Just came out of a meeting and noticed a new comment waiting to be moderated on one of my blog posts.
It was from a post about property that I wrote a while back. The comment seemed legit enough, a little off topic, but still legit… Then I noticed the url that the poster had used… it pointed to a joburg based property company’s website. I viewed their site and noticed that their SEO was being done by a South African SEO company… Funny that… Lets look at the poster’s email address domain… oh look, owned by the SEO company.
So I called them and asked to speak to the girl who’s name was used… I told her what had happened and asked her, very nicely, whether she thought that sort of thing was ethical.
You’ll never guess what she said.
“No, it’s not ethical“… She sounded ashamed and admitted to not wanting to do that kind of thing, but not having a choice.
“I hope you find a better job soon” I sheepishly suggested…
I’m not going to pretend I could ever understand what kind of situation she’s in that she feels she has to continue working for a bunch of spammers, but I sincerely hope that she gets out of there fast. Allowing your integrity to be eroded is not a healthy place for any decent human being to be in… and she sounded like a decent human being.
arbitraryuser 
With the amount of SEO jobs out there she should just tell them to sod off and go work somewhere with integrity!
The company who hired them should also be notified and educated about the perception this kind of tactic creates of their brand, oi how annoying!