Stop the Spam Comments – In Fact, Don’t Even Start

Hey, here’s a great idea.  Why not just start randomly posting stuff about your website on every blog you find?  You don’t even have to interact.  Just blabber on with keyword phrases and post links everywhere.  Sure, it will annoy the blog’s regular readers…but what matters is that you are linkbuilding right?

Google’s Thoughts on SPAM

Wrong!  Plenty of other people have thought of this really obvious idea, and contrary to what they’re thinking it’s not going to work.  Why won’t it work?  For a number of reasons, not the least of which is Google’s own promise to stop SPAM doers’ evil deeds.  On the official Google Blog, the Google team advised webmasters to stop putting up with SPAM messages, and instead utilize their “no follow” tag.  Now, whenever the crawlers find the rel=“nofollow” tag on hyperlinks those links are not receiving any credit when sites are indexed, filtered and ranked.

In essence, technology is catching up to SPAM marketers and is penalizing them for taking the course of least resistance.  The bottom line is that SPAM messages are rude.  You are insulting the owner of the blog or website by posting gibberish (or clichéd, impersonal messages) instead of an actual statement or question.  If all you’re interested in is a link and don’t bother making an actual conversation, the webmaster is likely not going to be interested in doing you any favors.

Automatic SPAM Killers—A SPAM BOT’S WORST NIGHTMARE!

What about SPAM that gets filtered out long before it is published?  Yes, many CMS produced websites now have special plug-ins that automatically filter out SPAM, based on some common SPAM identifiers.  (Link qualities, anchor text, IP addresses, etc.)  Now users can block SPAM from being published (even on a free posting blog) and can mark the message as SPAM, preventing its readers from even seeing the message, and destroying the SPAM sender’s hopes of getting a free link.

That’s not to mention the fact that most webmasters moderate all their comments in expectation of SPAM commentators.  No, for the most part, no one minds users that debate, argue or perhaps even troll a bit.  What we don’t like is SPAM—mindless sentences that build cheap links and reduce the quality of the blog.  Thanks to new advances in technology, webmasters and CMS developers are finding new ways to block SPAM from ever appearing.

So, the question is why waste your time with a SPAM approach?  Don’t even try it once.  That’s time that could be better spent surfing Craigslist Rants or watching your garden grow in super slow motion.  I think you get the point!

Remember, there is nothing wrong with randomly popping up on someone’s blog and creating a link.  However, you owe it to that website and that person (yes, every website is run by a human being deserving of respect!) to join the discussion, not draw attention to yourself.  So avoid the whole “me first” attitude.  Even typing coherent sentences all about yourself and your company can be considered SPAM.  Do the right thing.  Participate and show respect for this website’s owner!