SEO Agency Extortion Scam

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of digital marketing that helps websites rank in search engines such as Google and Bing. There are countless agencies offering services that promise to boost a website’s search engine ranking.

It seems that some of these agencies have now resorted to a form to blackmail to help their clients achieve SEO goals. One of our followers on Facebook from Italy who owns their own website sent us a copy of the email they received as part of this apparent SEO Agency Extortion Scam:

Message: Hello Sir

I am Dusyanthan Balasubramanian from [company name removed], a SEO and PR expert from Bangladesh! I have following request from yourselfes:

1. Please visit [link removed] and read the article: make sure stay on page for 10 minute
2. Bookmark the page
3. Now share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (I need traffic).
4. Adding backlink in your blog

Now Sir, if no reply, I leave 1 star on Trust Pilot, Google and also reporting [reporter's website] to all internet blacklists for spam:
https://www.spamhaus.org
https://www.spamcop.net
https://www.invaluement.com
https://www.spamhaus.org/dbl

Sir, this will causing your site to slip down the Google rankings and also you will have e mail delivering problems. I suggest that you complying with our little request and everything will be ok. As a free bonus our team will submit [reporter’s website] to 3000 bookmark sites to help you with Google ranking!

Thank you very much sir and we hoping see results in next hour. Max I give you 12 hours Sir because this urgent for client. Sir and please do not showing this email because it is confidential by data protection regulations!

yours sincerely

Dusyanthan Balasubramanian
[Company name removed] | Best SEO Service Provider & Expert Company in Bangladesh
[Address removed]

We suggested the website owner to ignore this email, as scammers have nothing to gain by following through with their threats. Surprisingly, a week after the email was sent, someone from the ‘SEO agency’ seems to have left a negative review for the reporter’s website on TrustPilot.

While it is likely that the review will be taken down after being flagged to TrustPilot’s team, it is an unnecessarily stressful situation for the website owner created by the 'SEO agency'. An increasing number of shoppers rely on online reviews for their purchase decisions and such malicious behaviour can damage businesses.

How to Handle an SEO Agency Extortion Scam

If you have been targeted by such a scam, we recommend taking the following steps:

1. Do not reply to such a message as it is never a good idea to engage with scammers. They may target you repeatedly if they know that you are responding to their threats.
   
   
2. Claim your website on popular review platforms such as Scamadviser, TrustPilot, Google My Business, Sitejabber and more. This way, you will be notified if negative reviews are being written for your business. Visit this link to claim your website’s Scamadviser page.
   
   
3. Respond to the review explaining the story behind it. This will let genuine customers know that the negative review is not based on a real experience.
   
   
4. Flag the review as fake so that the site’s support team can check and delete it.
   
   
5. Invite happy customers to write reviews so that the damage caused by fake negative reviews is minimal.

Have you been the target of such a scam? Let us know.