Those who visit this forum several times a day will know what I'm talking about. There is a lot of pointless garbage that gets posted here ("I like your website" and a link has been popping up a lot lately) and promptly deleted by Sam.

I've often wondered why these people do this. What's the point? Compared to most forums, this is a pretty low-traffic place, and those of us regular readers who are here often enough to catch these spam posts before they are removed don't bother clicking on the links. At best, we might write a quick "IBTL" post mocking the original and its writer.

At my new job, I've been enrolled in an online class that starts on Monday on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As a preliminary to this class, I've been reading up on the topic, and I think I might have discovered a possible "reason" for all the bizarre, random posts & links that end up here.

They're trying to generate artificial boosts to their search engine rankings.