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:
- What is or is not spam varies from blog niche to blog niche.
- Leaving your SEO term in a blog niche may be unacceptable to the blogger for cultural and business reasons.
- Yes, you can safely link drop if the link is informational and
- Don’t spam Suzy Homemaker.
Cultural Factors Affect the “Spam / Not Spam” Designation of a Comment
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.
Not recognizing the cultural differences can hurt you.
The cultural differences presents a danger to some who are using the dofollow list and misapplying SEO advice about link dropping and anchor text.
If we are honest, we all have noticed that some people are driving the dofollow lists on autopilot. They find a list, start at the top, and click on down. They don’t stay long at any blog. When they discover themselves reading a dull, boring page about knitting (yawn), they feel they should be “rewarded” for their benifecence and leave a nearly meaningless comment containing elenventy-seven links and an SEO name in the ‘name’ box.
You may think I’m guessing some think they deserve “rewards”; I’m not. You can read these “explanations” on some forums and in discussions that spring up in blog comments.
Ok, so the visitor thinks they “deserve” to be “rewarded”. The often high traffic “Suzy Homemaker” blogger who runs the sois dissant ‘boring’ blog disagrees. What happens then?
Suzy Homemaker edits, deletes or reports the comment to Akismet.
Suzy Homemaker and I know some SEO / Money bloggers think they think we should consider bloggers “innocent” until proven guilty and leave it alone.
Actually I do consider the borderline spammers innocent until proven guilty. Guilt or innocence is irrelevant to my decision to edit or report for a very good reason: I like money.
How borderline spam costs me money!
Bizarre, irrelevant comments with “names” like “Las Vegas Real Estate” make my knitting blog look spammy to knitters. It discourages knitters from visiting or commenting. Knitters click on adSense and Kontera ads for knitting items. That makes me money.
I’m simply not going to sacrifice my 700 - 1100 unique visitors a day because some fly-by visitor wants good SEO for the term “SEO expert”. Innocent mistake? Too bad. Any real SEO expert would advise that riddling my knitting blog with terms like “SEO Expert” might confuse my AdSense or Kontera and cause SEO ads to appear. My knitters won’t click on those. I will delete that SEO term.
So, why can’t some bloggers just lighten up?
Those of us on the “Suzy homemaker” side of the divide hear “lighten up” from the “SEO” bloggers all the time. (Why does this always remind me of dates where the guy suggested I was too hung up? 
)
I’m not going to belabor this: We aren’t going to lighten up because we want to make money.
What about at “Big Bucks Blogger”?
If you leave an “Blog Strokes” in the name box at Big Bucks Blogger, that’s fine with me!
Money/ seo/ blogging about blogging bloggers almost all think SEO terms make fine names. Dane does; Maurice does; Andy Beard does. It’s a cultural norm. Besides, an SEO name like “Blog Strokes” might hurt “The Knitting Fiend”, but it doesn’t hurt the SEO of “Big Bucks Blogger” one bit!
Are you beginning to understeand why these cultural norms exist? It had nothing to do with needing to “lighten up”. Suzy Homemaker cannot permit others to interfere with her ability to monetize her blog.
Can people link drop at dofollow blogs at all?
Of course. I think it’s generally a good idea to drop links and insert SEO terms in the name box provided it’s done judiciously.
Very few bloggers mind links provided the links are conversational and informational. If the blog isn’t in your niche, your SEO term is neither conversational nor informational. It may be disappointing to discover this, but generally speaking, blogs about SEO bore knitters to tears. (Yawn). More generally, if the topic of a blog makes you yawn, your favorite SEO term is probably not informational on that blog.
I can tell Dane “gets” this. He mentions he leaves a comment as part of a conversation: that’s what bloggers want. He also mentions he leaves “Blog Strokes” as the “name” at money blogs, but would not leave “Blog Strokes” in the name box at a non-money blog.
Like Mama Bear’s bed, he found the “just right” solution.
Is it ok to go out of your way to visit dofollow blogs?
As my sister the obstetrician would say: Abso-friggin-lutely!
I notice that both Maurice and Dane found my blog through Andy Beard’s BumpZee’s nofollow community. Visiting interesting blogs that belong to that community increases a bloggers chance of getting a “follow” links which is good for SEO. I’m doing the same thing!
So, what shouldn’t bloggers do?
Don’t grab a glass of sherry, find a “dofollow list”, pick an SEO term you want to highlight today and start marching down the list. Then, don’t “carefully craft” a “relevant” comment that contains the SEO term — leaving 1 comment every 3 minutes
This behavior tends to result in the sort of “Love” comments that Tricia saw on many of her blogs and I saw on my knitting blog. I’m sorry, but “Love” was not an informative name that told my knitting blog visitors what they would find at the end of the link.
Here’s, my message to “Love”: You make get a break from SEO bloggers who tend to be indulgent. But if you leave a comment like that on a “boring” Suzy Homemaker blog, it’s getting reported.
Dane already knew how strict “Crochet Jane” is. Notice he mentioned her severity? Crochet Jane exists. And she’ll gouge you with her size 00 metal crochet hook? Ouch!
So, be respectful when commenting- especially on your first comment.
Finally, the Wrap up
I think unsophisticated bloggers and web site owners are hurting themselves by leaving borderline spam comments. If you leave a borderline spam comment at the wrong blog — especially a high traffic, well monetized “Suzy homemaker” blog — you could find your attempt to jack SEO backfires because the blogger will report you to Akismet.
There is no point in anyone telling the “Suzy homemaker” bloggers to lighten up, or explain the SEO terms are innocent mistakes. We won’t lighten up and permit these irrelevant links on our blogs because doing so costs us money.
Yes, we know you “Love” Suzy Homemaker. But don’t try to force your affections on Suzy Homemaker. She’ll bust you.
300 mg hard drives? Milligram? LOL I meant mega byte of course. LOL Blame it on my nursing background!
I think that’s a pretty exhaustive summary of what’s acceptable and what isn’t, both in your view and that of a lot of other bloggers, with a lot of sound reasoning behind it.
I think your points about ‘cultural’ differences is a very valid one and if I was to comment on a blog outside of the bubble I usually blog in, I would certainly be mindful of it. It’s a long long time since I did any crochet though, so Suzy’s probably not got to be on the lookout for me
I think it’s been a good place to air these discussions and what I like about Bumpzee is that it certainly exposes all kinds of bloggers to each other. Hopefully non techie, non SEO and non blogging about blogging types, are more likely to find and read exchanges like these in the community.
In summary I don’t think most contributors here disagree on very much at all - good manners is good manners is good manners. When visiting, be mindful that you are a guest, demonstrate a little respect for one another and act accordingly.
On another topic entirely I just noticed your Kontera plugin and will certainly check it out, looks like a very useful idea - I’ll let you know how I get on and do my bit to spread the word.
Another great post on the topic. This is very much in line with my own philosophies on SEOing comments to other peoples blogs.
One thing that we all need to remember is that when we comment on another persons blog, we are in their house, and our actions effect them more than they do us.
To be honest, I would have killed “love’s” post at any of the blogs I currently own, though I’ve owned blogs in the past where I probably would have let it stand.
One quick note, I actually saw your post on the front page of BUMPzee. My M.O. is to hit the discussion page and look for any interesting discussions, then I look at the list of recently commented blogs for anything interesting, and that’s how I found you. Glad I did. It’s great reading.
Now, since I is what I is and that’s all what I is, I know you already said this in your post in your way, but let me say it a little more explicitly.
What if Jane Crochet, Becky embroidery, Scrapbook June and Charlie Quilter ( lets not be completely sexist here
) all realized that they had some interest in each others blogs, and agreed to post comments using their names as listed instead of the boring old Jane Smith, Becky White, June Carter ( couldn’t resist ) and Charlie Johnson? What if they all left good thoughtful comments about each other’s posts and they all related to each others crafts and pointed out little similarities or differences from their own.
They wouldn’t have to know that LSI even existed or what SEo stood for. All they would have to know is that some people interested in one of their crafts would also be interested in another of their crafts, and by demonstrating a cross interest through their posting they could increase the readership at all of their blogs and never even realize that they had strengthened the SEO position of each blog by simply adding their passion to their name when making comments they would have made anyways with less effect.
By all means they should refuse me coming in and chatting about WordPress themes and using a the name of my WP design site, They should whack me if I did that. It’s not even borderline spam, it’s more akin to dumping my garbage on their lawn. But they could at the same time welcome and invite each others efforts that serve to strengthen all of them at once.
Them Knitters is like that, are they?
The fortunate thing, from my experience is that most of the off topic stuff like this is automated, and thus easily detectable.
For that smaller percentage that is not, I wonder if you might already have something of a solution on your hands.
Since I didn’t subscribe to an email list for updates to your comments (I just never do), I ‘m pretty sure that you are running a separate script (Your dofollow script maybe?) that emailed me thanking me for my comment, and also today on letting me know that YOU had responded to my comment.
What about a plugin that hooks the edit comments function in a way that lets you optionally send an email to the commenter. You could have a canned email that thanks them for visiting your blog and gently suggests they read some resource about properly gaining links to their sites and explains that you have edited / deleted their comment based on the SEOing they tried to do.
Now, ofcourse this has no effect on the ones who load up a list of blogs from a do follow list and goes down the list commenting, but they are going to upgrade to automated scripts soon anyways, and then SK2 will deal with them for us.
This is more for the young impressionable webmaster who read some bad advice at some open forum.
I’m a high school dropout myself (Guns and Camouflage just seemed more interesting than first period biology), but I can see lots of future for your plugin. It gives people options. And good options to boot.
I’m more of an all or nothing type, myself, but I recognize the elegance of your solution.
Good Discussion
I think this post contains some absolutely invaluable advice to ALL bloggers. Regardless if you are doing your blogging at least partially for SEO or just for the social interaction. This way, everybody wins in the long term.
Speaking of cultural differences, I could think of several “IM-gurus” who would have turned the above information into an e-book and sold it for $37
Shh, don’t tell them about this post or maybe they’ll actually do it. Ah yes, I can see the headline now: “Web 3.0 Revealed! How real blogging resulted in a bucket load of traffic and put $10.000 in my pocket in 3,5 weeks.”
Seriously though, I really appreciate your well thought out posts about this matter.