice.
Documentation from Google Search Central says that cloaking, which shows different content to users and search engines, is a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines. It is considered deceptive and unethical.
Documentation from Google Search Central states that hiding text or links within a website's content to manipulate search engine rankings is against Google's guidelines and an unethical practice. This deceives both users and search engines.