Why Am I Getting So Many Bad Comments Lately?

“Why am I getting so many bad comments lately?” - It’s a pretty common question these days.

Rash Of Dangerous Human Comments

Indeed, there has been a great deal of chatter in the web community about more and more human comment spam!

What’s going on? Well, it appears to be the effort of spammers and even ‘black hat SEO’s’. In either case, it’s getting more and more difficult for them to get back links and traffic with software so they’re looking to enter your site with a human comment. And don’t forget, it’s not only search engine rank you have protect… it’s also the visitors you send to bad sites via these links. What will they think if you’ve driven them to a porn site?

NOTE: By default we add a rel=”nofollow” to comment links, so for clients and many on WordPress configured in a similar fashion you are not technically exposed to bad backlinks. To clarify, if they add their bad URL in the comment form field or if they add a link in the comment itself, it’s a viewable, clickable link, however it’s not indexed by search engines in a crawl… and not going to damage page rank.

Modern spam blocking software readily detects bot [ = automated software driven] spam, but humans are always going to be able to [at least] enter your comment moderation. If not, then you’d be preventing good comments too.  So, in lieu of bot driven comment spam, human comments have apparently become the latest danger.

And that is if you have moderation set up as a back up to something like Akismet Spam Blocking software. If not, you should!!

You Must Moderate Carefully!

Ultimately, it’s your brand out there. These nefarious human comments are now common practice, so  look them over before approving! The comments are generally positive, meant to sneak past you, but the links they add are dangerous to your site’s health. When approved they become outward bound links from your site. If so, you’re likely pointing to bad sites or neighborhoods and that can hurt your organic SEO, which is partly rated based upon on the links you keep. And even worse, they can undermine your status with visitors who may have otherwise become a lead or client.

And after all, why would you ever allow a comment to reach your site unless it truly adds value for your audience? Please!, whenever you get a comment follow the affiliated link to the site itself and review carefully FIRST before you accept it!

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