Image: Victor1558

In the past, I used to receive all sorts of fake lottery wins, Nigerian scams and too good to be true Job offers. But now the majority of my spam emails are SEO (search engine optimisation) proposals. In fact I get around 50-60 SEO proposals a week.

Why is it that there is such a high demand for SEO that it dominates your email content? The simple truth is, most businesses are more than willing to pay handsomely to be on the first page of Google. But it also highlights a major problem that Google, Yahoo and Bing are confronting - that millions of people are out to game the system.

Image: Ken Rubin, VP of Marketing for Rouxbe Online Cooking School

Since it's launch earlier this month, there has been an influx of businesses and individuals signing up to join Google Helpouts. In this blog, I interview some of the top providers on why they decided to make their listings free, and what the long term benefits are for providing a free service on Google Helpouts.