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

March 12th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 44 Comments

Like any other ‘minor’ link building - blog commenting is also useful. Because of how blog comment spam has arisen, the search engines are most likely to develop (or to be developing) ways to filter good comments from spammy ones.

So an important question arises: “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.

So if you avoid those flags and comment at relevant (established) blogs (that both follow and nofollow) you are both adding value to the discussion and doing some natural link building (btw, if you have a similar to the blogger’s post article, deep-link your author link).

Bonus resources: where to find ‘no nofollow’ blogs? Please note, I am not encouraging you to comment only at blogs that follow links (but that’s always good to have relevant ‘dofollow’ blogs in a separate folder in your feed list):

Subscribe to ‘No Nofollow’ feed;
Use this tip by SlightlyShadySeo.

Comments

44 responses so far ↓

seo bristol on Mar 12, 2008 at 8:55 am

No, it’s definitely not spamming.
:)
Chris Blackwell on Mar 12, 2008 at 9:41 am

I have always refused to use the “nofollow” tag in all my blogs despite some people just posting comments for the link. I don’t ever want to punish the ones that are legitimately commenting on my work just because a few bad apples are just attempting to link build. Comment spam has become a problem but I do suspect that you are right and the search engines are working hard on a way to filter out the bad from the good.
greg on Mar 12, 2008 at 10:10 am

The link to SlightlyShadySEO doesn’t seem to be working.
Ann Smarty on Mar 12, 2008 at 10:16 am

@greg I guess he’s having some server problems… check back a bit later…
Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 12, 2008 at 10:25 am

Yeah, I tried clicking over to a SlightlyShadySEO link from Sphinn earlier and the site seemed to be down. Probably be up and running later though, that’s a great blog.
David Bradley on Mar 12, 2008 at 10:26 am

It depends, doesn’t it? If someone posts a valid comment but then stuffs their Name with keywords instead of using a real name, that’s surely spam. But it’s a fine line between posting a valid response and pointing to an external resource that may just happen to be a site someone wishes to promote.

By the way, technical question, does Technorati follow nofollow?

db
Ann Smarty on Mar 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm

>>> By the way, technical question, does Technorati follow nofollow?

Per my observations - no…
I do get T links from ‘dofollow’ comments from time to time but never from ‘nofollow’ though…
David Bradley on Mar 12, 2008 at 12:27 pm

Thanks Ann

db
Hawaii SEO on Mar 12, 2008 at 2:06 pm

It does work in Yahoo anyway… For now. It’s only a matter of time before comment spammers get hit with a penalty. I don’t believe this would be a long term solution for anything. Sounds like it would ultimately be a waste of time.

You would likely get more traffic and subscribers if you post a great comment early versus being the 50th person to post a comment on a popular blog post.
Robinsun on Mar 12, 2008 at 2:44 pm

I am just wandering if the blog commenting in the “no follow” blogs is a type of linkbuilding or does it help to get backlink?
Loren Baker, Editor on Mar 12, 2008 at 3:38 pm

@Hawaii SEO

“You would likely get more traffic and subscribers if you post a great comment early versus being the 50th person to post a comment on a popular blog post.”

Search Engine Web (or whatever his/her name is) does an excellent job of identifying blog posts as they happen and being usually one of the first responders.
Internet Marketing Joy on Mar 12, 2008 at 5:10 pm

We can’t deny the fact that there are some who are taking advantage of blog comments..that’s why some blog owners use “no follow” attributes on their blogs…I just feel sad because others who are not spamming the blogs also gets affected..I just hope the search engines can find other ways on how to identify these spam comments..
SexyFun Adult Site Webmaster on Mar 13, 2008 at 1:47 am

In my opinion, posting in “no follow” is also helpful at times since some SE’s follow the links even if its marked as “no follow”.
The ratio should be 70% “do follow” and 30% “no follow” or something similar, but one should not completely ignore it….
Colorado Mortgage Lender on Mar 13, 2008 at 9:15 am

@David

“If someone posts a valid comment but then stuffs their Name with keywords instead of using a real name, that’s surely spam.”

Are you sure about that? I almost always use keywords because I was told it was better for SEO purposes. Why would the search engines frown on using something other than your name? Using a “handle” or nickname is common on the Internet, and the name chosen is usually keyword-related.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
Ann Smarty on Mar 13, 2008 at 9:37 am

Hawaii SEO: you are right, link building is NOT (and should not be) about only link building. It’s like by commenting you: make connections - get visitors - get some links (last thing in the list); I focused on link building aspect just to show that people who post good relative comments do not look like spammers - and comment spam can be identified and discounted algorithmically…
Ann Smarty on Mar 13, 2008 at 9:44 am

@David and @Colorado Mortgage Lender: I actually don’t think posting keywords in the author link differ much from posting your name. The main thing is NOT to spam and add value to the blog (allowing for mutual benefit for you and the blogger).

Another thing - what these words are. Words like ‘free poker online’ might look like a spam (due to their well… ‘bad reputation’).

Besides, if you post same keywords everywhere and build links only by commenting - you may look not quite natural too…
Andy Beard on Mar 13, 2008 at 9:55 am

On a daily basis I end up deleting loads of on topic comments because I couldn’t work out who had written them, and the site they linked to told me nothing about them.

With Spam Karma it is quicker to just flag them as spam than go through the trouble of editing them.
zoekmachine marketing on Mar 13, 2008 at 10:01 am

It still works for your SERP’s but i doubt it will last a long time.
Good post and a very good site!!
i love it
Colorado Mortgage Lender on Mar 13, 2008 at 10:53 am

@zoekmachine marketing

Why won’t it last? What better way would the search engines have to return rankings than incoming links?
Arnie on Mar 13, 2008 at 12:24 pm

If you want to see how many people believe in commenting for links, check out this post:
http://www.linkbuildingbestpractices.com/link-building/10-good-links/

In 48 hours we had over 90 comments. We sincerely wrote the post trying to get people to slow down for a minute and pursue 10 relatively easy links (not stellar links - but easy ones), but as it turns out I think most people just took the 1 minute to add a short comment and get a link from our blog.

We never imagined that we would get this kind of response. It will be interesting to see what happens to our blog post over time - will Google view it as a “spam post” even though we only accepted comments from family friendly sites, or will the lack of true input from most commentors show up?

Only time will tell.
Goran Giertz - Marketing on Mar 13, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Well most blogs are no-follow so that should not be giving any link authority.

Sometimes I get to blogs and they are full of rubbish, well then I just go somewhere else as its the articles that I am after.

But then I guess there are all sorts.
Sierra on Mar 14, 2008 at 12:23 am

Arnie it’s natural :) here at SEJ this also happends many times…
Japanese SEO on Mar 14, 2008 at 3:07 pm

I have the same opinion with Hawaii SEO.

Comment spam is very effective on Yahoo. I know a lot of sites targeting very competitive keywords that have been keeping a top position for a long time by posting spam comments continually.

Nonetheless Google would not allow it.

Thank you for a good article.
Concord on Mar 17, 2008 at 6:15 am

follow these steps

we secure only unidirectional links.
links are relevant in terms of business practice and keywords.
the sites we link to are rated in a varied way on Page Rank.
we don’t use any JavaScript or flash embedded links that will fail to be read by search engines.
we don’t use paid or time limited links.
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Mobile Marketing SMSJOCK on Mar 18, 2008 at 2:12 am

i don’t think not putting your real name when commenting is a spam. Not putting your real name is a way of protecting your name or advertising your websites keyword.

i don’t think we should define not putting your real name as spam but the comment itself should be evaluated carefully before considering it spam or not.

“It tracks if the poster’s browser looks natural (e.g. if it supports JavaScript);”

what if i disable java on my browser? it would be consider as spam? its ridiculous
Ann Smarty on Mar 18, 2008 at 2:38 am

@SMSJOCK: as I put it, only the combination of flags counts meaning one of them might not carry any weight…
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Terry Reeves on Mar 19, 2008 at 9:48 am

I have run a series of test using signatures like “Affordable SEO - Terry Reeves” and initially I ranked well for that term and many of the other terms that I tested.

Then, all of a sudden, I was filtered to page 5 or more depending on the term I used. So, Google does filter the benefits of these links DEPENDING on competitiveness of the term.

However, my long tail ranks from these terms have stayed well ranked and it is this traffic that sends me the best leads. So, the testing was a success.

I have actually received clients and many more visitors from my signatures on SEO/Intermet Marketing blogs than Google sends me on an average day. Traffic is about 1/3 search and 2/3 referrals from blog posts.

Also. My test proved that you can rank for moderately competitive keywords using only nofollow blogs alone IF the keywords or phrases are actually on your website. If they are not on your website, you will rank for a short time but then drop out of sight.

@ SexyFun Adult Site Webmaster “The ratio should be 70% do follow” and 30% no follow”

Personally, I believe that formula is backwards. I post on high traffic nofollow blogs more times than I post on any “followed” blog.
Terry Reeves on Mar 19, 2008 at 9:54 am

One final observation.

Keywords on the blog url+keywords in the blog post match keywords in your comment signature and appear on your linked site/page = success. It can be very hard to pull off but is well worth he find.

People put way too much emphasis on PageRank when it comes to linking. PageRank is nice when you can get it but targeted referral traffic pays the bills.
Ann Smarty on Mar 19, 2008 at 9:59 am

“Keywords on the blog url+keywords in the blog post match keywords in your comment signature and appear on your linked site/page = success.”

A very great point! Thank you for that. Yes, relevant long tail works with blog comments links.
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Saim Baig on Mar 22, 2008 at 3:38 pm

Its not spamming.I comment almost everywhere i visit.Helps a great deal.
poetryman69 on Mar 24, 2008 at 5:22 am

I trust the whole process less and less. for instance, when you leave your real email address on a blog, you get spammed.
Link Builder on Mar 26, 2008 at 10:54 pm

When someone leaves comments that is clearly not related to the article that you posted then thats one example of spamming.

Nice Blog Ann; keep on posting.
Victoria's Secret Models on Mar 29, 2008 at 4:23 pm

I hate when I get a totally unrelated comments. Mass & Automated comment spamming is a serious problem nowadays.
Karen on Apr 6, 2008 at 5:12 pm

I agree. No one likes spam and there are plenty of blogs relevant to whatever their topic is that they can post on!

Check out http://www.30minutelinkbuilding.info to learn how to get hundreds of one way links in about 30 minutes…no spamming or blog commenting. Super simple method.
concord on Apr 21, 2008 at 6:54 am

One way links can be defined as those links that do not require a link back .
One way links can be obtained from Directory links, press releases,forums,blogs comments,articles,social book marking sites,smo sites,rss feeds and related website links etc can help you tp build an effective linking campaign without the worries associated with
exchanging links with sketchy sites.
Dk on May 10, 2008 at 4:29 pm

hi nice posting’s
guilhem on May 13, 2008 at 2:27 pm

I don’t think i am spamming, at least not more than the comenter above. Love this site by the way.
David on May 24, 2008 at 3:39 pm

I have been looking for sites like this for a long time. Thank you!
Darren on Jun 17, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Its not spamming, so long as you have relevant comments to make and bring something to the table when discussing the content of the blog.
Wonderabby on Jun 23, 2008 at 3:33 pm

I agree — it’s all about content — if you comment intelligently and with real consideration of the blog post you’re commenting on, I don’t consider it spam.
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register, you’ll get pated by clicking on the links given to your acount
доставка пиццы ювао on Nov 19, 2008 at 10:14 am

anyway you can’t change this, so what’s the difference?