TJ Kelly

Brenda Lyttle Spam SEO

Published in Blogs

Is Brenda Lyttle spam? When I got her guest post request email, I wasn’t sure. I did some light digging and found out pretty easily: Brenda Lyttle is an SEO spammer. “She” is not a real person. She’s a persona used to convince unsuspecting authors to publish spammy SEO backlinks on their blogs.

Fake personas and SEO guest post requests are nothing new. They happen all the time. I’m writing this post so the next honest blog author who gets a guest post request from Brenda Lyttle will know the truth about “her” and her motives.

Note: there is at least one real Brenda Lyttle. See the end of this post for more about her.

Who is Brenda Lyttle?

She’s no one. She’s not a real person. But some SEOs have gone to great lengths to make her seem real at first and second glance. Here’s all the information I could find about her.

Brenda Lyttle is a spammer.

Name: Brenda Lyttle

Googling her name brings up some interesting results. The top result each time I’ve tried has been a forum discussing these very issues: is “Brenda” a real person and should authors accept her guest post request? Red flag #1.

After that forum, you should start to see some of her latest work. The interesting (and revealing) thing there is that, in her request email, she claims to be an expert in a certain field. Browsing through her recent posts, however, paints a very different picture. “She” doesn’t specialize in any one field. She guest posts about any topic that will drive traffic. Red flag #2.

Email: brendalyttle@gmail.com

If you google her email address, chances are good that the first result will be an entry on Project Honey Pot, a “distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use.” Red flag #3.

Again, the later results start to showcase her previous guest posts. By this point, it’s becoming very clear who she is and who she isn’t. More topic variety and yet seemingly no blog or website of her own. Red flag #4.

Brenda’s Facebook profile

Take a quick look at her Facebook profile, which is attached to her gmail address. Facebook offers plenty of privacy settings to hide your posts from non-friends, but her profile is just barren. I would have tried friending her to see behind the privacy wall, but “she” has disabled that feature. You cannot become her friend. Red flag #5.

The only activity on her profile is that she answered a question about Xbox 360 Kinnect, another spam-haven topic on the web. She has one profile photo, one cover photo, and subscribes to one person (which makes me suspicious of that person). That’s all she’s accumulated since joining Facebook 18 months ago. Red flag #6.

Google+ profile

Knowing what I now know (or believe) about her, I find her Google+ profile both expected and surprising. As expected, she “hasn’t shared anything” with me. Of course not, she hasn’t shared anything with anyone. On the other hand, “she” has taken the time to add 159 people to her Circles and 83 have added her back.

Oh, and here she claims to live in Plainwell, MI.

Fake Guest Post = SEO Spam Backlinks

The concept is simple. And, when done honestly, it’s actually not a bad thing. SEOs email bloggers asking to publish a guest post (and carefully-chosen backlinks & anchor text) on their blogs. It’s when SEOs lie about themselves and their motives to fool unsuspecting authors that I have a problem with it. But honesty is not the SEO way. It’s too hard and takes too much work. SEOs will always choose the easy way out: deceit.

If you want a link from my site back to yours, all you have to do is ask me. I’ll consider your request and decide for myself. I know not every author is open to even considering such requests, but I think they’re harmless when done professionally. Links are still extremely powerful in the Googlerithm™, so why not have an open conversation about sharing links? As long as it’s done above-board and with best practices, there’s nothing black-hat or spammy about it.

The real Brenda Lyttle

I came across one real person by the same name, a lawyer from Wyoming. In my opinion, this woman deserves to have her name back. So, to the real Brenda Lyttle, I apologize on behalf of these SEOs who spam other people and potentially damage your name. If you know anything about SEO, you’ll find that the only do-follow outbound link in this post is that one, pointing to your Facebook profile. It’s the best I could do after writing an entire post intentionally capitalizing on searches for your name. I hope my post helps to steer would-be authors away from the fake Brenda and thereby kill her persona, taking her out of your way.

26 thoughts on “Brenda Lyttle Spam SEO”

  2. Astra Spider

    Yes, thank you so much – apparently “Brenda” is busy today, because I also got an email from “her” sent to my biz email! I thought it was odd because instead of looking at my blog long enough to find my name and address me by it in her email to me, she addressed me as “Dear (link to my website). :) So I googled her email address and it brought me here! Thank you for your thorough research!

    Reply ↓
  3. Radu A.

    I also received an email from her and since it seemed too good to be true, I googled her email address…and that’s how I got to this post!

    So thanks for the info! I just deleted her email and will block her if she will ever contact me again.

    Reply ↓
  5. Phil

    Thanks for this though it’s a bit worrying. I’ve received a very poorly written article from this “person” but thought I’d ignore it as it’s clearly just a sales piece.

    Pity because I quite like the idea of guest bloggers on my site. But, I guess like the tv programme says: “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is!”

    Thanks for the heads up.

    Reply ↓
  7. Francine

    Speaking of spam, I just tried to click on my name (link to my blog) and it’s giving me an 404 error message. TJ, any idea why this is happening?

    I’ve only started blogging seriously in the last 2 months, and just began to notice this error message a few days ago.

    Any feedback would be much appreicated!

    Francine

    Reply ↓
  8. TJ Kelly

    Hi Francine, thank you for your comments. I’m not sure what you mean, though. I clicked on your name above and it directed me to your site, in both instances. Are you still getting a 404 when you try?

    Reply ↓
  10. Ahmad Khoirul Azmi

    Thank God i found this post on Google first page (well, number one actually) ! :)
    Recently I got the same email from the same name. I got many similar emails everyday. However, I must admit that this one is a bit different. That’s why I am so curious about her.
    “I wanted to further
    reach out to you because I have a team of writers and we would love to
    contribute to your site by creating premium editorial articles – these feature
    fresh, trending content developed by our in-house team, tailored to your
    audience. You do not have to pay us anything for this.
    You reap the benefits with unique, compelling articles aimed to
    improve your website visibility, drive traffic and promote social interest &
    shares. All articles we create are original and developed for your site only.”

    I have replied by asking her, “Wow, amazing, so your writers can write articles in Indonesian?” (well, my site is written in Bahasa Indonesia). Not long, she replied, “Yes, we can” and gave a sample of article. Well, the article was a result of very poor translation so that I couldn’t find what the article actually talked about. The only point I could see was two links pointing to a bad cr*dit loans site. Lol. Later, I found that the article was translated from an English spun article.

    Reply ↓
    1. TJ Kelly

      Thank you, Ahmad, I’m glad this was helpful to you! And thank you for posting the content of “her” email to you, that may prove helpful to future Googlers who receive similar requests from “her.” Cheers, thanks for your comment.

    1. TJ Kelly

      Thanks for your comment, John. “Her” guest post may not be bad, per se. And I don’t have a problem with the guest posts in an of themselves. My problem is that “she” isn’t who she says she is. She isn’t a person at all. She’s a persona invented by an SEO firm. The guest posts are designed to generate back-links to whatever sites they’re promoting. It’s a very common tactic, but I find it deceptive and unethical to misrepresent the firm using a fake persona.

  12. Alwayne

    This is what i got sent to my blog today:

    Dear owner of http://theincompleteid10t.blogspot.com,

    Just finishing up reading a few of your more recent posts on http://theincompleteid10t.blogspot.com.
    I really like the content that you come up with. I went ahead and
    forwarded your link to my fiance, he will love the site. :) I wanted to further
    reach out to you because I have a team of writers and we would love to
    contribute to your site by creating premium editorial articles – these feature
    fresh, trending content developed by our in-house team, tailored to your
    audience. You do not have to pay us anything for this.

    You reap the benefits with unique, compelling articles aimed to
    improve your website visibility, drive traffic and promote social interest &
    shares. All articles we create are original and developed for your site only.

    If you already have an editorial calendar in place, we’d like to
    contribute! Or, if you’re new to these opportunities, we encourage you to give it
    a try.

    Please do let me know if this caters to your interest.

    Looking forward to your positive revert. :)

    —
    Thank you!
    Brenda Lyttle

    —————————–
    Seems like ive now become a target seeing i just hit 100000 views. Thanks for the article

    Reply ↓
    1. TJ Kelly

      Thanks for your comment, James. I agree, there are plenty of other pseudonyms being used by SEOs to fool authors, though they may not be related to “Brenda’s” creators. Maybe I’ll start a list of fake SEO personas.

  15. Michelle

    Thanks so much for posting this…just got one of her requests and your post came up when I googled her name. The request seemed kind of odd, coming out of the blue…I do have guest bloggers, but they are bloggers I have a relationship with.

    Reply ↓
  17. John L

    I run a contributor based foreign policy site and I find the wording of the emails incredibly fun to parse. Doubly enjoyable to lead them on about going forward.

    Reply ↓

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