As an SEO consultant, I will occasionally test SEO services on a personal site I manage or for a client who is interested in vetting a service. As a recent service that is spamming inboxes in LinkedIn, I decided to run a test with the company SpicyPepper.io.
Who Is SpicyPepper.io?
SpicyPepper.io is a blogger outreach service that claims to perform natural outreach to different blogs with the goal of placing a link. When done correctly, outreach is a long process with a lot of rejection or webmasters asking a substantial exchange to post a link. If a service can help cut down on the outreach hours involved, I’m all for it. Unfortunately, services like SpicyPepper.io work off of a private blog network (PBN) where they own the sites and control the quality.
Although the website shows they are based out of Glasgow, it actually appears to be another spammy, fly by night SEO service.
Reviews for SpicyPepper.io
If you look online for any type of reviews for the company, you’ll quickly see they have none. This is a great indication that they are not a trustworthy company and they’re likely just out to scam you.
The Test
I decided to give SpicyPepper.io a chance after repeated messages in LinkedIn. Everyone is trying to sell something, so hey, why not give them a chance? I won’t disclose the site that I chose to have them work for, but I will disclose the results.
The Results
Building links takes a long time and I completely understand that. Unfortunately, one of the two employees at SpicyPepper.io guaranteed results in a week.
Here’s the first issue – if a service guarantees results in a certain time frame, it’s a scam. As I’ve mentioned many times here, SEO takes time when it is done naturally. Any SEO who can guarantee anything in a certain time frame is operating a scam and is out to take your money.
With that said, I proceeded with the the test and wanted to see what kind of results they could come up with.
No Domain Vetting
They came back (in one week) with placement on a website that has nothing to do with target site’s location or service. This is another indication that this is a scam. When I reviewed the domain metrics myself, I could quickly tell the site belongs to a PBN. This means there was no actual outreach and this “service” is not real. They find a site that they own that is somewhat relevant, insert a link and tell people they did outreach.
The Confrontation
As soon as I realized what had occurred I reached out to the salesperson from SpicyPepper.io on LinkedIn. He was very responsive when trying to sell me on his service, then was suddenly quiet when I asked about his outreach and the results. I then let him know I’m an SEO vetting his service and I know it’s a scam. I politely asked him to remove the link, refund what I had paid and we could go our separate ways.
His response was, “this is a digital product, no refunds.”
Of course it is.
Please, Avoid Link Spam Like SpicyPepper.io
If you own a website, I’m sure you have been pitched buying links in an email or through LinkedIn. Here’s a fun example:
The spammer guarantees placement on high traffic, noteworthy websites. But what really happens is they create a profile on a site and add a link that will never be found by Google and will have zero effect on SEO. Or, they publish a link to a site and remove it 2 weeks later only to provide SpicyPepper.io’s line of “this is a digital product, no refunds.”
Like all other link spammers who guarantee results with SEO, Spicy Pepper is yet another company to avoid.
Be safe out with your SEO and reach me at jeff@octivdigital.com if you would like me to vet an SEO service for you.
