Spam Comments Will Ruin Your Web Business

Leaving comments on similar and complimentary blogs in your niche can be a great way to build both natural backlinks (if it does not use a “rel=nofollow” tag) and alert new readers to your own website.

Commenting on other blogs is nothing new, but is back in vogue due to the explosion of social media. By leaving relevant, well-thought out comments on a piece of work written by someone else you are contributing to the overall discussion and networking with like-minded individuals.

This sounds fantastic… and it is, but as with everything else there are a few bad apples who want to spoil it for everyone else. Blogs comments are notorious spam magnets and while there are some Wordpress plugins to eradicate a large percentage of the sludge, some of it still filters through. The practice known as “comment spam” is not the way to go about promoting your own blog. Indeed, spamming someone else’s blog is also one way you can harm your own SEO efforts.

What is Comment Spam?

Comment spam first reared its ugly head back in the days when guestbooks were cool. Website owners would have a guestbook for visitors to leave comments in them which gave spammers carte blanche to bombard them with links to thier dodgy web ventures. Pharmaceuticals, gambling, porn. No subject and no guestbook was off limits. Some spammers shoe-horned hundreds of links into a single comment, often on innocent “home page” type websites which had a youthful audience.

The traditional homepage has been replaced by the blog and since this platform has also been adopted by businesses, it gives the spammers even more targets in which to promote their crap.

Any spammer wanting to promote their own blog or website can easily produce a keyword laden comment with numerous dodgy links and post it randomly on numerous blogs. Most of this spam is automated so a sophisticated spammer can bombard thousands of blogs with the click of a button.

Spamming blogs may seem like an easy way to build both backlinks and drive traffic to your own website but it is a method which should be avoided. Here are four reasons why you should never leave worthless, spam comments on anyone elses blog.

Your Spamming Does Not Go Unnoticed

If you try and promote a website by leaving spam comments then you are treading on very thin ice.

There is nothing blog owners hate more than seeing their latest written masterpiece being targeted by malicious spammers. People will go out of their way to report you to your internet provider, web hosting provider, the affiliate companies whose products are being promoted and Google itself.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was introduced to ensure spammers cannot do what they like and if you abboy the wrong webmaster you could find yourself in court.

You Will Get Punished

Like I said above, webmasters will often go out of their way to make your life hell if you spam their precious blog.

If you manage to stay out of court, your website will be worthless after Google deindexes you and you will have to start all over again. Webmasters have long memories and the Internet community is unforgiving to those who try to spam their way to success.

Your reputation will be tarnished forever and you will find it almost impossible to create any relationships with blog and website owners, even if you want to do things properly second time around.

In short, your online career will be over so you might as well start applying for shelf-stacking jobs at your local supermarket.

Spamming is Unprofessional

These days, image is everything on the internet and if you want people to do business with you then you need to come across as professional, ethical and trustworthy.

If somehow you manage to get away with a little spamming here and there and do not lose your Internet or web hosting account, you will still annoy the webmasters whose blogs you attempted to hijack and they will not want anything to do with you.

Just ask yourself, is it worth risking link exchanges with authority websites, the chance to guest write on industry-recognised blogs or losing out on potentially lucrative joint ventures for the sake of a few spam comments? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot…

Why Spam When You Have Nothing of Value?

You may be able to artificially boost your website’s search engine rankings if you leave comments on blogs and you may attract some traffic from those blogs.

However, if your website has very little to offer, then what is the point?

If your website is as spammy as the comments you leave, then any visitors who come your way are unlikely to stick around for very long and are unlikely to buy anything.

Rather than trying to promote a worthless website via dubious methods, why not put more energy into creating a valuable website first and then promote it by leaving worthwhile, intelligent comments on other people’s blogs.

This way, the whole community benefits.