Creepy way to get links - Bad SEO Hall of Fame

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A while back I received an email from a person purporting to be a victim of one of my websites. The mail was extremely hostile and litigious. Having been in business for myself for many years, being threatened to be sued is not new. A disgruntled person will usually wait awhile before involving a lawyer, especially considering how much lawyers charge. This guy had no such qualms, because he was launching what I refer to as an “internet lawsuit”.

The text of the message was along the lines of: “I have been to your website. You are in violation of internation copyright laws. You need to remove the offending page or suffer dire consequences including vicious email lawsuits. Or you can add a link to my page at www.spamsite.com/etc”.

Ahh, the clincher. In the midst of the protest concerning international copyright laws, I see the actual reason for the email: a backhand link trade request done through intimidation! Now I’ve seen a ton of creepy things in the backwaters of the link trading game, but this one reaches a new low. I’m going to be sued unless I link to your crappy website? No way! I wrote him back and said, I’m wrote the information in question, but rather than argue with you, I’ll take the page down, and I did. (The page was on a site that lost rankings and was only 200 or so of my orginal words, so no great loss). I figured I’d have a laugh at his reaction, which followed shortly.

“Oh, no need to take the page down. I just want a link to my website. You seem like a decent guy, you can copy whatever you want from my website, provided you link back. After all, you’re page is a themed website so the link is on-topic.”

Zoiks, the SEO-speak just tells me what WebmasterWorld this guy comes from. There you have it. Unless I link back to a clown I can’t keep content I wrote on my website. Ha! I checked the guys Whois info. He appeared to be some loser from the US that was selling his own product. At that point, I blocked his email at the server level and moved on.

I’m sure as time goes on, I’ll find even more lousy link trading attempts, but this was impressive for sheer sleaziness. The biggest problem I have with webmasters trying to screw me over is, what is the justification? I’m a “little guy” out here doing my thing. Sure, I make a good living, but I’m not some big company who can afford to get hosed on every deal with every dreamer from the internet. Oh well, my rankings came back on that site. I left two sentences on the page that he was concerned with. I checked the rankings today and my page is 1st with the two sentences and he’s on page 2. I doubt that will change much in the coming years.

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