Heads Up! Review All Comment Links Carefully
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009Comments ‘Heads Up’
Recently, we’ve seen folks allow bad comments to reach their blog pages and we’re concerned. To be specific, comments are often masked as pleasantries, but they can carry links to bad neighborhoods. It’s a common practice by those nefarious site owners looking to get links from your blog back to their site. And why would you ever allow that, unless a comment truly adds value for your audience?
According to SEMoz 2009 Study on Search Engine Ranking Factors, 2 of the top 5 Negative Ranking Factors relate to outbound links [from your site] to bad neighborhoods or sites. – This post is meant to be a ‘heads up’!
As Eastern CT Real Estate Broker Linda Davis will attest “Buyers and sellers typically research and then they get in touch direct via phone or email. The fact is, most consumers don’t socially network. What’s more, they may not want to discuss business matters publicly.” Jakob Nielsen’s study suggests that 90% of onliners read, but do not comment; 9% comment some and 1% are just active.
We tend to agree that most sophisticated buyers are less interested in joining a conversation [via commenting] then they are engaging an appealing potential service provider. Comments are by no means a bad thing. They can dramatically improve a posts’ emphasis with useful questions, information or even productive debate.
Discipline For Handling Comments
In any event, when comments arrive business bloggers should have discipline for handling them. Good business blogs protect you by holding all comments in moderation. When in moderation, don’t just review a comment, but carefully review the back link URL before approving it. In a perfect world, the idea with good comment links is to provide those reading, who might want to check a commenter’s site out, a simple click.
Regardless of whether the comment is pleasant or even seemingly useful, copy its’ URL to another browser and review it for all of 30 seconds. If the link is to a pharmaceutical reseller, clearly you don’t allow it to surface. If bad links slip through, you’ve got outbound link structure to bad sites and you’re being judged by search algorithms for that. Says Top SEO Scottie Claiborne, “Who you link TO matters. It always has. You control it, so you must recommend those links.”
Folks, as a business blogger interested in a healthy brand that competes for competitive organic search results, review all comments. And particularly, review the links that come with them!
Related Posts: