It has come to my attention that those who blog about blogging like to mention cars. Yesterday, Andy Beard wrote A Dofollow Plugin I Liken To A Subaru. In that post, he also explained why L’s Linky Love is not a Ferrari.
So, today, it amuses me to show you photos of cars parked in my driveway.
I drive this:
I’ve never been given permission to drive this.
I’ve also never driven this:
Hmm…the third car is the color of money. Maybe I can use it for a blog mascot!
Dane of Blog Strokes and Maurice of The Cayman Host both made some very good points about in comments of my post aboutborderline comment spam.. So good, I think the comments merit a full blog post. In my response, I will try to make these points:
I may be wrong, but I think the “battlelines” on the “SEO in name” argument are being fought between two different cultural contingents: the “Suzy Homemaker” blogs and the “SEO” blogs. The first group blogs about topics like knitting, gardening, crochet, sewing, cooking and mommy concerns. The second includes “money, blogging, seo, marketing and IT blogs.”
I realized how important cultural factors were when I read Dane’s comment, mentioned crochet:
One very big reason I switched from Akismet to Spam Karma (I notice you use it too) is that I simply don’t want uptight Jane over at crochet-blog-monthly deciding who can post comments at my blogs.
I crochet, I sew, I knit. I make decent money on a personal knitting blog. So, I am “Crochet Jane”!
It’s probably for that reason that I know this: What is or is not “spam” varies from blog niche to blog niche. In the “money / seo / marketing / blog design” niche, leaving SEO text in the “name” box is “done”. In knitting, that’s “not done”.
This isn’t a matter or ethics, it’s a cultural difference.
If you are a spammer, spammers don’t really read blog posts. Still, if you came from a dofollow list, it’s possible you have become a bit to eager to gain SEO and are now wasting your time by leaving borderline spammy comments at Dofollow blogs. I’m writing this to help you leave the type of comments that can help your SEO!
We all recognize out and out spam. The comment text contains several links to sites that are irrelevant to the post or blog, and the links contain SEO terms. The “name” is an SEO term. The actual comment text is irrelevant. In truly skanky spam, the links point to porn, pharmaceutical, mortgages or gambling sites.
But every blogger knows, spam is spam even if it points to cooking sites.
We all recognize comments that aren’t at all spammy. These comments provide an honest to goodness name or non-SEO term nickname in the name field which can be associated with the commenter’s blog or site. The links in comment text point to destinations that are specifically relevant to the conversational thread. The visitor did not drop links to their many, multiple blogs and web sites in the comment text.
Finally, the comment text fits the conversational thread.
So what’s borderline spam? Not suprisingly, it’s a comment that contains some valuable content but also shares some of the traits seen in full-blown spam! Non-conversational links in text? SEO names in the name field? We do-followers are seeing an explosion of this!
As a visitor, you might think: “Well, I left valuable commentary. This blog follows. I guess I deserve to refine my SEO by inserting a good SEO term in the name field and adding a desirable anchor text to my link in comments. Also, I want to leave a second singature link in the comment so I can get extra clicks.”
You also think: I’m just being smart and maximizing the return on the three minutes I spent writing this four sentence comment!
Well, you are not being smart; you are hurting yourself!
Here’s how leaving borderline spammy comment hurts you: If you leave borderline spammy comments you will be reported to Akismet by someone. (more…)