Are Low Quality Comment Links Hurting Your Blog?
We can’t check our feed readers without seeing post after post on Google’s Penguin updates, and with good reason; recent Google updates yield some serious penalties for those websites caught with their pants down. Yesterday, Search Engine Watch explained the difference of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. The Panda update targeted low value on-page content such as spammy outbound links. Penguin effect mainly inbound links – spammy and unnatural links pointing back at your website.
Even though we’re well into the Penguin updates now and that deals with mainly backlinks pointing at us, I decided last week to begin removing useless “Low Quality” links left by those that comment on this blog. This is something I’ve been considering for a couple of months and I finally took action, finishing up today. While Google shouldn’t be our only concern, any blogger ignoring the fact that SEO is changing in a huge way will very likly find their blogs a thing of the past.
Steps I have Taken And You Should Consider Them As Well
- The first step was taken weeks ago by deactivating the SEO Smart Links WordPress Plugin that was automatically linking selected keywords and phrases in published posts to other pages and posts. Old school SEO thinking makes that seem like a great idea but current Google updates makes it a dangerous mistake. Using your best keywords for anchor text too often in inbound and internal linking looks spammy and unnatural and therefore suspicious.
- The next step was to update our Comment Policy to reflect our new policies and changes.
- Then I used WordPress plugin Broken Link Checker to check and reduce the number of link redirects going out from our blog. These are not broken links but many are from dead or parked domains redirecting to other sites.
- Next was a huge task. At the time of this post we have 4,680 comments on just 105 posts. The WordPress plugin Broken Link Checker came in handy here as well and I removed hundreds, if not a couple thousand, outgoing links and even entire comments that should have never made it through. I removed spammy and low quality links such as URLs to real estate sites, hotels, insurance and hosting review sites. We even had links like bad credit loans and dating sites somehow slip in there. I also removed or changed links that were linking to Feed URLs. I have no idea where this trend of using a feed URL for blog comments came from but they are no longer welcome on this blog. Those links are for our readers, not search engines and we are not a feed reader. Also gone are links to foreign language sites, links to sales pages and niche sites. I also tried to catch and remove links from what I call CommentLuv Spoofing, where the comment author ‘tricks‘ the plugin by changing the URL just before submitting the comment. This is a common tactic among comment spammers and paid link builders.
- The final step was to go through every approved comment, one page at a time, and remove CommentLuv($) from those same spammy links that were removed from the step above.
The Result?
Well, it’s far too early to know but we are a couple thousand links lighter on the outbound side and hundreds of links were removed from internal linking. We are still do-follow and I love using CommentLuv Premium($) and believe in both but this requires a little due diligence on our part to insure this blog survives long term.
What Steps Have You Taken?
Do you plan on cleaning up your outbound and inbound links? What changes has the latest updates forced you to take? Do you think these recent Google updates are good or bad overall for the blogging community?
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Absolutely correct brian, I’m also trying to deactivate SEO Smart Links plugin from all of my sites to be aware of Google Penalties .
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sai krishna recently posted..11 Excellent Tips To Get More Followers On Pinterest
Hi Sai, I remember seeing a post on Google Plus about that very thing but I can’t find it now. I has to do with the plugin posting too many internal links using the same keywords.
Hey Brian, the Google Plus thread you are looking for is – https://plus.google.com/113206177525104143415/posts/9xqjPFK9U31
Oh look…it was shared by Hot Blog Tips! Dang, those HBT people must be really smart! LOL!
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Sheryl recently posted..Blooming Mammillaria Spinosissima Un Pico
LOL Thanks Sheryl, I searched G+ but didn’t think to look on our shared content.
Yes Sai. It’s a daunting task. I don’t personally use this plugin (SEO Smart Links), but I have used All-In-One SEO but didn’t see the use if I’m using SeoPressor.
Brian, thanks for this tip. I’m definitely going to cover it in my course. I like these little ‘insider’ tips that makes an experience better. Most people won’t do it because it’s a daunting and time consuming-task. But, if you want to win, pt aside a day and do it. If you want to win, that is
Ivin recently posted..NY Websites: Soon Banned From Anonomous Comments?
I agree with you Sai, Google is making everything really tough and not even tough it giving penalty so i always stay conscious about SEO work for my blog.
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Arjun Rai recently posted..us auction
Another great post Brian, I don’t plan to clean my outbound and inbound links yet.I watch carefully over my blog using webmaster tools if something bad is happening. And I personally think that these Google changes are just not working on our side at all.
Because last couple of weeks I noticed that spammy websites and new websites that don’t have any valuable content at all, are ranking high.
These changes are the golden times for comment spam and for blackhat tactics to test out, which is just what is happening right now.
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Thanks for sharing.
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Hi James, I’m watching webmaster tools tools too and from here on out I’ll be ‘keeping’ outbound links clean rather than cleaning them up. That was an incredible time killer.
Hi Brian, This is very helpful information. I am re-running Broken Link Checker and will look back at the comments from the early days of my blog. Before I understood a lot about spammy commenters, I’m sure I let some slip through that shouldn’t be there.
I also use the plugin Stop Spam Registrations that helps you weed out the spammy comments. The new version of CommentLuv seems to help more with this issue as well.
Thanks Carolyn, I hope it helps. I had an issue with the Stop Spam Registrations plugin last week and I haven’t had the nerve to reactivate it yet. There was an error on an update but was quickly fixed. I updated it before the fix and was locked out of my blog all day and night. lol Here’s the Google Plus update/thread: http://4u2bn.com/pi02
Wow, what a nightmare! I’m glad I waited a little while to update.
I have been very pleased with the plugin, especially when I see the email addresses of the commenters it has blocked. You’re right, though. It has blocked some commenters who weren’t spammers, but only about five that I know of out of 13,000+ blocked comments.
Carolyn recently posted..Bin There Done That – How Tech Transformed a Life
Hi Brian, sounds like you had a terrible time with removing all those spammy comments and links.
I’ve only noticed one commenter who is trying to post an RSS feed link. I haven’t worried about yet. But if I see a lot of that happening I might stop it.
Truthfully David, I doubt anyone considers a RSS feed link comment spam but it’s something I noticed when I was going through the links. I clicked a couple and it’s the actual feed such as Feedburner. I decided I don’t like it because those links should be there for other readers, not search bots. It’s not a big deal, certainly not a deal breaker, just something I hadn’t noticed up until now.
I recently undertook the same task and was able to eliminate over 1000 spam comments. There were a few that were questionable but If they had a gravatar attached I tended to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Haven’t noticed any RSS links though. (yet)
The same here Warren, a gravatar was one and if they subscribed to comments was another thing that made me second guess it.
How are you able to tell if they are subscribing to the comments? Is that a feature of premium CommentLuv?
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That Scoopit site picked up a blog post awhile back and made about 800 links to one of our pages all with the same anchor text. Was curious if it’d have any negative ramifications, but I didn’t notice anything. I’ve read about people having problems but haven’t seen any of it for myself. Just seems like it’d so easy to Google bowl sites if they really were so ardent in enforcing this.
As a side note, that’s the first I had heard about the CommentLuv spoofing. Very interesting.
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Charles Daniels recently posted..QR codes for your Michigan business. Part 3: Advanced QR code use.
I use Scoop.it to Charles and it’s a great way to gain a little traffic. I don’t think Google will count that against you, they pretty much know what’s going on there. I haven’t heard anything negative about that, not yet anyway.
One certain way to stay out of trouble is to use your site name and post titles, they expect that and it doesn’t look spammy to them.
I’ve always been careful to keep the spam comments off my blog. I tended to screen out any comments that pointed back to viagra, real estate, off topic websites and random links. Also, I use a third party commenting platform which does a pretty good job of screening out the spam as well.
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richard recently posted..Juggling Work, Play and Blogging
Hi Richard, a lot of people are moving to Livefyre. Like you I stayed on top of the obvious “bad” links but now it’s difficult to know what is considered low quality.
Google has made the bloggers go crazy! We really need to stay updated with all its updates. Now with the penguin update, bloggers have got 1 more work to do, monitor the links of the comments!
I wish Google thinks from bloggers point of view before updating its programs!
They’re definitely keeping us on our toes Zainil.
Update from Google is creating lot of havoc these days! Penguin esp. I would rather say, every site should get some concrete solution for this spamming! This would help a lot!
I think I hear what you’re saying Nicholas, if no one allowed spam on their blogs, spam would go away. I guess that’s true with just about all bad behavior though.
Well, you are right with most of the points and they sound really interesting and informative.
Spammy comments are not gonna work anymore and I still do not know why people waste their time on spamming on blogs if 90% of these comments go to bin?
Thanks for this great article! Regards
True Alex, and what does make it through really has no real effect on their rankings of position unless they now something I don’t.
Hi Brian,thanks for your article.
I deactivated SEO Smart Links in my site like 2-3 weeks ago.
I manually insert internal links in my posts, and I reviewed also the old posts.
Concerning SPAM comments, I use a combination of Akismet with G.A.S.P. (Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin).
After I switched theme (from Woothemes to Genesis Generate Child Theme), I was attacked from SPAM mails via Contact Form 7.
So I added “Bad Behavior” plugin and “Really Simple CAPTCHA” plugin and seems working pretty fine against spammers.
I use also CommentLuv with KeywordLuv plugin,
and I approve comments manually, checking every site linked in.
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It’s a tough job to run a quality blog, isn’t it Erik? You listed some great tools and, as you said, it still takes work on our end.
I get a LOT of messages through Contact Form 7 but not too much spam yet – knock on wood. When I do get spam I so to porn sites and subscribe them to every thing I can. lol < - Just joking but don’t think I haven’t considered it.
Usually I am reviewing the comments that people made on my blog before publish the. Since the day I shift my blog to wordpress, I am getting hundreds of spam comments. But I am not publishing any SPAM comments or Low quality comments on my blog.
Controlling the spam is tough Sajith. I keep hoping the blog comment spammers catch onto the Panda updates and realize they are spinning their wheels. Idiots are always the last ones to know.
i always do manual comment moderation it will be more useful for us to avoid spammy comment links.
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shenoyjoseph recently posted..List of Accessories for Samsung Galaxy S3
Everyone needs to take action after the Penguin update, and especially those who practiced the wrong techniques.
Good content will take you far. This should be a main focus..
Thanks Samuel, the problem is that what’s right today can be wrong tomorrow. How long did we work on gaining backlinks to using our best keywords in the anchor text? We just have to keep up with the trends and learn what works long term and what will more than likely become a fad.
nice info about it.. I’ve not used broken link checker before and this will help me.
Comment policies are important, and policing them is as well. There are those online who take the time to comment, make an informed comment, and attempt to generate discussions from blogs and websites, but they are often buried under a wave of misspelled words and “great post!!!” spam that achieves nothing. I hope to see even more strict policies on commenting, and I hope that such rules will rid us all of bots that just say generic things on 1,000 websites a day.
Thanks Scott but I had to remove accidentattorneys-california.com. That’s a great comment but you would be better served leaving that link on blogs that pertain to the legal system or similar interests. I realize you are running a blog and you are ALWAYS welcome to read and interact with us but I can no longer allow non-relevant and non-blog links with just a few exceptions. Thanks for your understanding.
I didn’t use SEO Smart Links or similar plugins; having lots of keywords linking to other parts of your website might sound like a good plan, but the truth is that no real person would take the time to do this – only the plugins do it.
Weeding out the poorly written comments like “great site!” and the like is definitely a smart move; you don’t want to have low quality content here or to link out to bad neighborhoods / unrelated websites. On the other hand, linking out to related sites is definitely recommended; all the huge news portals, internet marketing sites, etc do it – it’s a clear indication that they are built naturally, referencing good quality information, tools, and so on, and not trying to keep all the link juice for them.
With the last Panda / Penguin algorithm changes I started to believe this more and more: it’s time to build clean websites and backlinks. Would you write a report for a local newspaper or for your school trying to achieve a 2% or 4% keyword density? Would it be normal for a newly launched website to gain 1,000 inbound links in a few months, when it’s only got 2-3 pages of low quality text?
I think I know how the future of SEO looks like; we need clean looking, fast loading websites, great, unique, informative content and natural backlinks. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t build backlinks to our sites, but unless we’re getting links that bring in traffic, real website visitors that are interested in what we have to say, it will all be in vain as Google gets smarter and smarter.
Well, I’ve got to stop before I turn my comment into an article
George recently posted..How to Use QR Codes for Business
Great comment George! I added it to our “Great Blog Comments” section on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/pin/280208408035909071/
I completely agree that backlinks from sources that don’t drive quality traffic are basically useless. Great outlook on the future of SEO.
I love your analogy of a local newspaper or school report and keyword density.
Thank you a lot for the kind words and for the pin, Brian! I have worked with a visionary company that was only counting active links, backlinks that were driving visitors to their websites, back in 2010.
George recently posted..How to Use QR Codes for Business
Hey Brian, Thanks for sharing this post to me, I also think to remove SEO smart link plugin when reading the quotes you listed above “Using your best keywords for anchor text too often in inbound and internal linking looks spammy and unnatural and therefore suspicious.” – Thanks so much, Brian.
Umm, Trung, I wonder how long it’s going to take the developer of the SEO smart link plugin to send me a nasty note? lol
i am using seo smart links but not really using it to create deep links , but using it because it automatically add no follow links to outbound links , do you think that will hurt my blog?
gonna use Broken Link Checker
and i have installed commentluv few days back and am very happy with the plugin as i have stopped getting 100 spam comments everyday.
saad naeem recently posted..4 Recipes to Create an Interesting Website Content
Hi Saad, I didn’t know it inserted the no-follow tag but I just add rel=”nofollow” to any URL that I don’t want to vouch for, such as an ad. I can’t think of any reason it would hurt you other than there may be better ways of adding the tag.
yea brian when you check the box in the settings menu and when you publish the post it will automatically add no follow and set the outbound links to open in new window. here’s what the description says :
”Finally SEO Smart links allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.”
cool isn’t it ?
thanks for the reply though.
saad naeem recently posted..How Social Media Can Help To Overcome Google Penguin
In my case, you are teaching me a new thing and i now going to update all my blogs and activities. also you specified how to manage well the comments on your blog, everyone have to approved quality and useful comments on their blog.
I appreciate your comments Noel but go back and read the post. You’ll see why I have to keep removing your links, hitachi-wand.com, menbuy.net, and 1000giftideas.com etc. To be blatantly honest, they are low quality links. I just want you to understand so you are not wasting your time here with your link building tasks.
Well, that’s right that you decided to clean the comments, because some of them can be really spammy, and can bring you only problems
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Amanda recently posted..Fashion WordPress Themes
That’s the reason Google is at the top of the game. They
can manipulate the search engine and put new strategies to take
control all business in the internet.
So you recommend that remove all these non related comment links but what if we have thousands of comments. Actually when i was approving comments at hat time i approve lots of junk and irrelevant comments and now they are hurting my blog.
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Zeeshan recently posted..Massive CommentLuv Enabled Blogs List June 2012 (niche blogging)
Last time spammers more an more makes me angry, you show me realy usefull tips for solve problems with spammers.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
hi brian, i thinks i want to manually remove some of my affiliate links in post so i recover from this google latest updates.
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I just disabled the SEO Smart Links plugin – luckily I didn’t really see it go crazy with the linking. I have used the Broken Links Checker plugin in the past and still have it installed, but I keep it disabled at times as I find it slows down my blog sometimes.
I haven’t noticed the Broken Links Checker plugin slowing things down but I can certainly see how it could Paul, when it’s continuously checking every link.
Auto link building is always been a kind of sin in blogging world. Although penguin came very late but did enough reset. Now everyone is aware of these things. I do use broken link checker as you have mentioned here. Other than that i also use commentluv, but do not ever publish any low quality comment.
jeet recently posted..Facebook May Disappear Within 5 to 8 Years: Really Facebook is Closing ?
You’re absolutely right Jeet, auto linking was always a risky practice and now more people are starting to understand that.
Just deleted lots of comments….Although just to get number of comments i leaved lots of spammy comments earlier……
But really it’s irritating the way google changes it’s algorithm….
in the world of penguine, broken link checker plays a very important role. I check daily for broken links.
Can’t agree more with the post. I always say this to my friends that “When I think I know answers to Google’s Questions Google changes the way it ask questions”.
So getting rid of Links is one good point but I am not sure how Google will counter Black Hat guys who can create many 1000s of incoming bad links to one’s website to take it down.
Good Read!
Cheers
Jas
I was getting hundreds of comments with broken links and automated comments to my Blog posts. I really Fed-up with those comments to checking all and what comment I need to approve. And I always beware of my outbound links before approved the comment because It’s really big damage for good blogs.
Well, irrelevant comments to the post considered as spamming comments but sometimes the reader don’t understand what really the writer wants to convey to their readers due to which conflicts of comments take place. Spamming comments always hurts good blogs as it takes more time of the writer to check them all which we can say more time consuming and time wasting for the blogger to read the spamming comments.
just now checking there are alot of outbound links for my blog
I do not use wordpress So I am not sure how to apply these to my blog.But I get the general concept. I have been wrestling with the idea that any comment is good comments since I am a beginner and they are rare.
Hi, I’m was a blogger user, but now converted to WordPress! that’s really awesome cms I love it! it’s very easy to use! and removing spammy made easy!
I did not know the part about changing the link on comments love at the last minute. I monitor all comments. But I think I am going to go through and rid myself of my start up comments when I was completely desperate for any comment at all.
Mom bloggers are the worse receiving comments, and I hate that because I guess I am a mom blogger.
You basically get,
Great post, did you see my post on the review of baby spittle foo foo bottles. You can enter to win and please follow me back by the way on all social sites.
I am like what?
Wait am I chattering too much, it is that WAHM syndrome. lol
Pam
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Pam recently posted..Simple Daily Challenge and Facebook Tidy Dash for Busy Moms Tuesday, JUNE 18 10 :45 am
Yes ! one of my dofollow blogs was suspended by the web hosting provider ( a very sad story ) due to hundreds of comments notification emails ( i learned to turn this thing off from WordPress settings ).
Nowadays fighting spam is more easier and plugins like Akismet, Bad Behavior, Cloudflare help to minimize Spam comments … but once people are coming and writing whatever to get a link !! this is crazy … do you think it is unfair to delete irrelevant comments ? i don’t think so.
You’re absolutely right Jeet, auto linking was always a risky practice and now more people are starting to understand that.
hi nice review it’s very helpful information. i am agree with you but If any one do bad linking. then how to remove all the bad links? have you know that any tips .. quickly remove the bad linking..
Nice Post Thanks for Sharing
i agree with you after the penguin update we should be very careful about the comment quality as anytime penguin can hit your blog
Very informative blog! Thanks for sharing this information. I would agree that there are indeed a lot of people whose purpose is to deceive many just for their personal gain. I hope this blog could reach as many readers to share this worldwide.