Comment Spam is NOT SEO

Comment spam is undoubtedly the bane of the life of anyone managing a blog. Particularly a WordPress powered blog. For all the plugins and verification methods you can employ to try and prevent it, one will slip through. I get a LOT of spam both through comments on various blogs I manage and contribute to and by email. One such email recently offered me:

“Cheap SEO services for your clients. You send me $15 I put comments with my bot on all blogs I find.”

Now, as someone involved in SEO, to have it belittled as nothing more comment spam is pretty irritating. I let the individual know, in no uncertain terms, that his services were of about as much interest to me as having all of my teeth pulled out with a pair of pliers or having my eyebrows removed with sandpaper.

He never responded.

Comment Spammers

They’re getting more and more unusual, comment spammers. As soon as I feel like I’ve seen it all (from the generic, ‘great advice’ to the ‘which WordPress theme do you use?’) along comes another of a sort I have never come across. Equally as poor, equally as unlikely to ever get approved on any self-respecting blog and equally as annoying.

Some of the more recent ones I’ve encountered on this very blog include:

“I don’t know what to say to be good. Everyone can to have an oppinion, i say just our oppinion is not the same.”

That one was a comment by someone calling themselves ‘TV Online.’

We also had the audacious:

“I need links. Post my comment please.”

Not to mention the frequent offers we receive via blog comments for erm, medical enhancements of various descriptions.

Comment Spam isn’t SEO

Comment spam is spam. Plain and simple. It’s not SEO – it’s not even an effective link building method, particularly when attempted in the automated way.

Blog commenting (done properly)  is a valid means of engaging with bloggers and, yes, driving traffic to your site. But the spam of the sort we encounter is just plain spam, the dregs of the internet.

It’s certainly not SEO.

/rant over.