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No, I Won't Link to Your Spammy Article

If you're reading this, chances are you've arrived here from a link I sent you via email. That email would have been a reply to one you originally sent to me that would have sounded something like this:

Hi, I came across your blog on [thing] and I must admit, it was really nicely written. I also have an article on [thing] and I think it would be a great addition to your blog.

No, no it wouldn't and there are all sorts of reasons why not. First among them is that if I was to add a link to your resource, I'd be legitimising the spam email you just sent me. Wait - you think It's not spam? Of course it's spam! Keep reading the definition until you understand then proceed:

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send an unsolicited message, especially advertising

Alrighty, so it's an unsolicited message (I certainly didn't ask for it) and it's intended to advertise your work. And that's really what you're asking for here - free advertising. You want people reading my content to leave my site and head on over to yours where they'll not only read your content, but (probably) view your ads and drive revenue for you.

Thing is, it's probably not even "your" site anyway because there's a very high likelihood that you're an Oompa Loompa in the "digital marketing" space tasked with spamming people like me (remember, you're only allowed to have gotten down to here if you understand what spam is) in order to drive clicks. It's either clicks alone or clicks and SEO courtesy of establishing more inbound links in an attempt to artificially inflate the popularity of the site.

So here's how I've decided to deal with the problem: every time I receive spam of this nature I'm going to add an item to the list below. It will have the title of the resource you wanted me to link to, except... no link! Just the title. On a popular blog. So now when people search for [thing], they'll hopefully end up here rather than on the spammy article thus penalising you for your behaviour. And just to help my own SEO and awareness of your spammy behaviour, I'll tweet a link to this page with the title of your page each time it happens.

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Incidentally, I think this blog post would be a great addition to your article, would you mind linking to it? kthanksbye!

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Hi, I'm Troy Hunt, I write this blog, create courses for Pluralsight and am a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP who travels the world speaking at events and training technology professionals