Sphinn - Link Building Via Blog Comments : Is It Spam Or Not?

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Link Building Via Blog Comments : Is It Spam Or Not?

Went Hot: March 12, 2008 - 1:56 pm
Posted By: lorenbaker 214 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginejournal.com)
Category: Link Building

If you are commenting in blogs as a part of your link building strategy, look to the spam filtering system of the SpamKarma WP Plugin for red flags which the search engines are probably also using to identify comment spam.

13 Comments

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Comments

from brian 214 days ago #

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goodman20 got my +1

from brian 214 days ago #

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(for the irony)

from BrettFromTibet 214 days ago #

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I've always assumed that Google has a "blog comment detection" algorithm that completely (or heavily) discounts user generate blog comment links as non-editorial - whether they are followed or not - the same way they likely discount blocks of links in the footer about "Bad Viagra Loan Gambling."

Do you think Google still counts followed blog links? If so, how much are they worth?

from debram 214 days ago #

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from blogrush 214 days ago #

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If you run a real blog you care about you aren't going to let spam through moderation. The only thing people who spam can hope for is to get on blogs that are wide open, and thus, absolutely worthless to get links from anyway.

If someone who really wants to run a quality blog leaves their comments open to instant post without moderation, they aren't sane. And their site will suffer for it.

Legitimate link building through commenting is also called "joining in the conversation" and adding to it in a productive way. I encourage this with clients all the time. It is what blog comments were designed for - conversation and feedback - and it just so happens people can click on a link and come to your site if you have done a good job of being a part of the conversation.

Doing commenting just for engines is ignorant. It doesn't boost your SEO in any significant way that would justify the effort unless you were also adding comments to blogs for the right reasons in the first place.

from BrettFromTibet 214 days ago #

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Reasons that make me think blog comments are maybe counted:

I've seen spam pages rank for semi-competitive terms with absolutely nothing but .edu blog comment spam holding them up.

Some of my own sites rank for my name, and they have no instance of my full name on the page and nothing with anchor text of my name pointing to them, except blog comment links.

But my intution says that Google heavily discounts them, along with Flickr links and most other well-known FFAs.

from crazycat 214 days ago #

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It's always good to comment by sharing your views as much as possible. It's not enough that you say you agree with the post or not.

from kevgibbo 213 days ago #

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If you're an SEO contributing to industy specific blogs it makes sense to leave a profile link so that other people can see who you are and find your blog etc. I'm sure Google will have some sort of logic towards realising the difference between someone who is active in a specific industries community and someone who leaves spam comments everywhere.

from annie7 213 days ago #

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@BrettFromTibet: Google does count them - and you can run simple tests to prove it (which I did). When starting a blog, I quickly ranked it for my name by merely commenting at other blogs...

@blogrush: you get my +1 for saying this:

Legitimate link building through commenting is also called "joining in the conversation"... Doing commenting just for engines is ignorant.

from seosurvivor 213 days ago #

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I think it's all in the context and presentation. Some links within comments actually do make sense, are relevant and improve the dialog. Others, like the "Nice post, click here!" type, are crappy and spammy. It's all up to the blog moderator to decide. Even though the majority of the blogs out there use "nofollows" on their comments, you still don't want spam everywhere.

from annie7 213 days ago #

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@seosurvivor: my thoughts precisely!

from MarkONeill 212 days ago #

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Provided it's a relevant and useful post, then no, it's not spam. Merely saying "Yes, I agree" or"good job!" IS spam in my opinion. To qualify as not spam, it has to advance the discussion in some way and bring something to the table not previously looked at. As seosurvivor says, it's all in the context and presentation.