I recently received a email from a guy trying to buy a link on my site. He obviously hadn’t read the site or he would know that I have a slight understanding of SEO but it reminded me of this post on Search Engine Land.

Here is the conversation:

Hi,

Are you interested in getting a template/ banner/ header/ logo/ business cards/ mascot designs for no money for your site, in return we require text links from your site. Please get back to me if you are interested.

Warm Regards

XXX XX, Webmaster

ABC.com – Website Design Services

XYZ.com - Custom Logo and Marketing Materials

My reply:

Hi XXX,
I don’t generally include advertising on my site, particularly text links as i thought i read something about issue with search engines if i did this, is that not the case?

He continued:

Hi
Thanks for the mail. Yes, there are certain rules followed by search engines to rank a site, it follows an algorithm, according to that the text links you are placing must be under the heading “blog roll, featured sites, my favorites sites, etc.” you should not use the heading with the word “link” then the search engine deeply scan the data and make some action. So there is no harm if you put text links of others, but you should not use the heading as “link/ links” thats it, and the links you are placing should be relevant to your site thats all a search engine wants. You no need to worry I will give relevant links to your site, so let me know which product you are interested in template, banner, header or logo. Reply me ASAP.
Regards,
XXX

Interesting response! Completely untrue but at least he’s creative!

I continued:

Hi XXX,

I’ve looked at Google’s webmaster guidelines and it doesn’t mention anything about what you have said, it does say that i should use a ‘nofollow’ tag though -
In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links.
Do you advise the nofollow tags go on your links to prevent causing any issues with Google?

Sorry about the questions, i just want to make sure i am not harming my site by including links to other sites.

Thanks

He continues with more bullshit:

Hi
What you said is one of the criteria, there are many criteria regarding links, if the links are related to your sites, there is no harm, no search engine will take any action. No follow links you can be used for the links which are irrelevant to you. Having related links search engine will enhance your rankings. I think we are more out of topic, so kindly get back to me regarding product. Await for your good answer.
Regards,

I like the way he has said it will help my rankings by doing this and then has said ‘we are more out of topic’

I replied:

Hi XXX
What site would i be linking too?

He responded:

These are my link details, send me the product details, I will go through it tomorrow, moving now, bye
1) Link Text - SEO Services
Link Url - abc.com
2) Link Text - Marketing Strategies
Link Url - xyz.com
3) Link Text - Web Developer
Link Url - 123.com
Regards,
xxx

So he has lied to me about the guidelines and then asked me to link to SEO services!

I got bored at this point and told him the truth:

Hi XXX,
Looking at the three sites below they are all registered by XYZ.com and all three offer SEO services. Based on this i would expect you and them to know Google search engine guidelines. How you can actually say ‘there is no harm, no search engine will take any action’ and ‘Having related links search engine will enhance your rankings’ is absolutely disgraceful. You are lying to people who may not know any better, luckily i do!
I work for a world leading, ETHICAL search engine optimisation agency and if you actually took the time to read the sort of things included on my site you may have thought that this person actually knows about SEO and i shouldn’t try to trick him into damaging his own site through such blatant lies!

I now have the 3 sites and the parent site that is blatantly breaking Google’s guidelines and, as such this email and it’s history will now be sent to Google’s spam department and hopefully all 4 sites will be removed for the listed very shortly.

I don’t care that they are buying links but a hint to the ones who try it out there - if someone starts to question, it don’t lie. It just makes things worse and you will look like a moron, especially when it gets sent to Google!