If you run a blog, news site, or other web site you may already have received emails from keen individuals talking about your “influential” site and asking if you would be kind enough to include their recently written “appropriate article” which includes a couple of links.

If you receive this kind of request – you really should approach it cautiously as this is most likely from a SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) company, using questionable tactics, in building link backs from legitimate websites. In effect it is largely similar to comment SPAM.

In return these requests typically offer “ a tempter” – something along the lines of (and this is from a recently received request) “I will of corse give you and your blog a shout” – i.e. a back link, often from an obscure web page, unrelated to your actual web content which is unlikely to help you, or your site, in any way.

In the past these kind of requests have typically arrived from Hotmail or Gmail accounts which can make it more difficult distinguishing them from real requests from people reaching out.

The surprising thing about this kind of email these days is that a number of the SEO companies involved seem to be becoming a little more brash and dropping the pretense by sending these requests straight from their SEO based email domains.