I was reading through one of my favorite blogs, Search Engine Journal, and stumbled upon an excellent article regarding the use of blog commentes for link building and the on-going argument of whether or not it is 'considered' spamming.
The author Ann Smarty raises an important question! “If I build links via blog commenting - do I look like a spammer?”
To see how comment spam can be identified algorithmically, let’s try analyzing Spam Karma reports (it was only fooled once or twice with my own blog). The plugin uses combination of the following ‘red flags’:
- It looks at the period of time the comment was posted after the page loaded;
- It analyzes if the comment contains an URL(s) in content;
- (If there is an URL in content) it compares non-URL comment length and the length of the URL itself;
- It looks if the URLs are linked or not;
- It filters some ’spammy’ IPs;
- It looks how old the post is and how long ago the latest comment there appeared;
- It tracks if the poster’s browser looks natural (e.g. if it supports JavaScript);
A search engine can do pretty much the same plus it might be looking into:
- comment relevancy;
- overall comment content length;
- similar/same comments around several blogs;
- your linked comments acquisition rate (e.g. 100 per day might look unnatural);
- some blacklist words like "porn" both in the author link and the
comment body.
This is certainly a hot topic! Feel free to leave your thoughts or suggestions in the comments below..
3 comments:
I am contacting you through this contact form as there was no email address available. We would be interested in purchasing advertising on your blog http://searchmarketingblogonline.blogspot.com/
. Please get back to me using the email address I have entered if you would be interested in discussing this further.
regards
pramila
good4seo@gmail.com
I think when it comes down to it, if you are actually contributing to the conversation any comment is a good one.
When I receive comments like "wow blog nice, i like u fav blog check this site too!" or something to that effect it's pretty insulting though.
My personal online blog has become so flooded i shutter each time I have to go moderate/approve comments. i know that i must accidentally delete real comments along the way.
I have no problem letting someone link back to their site or blog though if they are making a contribution to the conversation.
I think you are right too when you note that search engines can detect the same for each comment.
Perhaps its the conspiracy theorist in me, but I do not believe that people give search engines enough credit for being as intelligent as they are.
Google for instance has a lot of engineers, working all day everyday on improving their search and making it more intelligent. Something like scanning comments for spam seems easy...
I also am curious if the 'nofollow' movement really even has an effect.
I did a test of a vacation site I own, and posted comments on some no-follow blogs and the site was indexed by google and ranked for some off the wall keywords.
That makes me thing that it's possible that Google is still taking into account those links despite what is said otherwise.
i would be interested in conducting more studies on this to see the effects of no-follow links.
As far as i suggest Your Web site acts a great role in providing information to targeted visitors. I recognize or rated it as excellent.
Post a Comment