News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Mar 12, 2008 - 01:56 pm
Story Found By: lorenbaker 1534 Days ago
Category: Link Building
13 Comments
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News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Mar 12, 2008 - 01:56 pm
Story Found By: lorenbaker 1534 Days ago
Category: Link Building
13 Comments
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Comments
goodman20 got my +1
(for the irony)
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?
NO
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.
Reasons that make me think blog comments are maybe counted:<ol><li>I’ve seen spam pages rank for semi-competitive terms with absolutely nothing but .edu blog comment spam holding them up.</li><li>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.</li></ol>But my intution says that Google heavily discounts them, along with Flickr links and most other well-known FFAs.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
@seosurvivor: my thoughts precisely!
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.
I think SEOMoz has the best idea. You only get a link when you have completed 100 posts otherwise its a no-follow. The link is credible.