Too Much SEO and Everything is Going to Suck
Last April I chanced upon a post on JohnChow.com that I thought quite disturbing. I would’ve responded there, but the lazy guy in me thought of postponing it. So here, two months after I’m writing a reaction.
In one of John’s evil SEO trick posts, he says one good way to encourage people to leave comments on your blog is by displaying the top comment authors on your home page. This way they get a link from your front page, and with WordPress this is usually not dumbed down by rel=nofollow (something previously discussed here on JOAB).
This can prove to be beneficial to both blog author and reader. Authors will get more comments on posts. Readers get SEO love from another blog’s front page. It’s much like purchasing a text link, John himself says.
Looking at my Top Commentators lists, I can see that, from a SEO standpoint, three commentators are doing it right and the rest are doing it wrong. Getting a link on the Top Commentators list offers more SEO benefit than traffic benefits. It’s the same as buying a text link. The link sends you traffic but its main purpose to help you improve your Google ranking. Knowing this to be the case, then the anchor text for the top commentator link should be anything but your name (unless your name is very descriptive).
So if you comment on a blog, instead of using your own name you use a descriptive anchor text.
But then that got me thinking. If everyone did this, then no one would be signing blogs using their names or aliases. Everything would be signing as “website copywriter,” “cheap custom content,” or some other text. Maybe people will also start signing as “buy viagra” or “xanax” or some other spammy sounding name. And what happens when that becomes the prevailing trend? You will have a helluva time filtering your comments for spam.
Your spam filters might come up with a lot of false positives. You might end up having to sift through your moderation list for otherwise valid comments.
Worse, wouldn’t this make the line that separates spam from non-spam disappear altogether? And wouldn’t this mean that most of your commenters become spammers by definition?
Personally I have my limits. It’s okay to sign as your blog or website’s name. But if you’re using my comment threads too much for marketing your product, service, or brand, then that’s spam in my book.
Evil, indeed. And bordering on stupid. If I had commenters like that I would block them outright. Search optimization and marketing sometimes just make things too annoying for the regular user.
I have found few blogs having good content. And I think you are doing a very good work buddy. Keep up your work. This post was really a nice piece of your work.
Nasru said this on October 18, 2007 9:33 pm