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2007 is when I began creating niche stores. Many kind and giving people shared their knowledge with me, making it easier to improve my sites. I have gathered much of what I've learned and put it here, on this site, as a way of giving back. It is my hope that this site will help you improve your niche stores and sites, too. ~ Rochelle
Blog Commenting – How Bad Can It Get?
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Rochelle in
Tyler at Niche Store Journey recently wrote “Driving Traffic Using Blog Commenting.” He did a great job of explaining how to use blog commenting to get backlinks.
As explained by Tyler, there is a right way and a wrong way to leave comments on blogs. Do it right, and you will be rewarded with the ever-coveted backlink. Do it wrong, and your comment will either be deleted or it will never see the light of day.
There are times when I shake my head in wonder at comments that are left on my sites. For example, I recently wrote a post on this site where I gave an update of my daughter who had been hospitalized with pneumonia. Someone left a comment on that particular post that was along the lines of, “Great post, as usual, about a controversial topic. I like your spin on it.”
Hmmm. My daughter was in the hospital, and this person liked my spin on that. I never knew having a sick daughter was controversial! Clearly, the person didn’t even bother to read the post before leaving his very stupid comment. This is exactly the type of comment that I will delete (if it was already published) or ignore (if it is waiting for manual approval).
Just a few moments ago, I got an email about a comment that is currently waiting my approval. The comment reads, “That was amazing! No words could further describe that other than amazing. Thanks!” Wanna guess whether or not I’m going to approve that comment?
This got me thinking. I bet many of you have seen doozies. Let’s see who has gotten the worst comments (but keep them clean and family friendly, please). What are some of the comments that didn’t pass your particular blog-commenting standards?
13 Responses to “Blog Commenting – How Bad Can It Get?”
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Hey there Rochelle!
Thanks so much for taking the time to write about my post. We all shared some good insights on the comments, and I am glad that it was so well received.
As far as my own blogs go: Anytime a comment does not directly relate to and ADD TO the discussion at hand, it will not be approved.
So stuff like “Great ideas, I am bookmarking your site!”, that ain’t cuttin’ it! It was obviously a mass spam post and has no relevance to my topic at all.
I am not asking people to craft Pulitzer Prize worthy content in the comments section… I only ask that they actually READ my content and respond accordingly!
.-= Tyler – Niche Store Journey´s last blog ..Driving Traffic Using Blog Commenting =-.
Hi Rochelle,
I find that not only do you get totally unrelated comments, you also get multiple identical comments. It’s so annoying.
I’d like to not have to moderate each blog, but I daren’t not!
Mick
.-= Mick´s last blog ..Wolverine W05107 Green Fulton Mid Cut Hiker Work Boots =-.
Your two examples sound just like comments that I get regularly, too. I guess the spam commenter thinks that compliments and gushing praise will cancel out the fact that there is no content in the comment. Obviously, the spam comment is generic for a reason…so it can be used all over the place.
Rochelle, since your site is so comment friendly, I would expect that you have to delete quite a few.
.-= Julie´s last blog ..Abeka 3 =-.
@Tyler – You are quite welcome
@Mick – What also annoys me is when it seems a commenter targets one of my sites and bombards it with gobbledy-gook comments at regular intervals. When this happens it goes on for days. The person doing it uses a huge variety of IP addresses, so I can’t ban it. But, I also don’t approve it. Makes me think it is an automated system being used, because I can’t imagine someone would waste that much time for comments that never get published.
@Julie – Maybe we should write blog posts along the lines of, “This Is The Best Blog On The Internet, Come And Gush Over How Great It Is”
Actually, I find I have very few spam comments on this blog. There was the one I mentioned on my daughter’s health update, and a few others that tell me what a fabulous blog this is, but really, I don’t have to delete much at all (I’m knocking on wood, now, just in case I jinxed myself).
Rochelle
Most, if not all, of those comments that seem to have no relevance to your post are done by automated tools. The person posting the comment has a piece of software that will go out and search for blogs based on the blog content. That person will then try to craft a comment that sounds good and has a slight chance of making the authors happy. They then mass submit that comment to hundreds if not thousands of blogs praying that a small percentage of them get accepted. Many authors that rarely get comments or traffic are all to happy to approve them.
I know someone that tested a piece of software that does the automated commenting. He just wanted to see how many links he could build as a test. It worked pretty well for a short time. Then he forgot to use a proxy and a blog marked him as spam. Once that happens every WordPress blog that uses the spam plugin will automatically mark that IP address as spam and the author will never see the comment. You can get your IP address out of the “spam box”. You just have to know how to do it.
For a short time I worked as an intern for a major SEO blogger. He taught me a lot about building back links. Commenting on relevant blogs was one of those. I used to stay up until 1 or 2 (and then had to get up at 6 to go to my real job) in the morning reading articles and putting relevant comments up. I never used the same comment twice and I read every single article I commented on. In the 3 months I did that I had built over 15,000 back links. I did not comment on 15,000 blog posts. I took advantage of blogs using commentluv and the top commenter plugin. If you can find high pagerank blogs that use the top commenter plugin you can build a lot of back links very quickly. Just be careful not to go crazy doing it. Some site owners do not like to see you listed as the only person commenting. But in moderation it works well. The site I was working on actually got penalized by Google for building back links too quickly. They thought I was using some type of automation software to do it. But I wasn’t…I was just never sleeping
I actually kind of enjoyed commenting. Believe it or not there are a lot of websites with some very good information. I was learning a lot and enjoying leaving thoughtful comments. Commenting is a really good way to build back links. But as Rochelle and Tyler say, keep the comments relevant. And actually read the posts. You will be surprised how much you can learn from everyone else.
@billf – Holy cow! I can’t even begin to imagine building backlinks as you did!
Thanks for shedding light on scripts for spam commenting. I figured it was something like that.
I have a method of finding .gov and .edu blogs for leaving comments, as those are really great backlinks. I plan on writing a post soon about how to do that. Google really loves to see those type of backlinks.
Great tip, too, about finding sites that use the Top Commentator plugin to get the most out of your blog commenting efforts.
Rochelle
@billf & @Rochelle:
Yes there are a plethora of programs available to use that can automate (or semi-automate) blog commenting.
To be honest, I use several of these myself. But NOT for the purposes of spam commenting, but rather as a quick way to read content and then quickly leave a useful comment on it without having to go through dozens and dozens of blogs.
Instead I just load up a program and do it from one central location. Quite convenient I must say.
.-= Tyler – Niche Store Journey´s last blog ..Driving Traffic Using Blog Commenting =-.
Yea, I get those computer generated comments too … Tyler … would you shoot me an email and let me know what tools you’re using and how you use them in a “good” way? LOL Thanks! S
.-= Suzanne Franco´s last blog ..Earnings / Profits for My BANS eBay EPN Niche Stores – March and April 2010 =-.
Hi Rochelle,
I just got 3 of those type of comments today … praising me for writing such useful content, and promising to bookmark my site and subscribe to my feed. I sent all three to akismet land.
I think one of the biggest problems when it comes to commenting is this idea that it’s primarily a way to get backlinks … it’s not nearly the “best” way to get links.
But … it is one of the best ways to network and get to know other bloggers … something that too many people who go on “link building” comment runs tend to forget. 3 or 4 new friends (especially friends with successful blogs) can be way more valuable over the long run, than even 5 or 6 hundred comments. (IMHO)
.-= Todd Morris´s last blog ..How To Organize Google Reader For Peak Productivity =-.
Well, the comment spammers are now targeting most of my niche sites. So far today I have deleted 103 spam comments from my inbox (they are all for sites set on manual approval, but I get emails whenever a comment is pending approval/rejection). The day still has many hours left, so I anticipate my inbox will be filled with dozens more before the day is done.
So, I am now turning off the “Comment” feature on these sites. What a shame that one or two people have ruined it for honest commenters. But, I’m tired of the huge addition to spam in my inbox.
From what I can tell, it is only the sites that use KeywordLuv and CommentLuv. So, I will never use those plugins again!
Rochelle
I forgot to mention: Closing comments on my blogs was not sufficient to put an end to spam comments. I ended up needing to install a plugin that closed the comments on all my posts. I installed “Autoclose,” which works beautifully.
Rochelle
Receiving a lot of (automated) spam comments is one of the “perks” of having a high traffic blog/site. At least I find the more visitors I get, the more spam I get. I always have comment moderation enabled on my sites. Can I say thank heavens for Akismet?
Having said that, I would like to share this “gem” I got today on one of my blogs. I am sure most of you recognize it:
“Intimately, the actual article is really the finest on this significant topic. We agree along with your conclusions and may eagerly appear forward to your following improvements. Simply saying many thanks won’t you sufficient, for the actual exceptional lucidity in your writing. may instantly get your own give food to to stay abreast associated with any updates. Genuine perform and much achievement in your own efforts!
Yahoo Babelfish anyone?
.-= Daisy´s last blog ..The Pros and Cons of Yoga =-.
The amount of SPAM i get is around 97%. Akismet does a great job of filtering it all out. I feel sorry in a way for the spammers, because it’s not getting them anywhere. How do they honestly thing this technique would actually work??
.-= Anthony Wakefield´s last blog ..“Centering In” – Improvised Acoustic Guitar Song In Layers =-.