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At the bottom of this post is a message that was left on one of our artist's contact forms.  Here are some of the red flags that I see to identify this as a spammer and potentially a scammer.

While there are legitimate people doing this kind of work, most are bordering on scams.

In particular, this message has a number of red flags.

• There is no mention of "art" in the message so they obviously don't really know anything about the artist's website.  A "Digital Marking Specialist" would understand that the best marketing efforts for an artist still revolve around the artist's interaction with their community.  That's where most sales are made.
• There is no way that they could know that you had a drop in website traffic.  That's not information that is available to an outsider.
• The email address is at GMail.  Any successful business would at least have a domain name and a company.  If you are soliciting business, you want to present yourself in the best light.  The extend of this "business" is likely the choice of a name and setting up a GMail account.
• Notice that the poster was from Angola in southern Africa.  I've not seen much internet activity at all from Angola so this is surprising if nothing else.

You would have to ask yourself, how much would a digital marketing person from Angola know about the needs of a Canadian artist selling mostly to a local community?  So no matter how legitimate they might be, could they be of much help to the artist?

We do see a lot of these kinds of spam messages.  They seem to be mostly from India but we do some from lots of other locations.

Here is the content of the message in question:

24 Jun 2021 04:36 AM
Stacy Carner<stacyseomarketing@gmail.com>    Benguela, Angola 🇦🇴 (45.115.26.38)
Re: Fix Website Errors

Hello,

My name is Stacy and I am a Digital Marketing Specialists for a Creative Agency.

I was doing some industry benchmarking for a client of mine when I came across your website.

I noticed a few technical errors which correspond with a drop of website traffic over the last 2-3 months which I thought I would bring to your attention.

After closer inspection it appears your site is lacking in 4 key criteria.

1- Website Speed
2- Link Diversity
3- Domain Authority
4- Competition Comparison

I can send you over the report which shows all of the above and so much more which will help you at least improve your site, its rankings and traffic.

I would love the chance to help as well however; this report will at least give you a gauge on the quality of what I do. If you are interested then please share your requirement and contact details.

Is this the best email to send it to?

Sincerely,
Stacy Carner
stacyseomarketing@gmail.com