Spam it seems is just another thing we have o put up with in modern life. Mostly it’s just annoying especially if you have a blog where you encourage regular commenting. But what can you do about it?
You might often see comments that appear on your website such as this:
“I’ve been looking for this precise info on this topic for a long time. Bookmarked and recommended!”
“ I was just surfing around the internet looking for ideas to write some articles about and saw your blog, good stuff you have here thanks for the info”
“How you think when the economic crisis will end? I wish to make statistics of independent opinions!”
These are the sort of spam comments that are spread by programs like Trackback Submitter, one of most popular link building tools used by spammers and lovers of black or Black Hat SEO.
There are a few telltale signs to look out for even if the comments seem ok.
- Bad English and sentence structure “I am agreeing with thing that are being written”
- Overly general comments “very good insight, I really enjoyed reading this, keep it up!” – I just got this comment from two different people on the same day for the same post.
- Your page title being included in the post – This post title is Combating spam comments | Photo Creative 365 not Day 99 – Combating spam comments
- Long and strange email addresses and websites
If you’re a WordPress user then here’s a couple of must have plugins. If you’re not then you’d be happy to know that many of these programs are available for other CMS’s.
- Akismet - No self respecting WordPress blog is seen without it.
- SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam - Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress on the comment form, registration form, login, or all.
Want to know the craziest thing about all this?
Posting comments on blogs with your link in it will not help your SEO.
“No-follow” was invented by Google in 2005 and almost every blog has no-follow for comments links. WordPress has it as an installation default. This means that, even though you can put a link in your comment on a blog, the link is given no weight by the search engines.
The only actual value a link in comments has is if someone clicks on it.
You can read more about it at Preventing comment spam from the official Google Blog (from five years ago).
Worth thinking about isn’t it?
Day 99 – Combating spam comments
Spam it seems is just another thing we have o put up with in modern life. Mostly it’s just annoying especially if you have a blog where you encourage regular commenting. But what can you do about it?
You might often see comments that appear on your website such as this:
“I’ve been looking for this precise info on this topic for a long time. Bookmarked and recommended!”
“ I was just surfing around the internet looking for ideas to write some articles about and saw your blog, good stuff you have here thanks for the info”
“How you think when the economic crisis will end? I wish to make statistics of independent opinions!”
These are the sort of spam comments that are spread by programs like Trackback Submitter, one of most popular link building tools used by spammers and lovers of black or Black Hat SEO.
There are a few telltale signs to look out for even if the comments seem ok.
If you’re a WordPress user then here’s a couple of must have plugins. If you’re not then you’d be happy to know that many of these programs are available for other CMS’s.
Want to know the craziest thing about all this?
Posting comments on blogs with your link in it will not help your SEO.
“No-follow” was invented by Google in 2005 and almost every blog has no-follow for comments links. WordPress has it as an installation default. This means that, even though you can put a link in your comment on a blog, the link is given no weight by the search engines.
The only actual value a link in comments has is if someone clicks on it.
You can read more about it at Preventing comment spam from the official Google Blog (from five years ago).
Worth thinking about isn’t it?