What do you do when that happens? Do you actually do all the
work and sacrifice your own orgasm to give some lazy bastard theirs? If you’re
like me, you say ‘hell no’ and pack it in.
Spam comments work the same way. If you’ve been blogging for
awhile, you’ve probably noticed that the more popular you get, the more
spammers you have attacking your blog and leaving comments. Most of these spam
comments are obviously written by bots. Check out the below example. You can
tell its spam from a mile away, because it’s completely generic and poorly
written.
If you have a decent spam blocker set up, these should go
right into your spam folder. Most of these pieces of spam will be associated
with known spammers, so you won’t really need to do anything but dump them in
your trash once a week.
However, how do you deal with the individual spammer? An
individual spammer is some random idiot, usually new to blogging, who only
comments on your page with the intention of slipping in their own link. The
below is an example of an individual spammer.
This person is no one I know. They came to my page after I
got publicized on the WP Freshly Pressed platform and randomly slipped a link
for some of their shitty cartoons into my article. Their cartoons had nothing to do with my
article. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that they even read the article.
Instead, they saw I had a high amount of traffic and decided to sneak a link in
to get referred traffic from my page.
In short, they were
being a lazy lover, expecting me to do all the work while they reaped all the
benefits. Um, no, I don’t think so.
When I get a link from someone I don’t know, who doesn’t regularly
interact on my page, I either delete the link or delete the entire comment. I
do this for a number of reasons.
First, I want to discourage other lazy lovers from doing the
same thing. If someone else comes to my page and sees my comments, they might
think that I’m ok with links because I let someone else do it.
Second, if someone is doing this, chances are someone will eventually
report them as a spammer. The last thing you want is for people to associate
you with a known spammer. When a known spammer puts a link on your page, you’re
associated.
Don’t let that happen.
Don’t be impressed by a token effort either. You might have
seen something like a ‘pingback’ or ‘trackback’ on your page. In this case,
that means a person linked to your post on their own page. If you accept the
pingback or trackback, a notification will be added to your comments that works
just like a comment.
This is often just a tricky way for spammers to get into
your comments section and insert their own links. Once you approve a trackback
or pingback, you are linking from your blog to another site. This means that
you are telling Google that site is relevant. If it is a spam site, then you
could be penalized by Google for it.
However, if you delete the pingback or trackback, they are
still sending a link from their page, to your page. You will not be penalized
by Google, even if spam sites send links to your page, because you have no
control over it.
In short, if someone wants to be a lazy lover on your site,
don’t let it happen. Either delete the comment entirely or remove the link. If
you don’t know the person, don’t let them get away with using you for their own
means. Instead, get up, put your pants on and find a blogger who knows how to return
the favor.
