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!
What are Borderline Spammy Habits?
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!
Leaving Borderline Spammy Comments Hurts You
Here’s how leaving borderline spammy comment hurts you: If you leave borderline spammy comments you will be reported to Akismet by someone.
How many people will report you?
If your comment irritates 1% of bloggers, 1% of bloggers may report your comment to Akismet. If they are kindly inclined, they will simply delete or edit. Either way, you get absolutely no linkjuice.
If your comment irriates 10% of bloggers. Then 10% of bloggers may report you to Akismet. Irritate 50% of bloggers? You know the answer to this!
Clearly, if you irritate a blogger, you will not get your multiple links with great SEO anchor text. At best, you wasted your time.
But things are even worse for you. If you are reported often enough, you will find it difficult to comment on all blogs protected by Akismet. Remember: If “Jane” has very strict standards and reports you, you can have trouble posting at “Joe’s” blog because Akismet will bounce you before he sees the comment.
What Behaviors Should You Avoid?
I can’t list all borderline spammy practices. I advise following this principle: “Avoid being greedy.”
When you visit a dofollow blog, particularly for the first time, leave a relevant comment; then count on getting one link with your name as an anchor. Think of getting dofollows as asking for dessert: the blogger is willing to give you a slice of pie. They don’t want to give you the whole pie! (Especially not if you are a first time visitor!)
So, you are still wondering: But what specifically should I avoid doing? Here’s an incomplete list of things not to do:
- Don’t leave an SEO term in the “name” box. Leave a “name” or “nickname” : “Andy” is a name. “Tricia” is a name. “Las Vegas Real Estate” and “Learn Spanish” are not names. Some bloggers will let you get away with writing something like “Andy Beard — Niche Marketing” but you might want to wait until the blogger trusts you before doing that. Also, watch and make sure the blogger is letting other people do it!
- Don’t leave a second signature block at the bottom of the post. You already got a signature in the “name” and “url” field. Readers who want to visit your blog can already click that signature. You may want perfect anchor text but remember: your blogger host can’t afford lots anchor text with your SEO terms on their blog. It confuses their adsense and Kontera contextual ads and decreases their revenue!
- Don’t insert irrelevant hyperlinks in the comment text. Someone named “love” hyperlinked the word love to a dating site when commenting on my sock pattern. That’s spammy!
- Don’t expect a dofollow on your first visit. There are plugins that only give dofollows after you have visited several times. (L’s Linky Love is one of them.)
- Don’t leave multiple comments at several of a bloggers different blogs on the same day. Some bloggers have 9 blogs; if you hit the all on the same day, with the same url, you will be reported by Akismet.
In short: If you want to boost your SEO, visit do-follow blogs. If you have something to say, leave a comment. Come back if you like the blog. Comment some more. Participate with that blogger’s community.
But don’t leave the sorts of comments you would never dream of leaving if a blog were “nofollow”!
Hm… Now I’m afraid to leave any comment at all.. :]
Although thanks for posting this, was informative, especially for blogging newbie like me.
Hmmm why does this post topic seem familiar?
LOL I think I’ve talked about this on three of my blogs in the past two weeks or so.
In last hour I got a comment from someone with a site domain garden.biz, name garden, who told me in their comment that it must be nice to garden since it’s so passive (not for me- I do extreme gardening!) and that they don’t garden at all because they don’t have time and wish they had the time. Yet their like goes to a gardening blog selling gardening stuff. Right.
Don’t make a blogger feel that you think they are stupid when you leave a comment.
If the person had said they had just started a gardening blog and a site that sells gardening equiptment and been truthful it wouldn’t have got my goat so much. Did they think that I can’t see their name and link?
I think that’s part of what makes me so mad at these kind of comments and links. It’s like the comment spammers think we can’t see their urls or that they are just leaving a lame comment to get a back link.
We are not dumb. Most of us click on the links that have been left in order to be sure we aren’t linking to a link farm or empty site etc.
Love hit me too … yeah, you love my flowers, love the idea of a certain food etc .. that’s nice but why do you link the word love to your dating site?
Then there’s Canadian flower company who links to the name flower and if they mention anything in the comment that says flower, Canada, Canadian, rose or any other type of flower it gets a link to their site. They’ve left one line comments with four links to their site!
Those are just a few examples that have come in in the last hour or so. If I get 100 comments a day across all our blogs 25 to 40 will be comment spam such as this. I’m not even counting real spam comments that get caught in Akismet or that are blocked by Bad Behavior.
I don’t mind so much if people link to their website or business type blog when they fill out the comment form if they are leaving a genuine comment, but yes I prefer that they leave a name and that they not add any extra links within their comment unless that link really pertains to whatever the blog post was about.
If a link within a comment has nothing to do with my post or my blog, or their comment has little to nothing to do with the post I’ve been starting to mark the comment as Spam. I get enough comments that I’m not willing to spam up my site with those that abuse my do follow policy.
Sure, anyone who knowingly visits a do follow blog is doing it in part for the link. We know that.
The main reason I’m a do follow blogger and have been for almost a year is because I want to reward my REGULAR and LOYAL visitors. Not someone coming in with SEO links, and multiple links - Slam, Bam thank you mam. Uh huh.
If you are visiting do follow blogs mainly for back links at least have the courtesy of finding a post that you can leave a REAL comment on and don’t fill it with links. If you can’t find something on that blog that you can leave a meaningful comment on - move on. There’s plenty of blogs out there that do and don’t follow.
Oh and yes I said I’ve been a do follow blogger for almost a year. Do you know how long I’ve been ticked about SEO type comment spam? Only a month to six weeks because it’s DRAMATICALLY increased in that time. If there was a little bit here and there like there was before it might slip by (might not either), but I’m sure whether it slipped by or not it wouldn’t be as irritating as it’s become. I mean, look at what I said above - 25 to 40% of my “real” comments are comment spam lately. That’s abuse!
I’ll go along with this for the most part, and I commend you on a well thought out and considered position. It’s always nice to see someone sat down and thought it through instead of going with the knee jerk. I’d rather hang with someone who disagrees with me on something they thought out than some one who agrees just because.
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 want their behavior to make the determination, and thus far it’s worked beautifully. Though I will admit I have a couple of clever guys making concerted efforts to learn how to game the filters, and one even managed to squeak one through, so I was forced to implement my first actual blacklist entry.
As for SEOing the name, this is new for me. My name is Dane Morgan, and since it’s your blog you could easily change my name, and if you told me that you just really didn’t want my comments without using my name, I’d honor that request in a heart beat, it is your blog, and that’s just the right thing to do.
But I plan to make pretty much any comment on a post about blogging under my blogging blogs name now, which is Blog Strokes. I’ll still make niche / bum marketing type comments under my real name, until I launch my next blog about niche marketing, then I’ll sign those posts with that blogs name. Everything else, I would sign under my own name.
This allows me to 1) separate these three facets of my online life and make them more manageable, and 2) actually leave a better link for both my blog AND the blog i commented on. A link to Blog Strokes with “blog” in the link text is more valuable to this post, than one to Dane Morgan dot com with “Dane Morgan” in the link text. Nothing on your blog is about that.
Finally, I know it’s a little heretical, but i don’t consider weather a blog is do follow or not before I post a comment. I post based on weather your post leaves me with a desire to engage you in conversation. But as Andy will tell you, I’m pretty sloppy as links and juice go.
Oh, yeah, Nice Blog, lol. No, really, nice blog, I was just a little afraid to say so.
As a fellow blogger who reads and visits lots of blogs on a daily basis, this is good information to know. I’ve never really paid much attention to the dofollow lists or whatever and honestly I’ve never heard of akismet. What exactly is it?
Anyway, whenever I leave a comment I always try to contribute something to the discussion. I can’t say my comment will be as long or as detailed as the ones above, but they might be on occasion. Every once in a while if I have recently written an article on my blog related to the subject I am commenting on I will include a link to my article. I only do this on blogs I have visited and commented at before, and where I have seen precedent.
Again thanks for the information I will pay more attention to my comments and the comments on my blog as well.
later all and have a profitable productive blogging day
Yours truly
C “the C has to stand for Chow” man
I got to this post via Bumpzee and the nofollow community and your comment title caught my eye.
I have to admit that the names issue is one I had not given much thought to, and have often used my Christian name followed by my online identity as a “handle” (that being effectively the name of my site). I didn’t do it for this comment however
I have never done this to game anyone, it was pretty much an unconscious thing, but having read this it’s quite obvious that some bloggers consider it to be “spammy”. To be honest, if someone uses something other than a real name on my own sites, I wouldn’t have a problem with it, unless, like the example already given, it was a blatant keyphrase. Something like Diane’s example above looks fine to me and actually makes it clearer what she’s all about. As I’ve often clicked on comment links to be taken to a place that is of no interest to me personally, don’t you think that sometimes an insightful name has its place and could be beneficial to other readers?
As my site’s title is effectively my brand, I’ve often thought it appropriate, but I can see how this could be misconstrued. I’ve been blogging for a fair few years, long before all these issues were around, so, it’s not just “newbies” (hate that word) who might be a little surprised at how these attitudes have developed.
Still, this thread got me thinking, and not just that perhaps some folks could lighten up a bit. I hate spam too, but tend to view my commentators innocent until proven guilty.
Final thought - I use captchas in conjunction with forced moderation and it keeps me pretty clear of 99% of spam. Anything that makes it to moderation gets personal attention and edits if I see fit.
I just re-read that and must apologize to Dane, for my stupid typo! It’s been a long day.
No problem Maurice. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I get called even face to face and saying my name to someone. Actually it’s improoved in recent years, but I think up until I was about 20 or so there weren’t 100 people who read or heard Dane on the first go.
Phew, that was a long but interesting discussion (please don’t delete me I have more to say!
).
I just added the do-follow plug-in to my blog about marketing and to a few of my other niche blogs too.
I agree with what Blog Strokes say about SEOing the name in an otherwise decent comment. I wouldn’t really want to call that spamming. Here is my reasoning for that: If more people visit your blog and leave relevant and well thought out comments, that will actually help make your blog more popular, as you get more relevant content with virtually no effort on your part.
As I have been marketing online for many years, I know that this is the same argument those who sold blog-spamming software where using. But you have to agree that there is a big difference between those “Hey, nice post - come buy some [insert your favorite potency enhancer here]” posts and those that actually contributes something real but uses an SEOed signature or name.
Still, it must of course be up to the blog owner to decide what gives. Perhaps we should have an additional plug-in that clearly states the rules of commenting above the comment box? Then one couldn’t be excused “for not knowing better”, which I actually think is part of the problem right now.
Heh heh, I was going to be an ass and link my two sites :p but then my darn smart side of me convinced me not to.
You make some very good points here, but I have to disagree with #5.
If somebody made a comment on all 4 of my blogs, I would be more than happy that they did. I don’t think Akismet works that way.
OIC!
Didn’t realize that is what you meant. But yea, you’re right in that point of view. Most definitely would hate that to happen.
I think the message is great… Don’t spam… specifically don’t spam dofollow blogs. I was worried for a second there though. Is it good to give potential SEO/ non blogger / border line spammer types advice on how best to achieve their goals? Then after a second re-think I came to the conclusion even if their motive was bad, following these guidelines will force them to blog in an acceptable manner even if that wasn’t there goal. Or is the real motive to spread the word about the evils, hopefully making life easier for dofollow bloggers in the long term.
My name ain’t love and I don’t link to a dating site by commenting on your sock patterns. Excellent points on how people abuse link building.
Interesting thread.
I find that, more and more, the spammy and even the semi-spammy comments stand out like sore thumbs when it comes to moderation time.
And, as many people here say, just because someone submits a comment, whether it is truly brilliant or abominable sapm, you don’t have to accept it.
So, my own rule of thumb is that, if I think that a real person has made an effort to sit, think and then write, I’ll use it.
Otherwise, I won’t, and that pretty much has dealt with the spammers so far,
Steve
This is actually a very helpful and insightful post for new bloggers like myself.
I will admit that I am eager to get the “link love” from any blog that will allow me to… But it is obvious that if I have NOTHING relevant to add to the post, that it is just hurting me in the long run.
Readers will notice that your comments are not valuable and just a waste of time, and probably will not visit your blog then, or in the future.
So the tiny SEO boost you get by having ONE more link to you out in the blogosphere is overshadowed by the fact that you are missing out on many potential readers by posting dumb comments.
Good points!
[...] blogs very quickly. There has been a very interesting discussion recently over at this blog about comment etiquette and spam if you want to know more about some blogger’s views on acceptable/unacceptable behavior. Of [...]
Why you all still wanna dofollow since it’s very troublesome? I don’t mind to get remove, before you do that, make sure you think probably if you wanna dofollow, and the anchor text is really depend on the blog of the owner, my blog is bloggingsecret.com and I also have blog louisslim.com.I will put louisslim.com with an anchor text “louiss” or “louiss lim” instead of “bloggingsecret.com”. If my blog is bloggingsecret.net, of course I put my name as “blogging secret”, since my blog branding as blogging secret!
If the blog about watch, why not they put anchor text as “Watch”? I just thought about it all the time, since I read this post, make me feel that dofollow and nofollow is still the same, the different is you let those anchor text with their name to drop a comment and linkback to him. If have 100 people name robin which have their own blog and 100 people of them drop comment on your blog, will you approve it?
This just my opinion, I would appreciate if you give me some feedback, thank you for your time for reading this comment.
Louiss
This is an informative post regarding how to leave comments on other bloggers websites, without making your comment look ‘spammy’ in nature.
I’ll be back at a later date to read some of the other interesting posts you have.
Its ironic that many bloggers talk about this but then they actually use no follow.
You might be interested to see this thread in light of the last comment
http://www.jangro.com/a/2007/08/29/is-dofollow-a-spam-magnet/
Drive by cut and paste dofollow commenting perhaps?
As for spammy comments, on my blog I keep getting a lot of comments with just “great post” and tons of links included. For some reason Akismet doesn’t pick them up and I had to manually file them as “spam”. Have you guys run into the same problem?
I can’t use Spam Karma but, on my NucleusCMS blog, I use a plugin called PHYFS (I won’t repeat what it stands for as this is a family friendly place) and this does a good job of weeding out the type of spam Cindy mentions - anything with more than 3 links is toast
That number is set by the blog admin, so you can allow as many URLs as you feel is reasonable. It also destroys posts that are made from the same IP within a certain time frame - if a bot is doing multiple posts all within seconds of each other they get zapped as they arrive. The plugin also allows users to set up a nice sarcastic message which is displayed to wannabe spammers who break the user defined parameters.
In addition to manual moderation and a captcha this keeps me pretty free of most spam, including the human posted junk.