This recent post over at Google’s Webmaster Blog and the fact that there’s a whole new search algorithm (caffeine) launching after the holidays really got me thinking about the future value of comment posting on blogs for SEO purposes.
Let’s just think about it from a common sense perspective. Although I’m totally oversimplifying, the whole idea of Google is that it shows the most “relevant” or “important” or “most popular” pages that it knows about for a given term. Oversimplifying again, the basic way it does this is to track the number (and quality/type) of inbound links to a page and what that link “calls” the page (anchor text). So, in general, the more inbound links a page has for a given term, the higher it shows up in the SERPS. Each inbound link is like a “vote” for the site it’s linking to.
When you comment on a blog (for SEO purposes), most of the time, the “name” field becomes the anchor text of the term you’re trying to rank for , and the link is the page you’re trying to rank for. Does that really look natural? Is that really a “vote” ? Contrast that with a blog post or comment that has the link embedded in it. THAT looks more like a “vote” … doesn’t it? Compound that with the fact that Google KNOWS these blog comments are completely abused for SEO, and don’t you think they’re going to do something about that .. if they haven’t already?
We also know that Google already has processes to value the weight or importance of links. For example, links from higher PR sites are more important; reciprocal links are less important (perhaps even valueless); no follow links are less important (perhaps even valueless); links from known paid link sites are less important etc. So, is it really a stretch to think, that Google is now (or already has) started to seriously devalue links from blog comments. I certainly don’t think so, and it seems like Google is hinting at just that in the blog post I mentioned.
My personal opinion (and that’s all it is!!) is that links from blog comments that follow the typical pattern of name of commenter = anchor text and link is the page you’re trying to rank are going to or already have been VERY devalued. I have come to the conclusion that it may very well be a waste of time. Heck, Google themselves are saying just that! This is a quote from their blog post about comment links:
At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links.
So what should you do? I would (and I’m going to!) start to move away from using blog comments for link building (yikes…a gasp went up in the room). I just think it’s common sense. Blog posts with links and links within the body of comments (if you are able to do them!) would still be fair game I’d say, BUT…I think the writing is on the wall here. I think the party’s over and it’s time to start focusing on other link building techniques.
Please note, I have no “insider” knowledge here and this is only my opinion.
November 28th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
hahaha… jk….
That is really interesting Steve. I would have to agree that these links are worth practically nothing, but what about on keywords that are not competitive at all?
Would almost nothing be better than nothing. I only ask because sometimes when managing a bunch of sites outsourcing articles writing gets expensive.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Should anchor text in forum signatures then follow the same fate?
November 29th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
“That is really interesting Steve. I would have to agree that these links are worth practically nothing, but what about on keywords that are not competitive at all?”
It probably wouldn’t make a difference. If Google has a footprint they’re going to devalue…I would assume they’d just do that…and not take into account the competitiveness.
“outsourcing articles writing gets expensive.”
Yup..have to leverage those articles using something like our article blueprint…that way it’s invest 1 x but use many!
November 29th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
“Should anchor text in forum signatures then follow the same fate?”
I would think that it’s possible…although it would seem that there’s probably less abuse there….more forums are moderated etc.
November 29th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Love jk’s humor - great resource for resilience and success.
Thank you for the heads up. This IS going to be interesting, isn’t it.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Online business and internet marketing strategies are our interest, and we were reviewing your report entitled Commission Blueprint 2.0 - Generating Affiliate Traffic From Free Google Traffic.
Might you soon be offering an update with revised strategies on linking resources, because of the changing algorithm? Hope so - put me on the list!
November 30th, 2009 at 3:43 am
OK Steve, we need some creative paradigms. You and Tim have been so helpful, we’re hoping this is going to turn into new opportunities for all, necessity being the mother of invention. ¿Por qué no?
November 30th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Oy! I’m just starting to wrap my head around how to get my singing blog to climb the Alexa and Google ratings, and now the rules are changing?
So what other techniques ARE available for shoestring budget bloggers?
Thanks for helping us little guys!
November 30th, 2009 at 4:07 am
You are always keeping us up-to-date. Thanks.
November 30th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I understand what you are saying about Goolge detecting the “footprint” of a blog comment that is made strictly for SEO purposes, but what about simply using a name for the anchor text and the url for the page you want to rank for?
Would this still be something you think Google would be looking for? Are these types of back links worth anything, without the keyword in the anchor text?
December 1st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
@lesso - I think this is totally an opportunity. We’re focusing right now on tools and resources in our membership program to start branching out past blog comments. There’s plenty of other sources!
@Sing Well Sing Better: Well…forums are still game, article marketing is great for backlinks, squidoo/hubpages and all the web 2.0 platforms etc.
@Michael I’m not sure if Google would treat them all the same way…I understand what you’re saying and it makes sense…BUT…if you aren’t building an anchor text link…is it really worth it anyway? Probably not. SEO is a game of making sure you’re spending your time wisely…and you always need to re-evaluate. I think time would be best spent elsewhere
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I would agree with your suggestion that blog comments may be, in general, of low-ish value. (maybe I’ll have to change my name to Viagra!)
[It's hard to really know for sure, but I expect you could measure this.]
But overall, this topic applies to just commenting on blogs only for the follow-link value, rather than the benefit of providing a valid comment other than “great post!”.
I would think there still may be some value (to the link) overall if you are active in your market-place/niche/topic and that adding comments may still be at least a little lucrative in terms of gaining yourself a backlink. It also has the added benefit of having other people visit your site(s) (through your link) and just get overall respect and authority in your niche.
Hopefully this comment will drive my site’s PR higher too.
(Just kidding!)
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 pm
@jim Munro that makes sense to me!
December 7th, 2009 at 12:08 am
I posted some comments before anyway, because lots of your stuff is really informative.Absolutely amazing man!
December 7th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Hi Guys,
While this post is relevant to all of us in terms of getting higher rankings and the Off-Page methodology that we follow or perhaps need to follow here is my *personal* thought process.
Google is Google, what that means is they have the resources, technology and algorithms in place in order to preserve their core competence of relevance.
SEO like any another other process evolves. A few years ago the trick was to stuff your page with keywords and submit your website to a few directories and wallah! you would certainly see high rankings.
Today, we don’t waste anytime submitting websites to automated directories nor do we recommend/allow our clients to try and hide or mislead search engines from an On-Page perspective. That being said, there is still a good amount of highly relevant Directories focused on themes or geographies that we know work well. Also, correct Usage of On-Page (Title Tags, Meta Description. Sitemaps, Image Optimization) as opposed to keyword stuffing continues to work.
Likewise, few months ago, comments such as “I Agree” “Great Theme” worked just as well. Today with sophisticated plugins and the increased number of commenter’s and webmasters who understand whats going on, the dynamics have changed. Posts need to be a lot more creative and actually contributing some amount of value before your comment gets approved. The no-follow attribute has also added in another challenge.
We have optimized well over 200 websites each of these having a unique off-page strategy. Our results as of today seem to indicate that Blog commenting if done by the guidelines (Not Spamming) are still significantly contributing to high rankings. There are a few websites that we have done which are built solely around blog commenting (No-Follow) included.
Ofcourse the niche being targeted makes a significant difference (Less Competitive) which perhaps proves that Google is still adding some amount of weight age to these type of links.
According to me the reason why Spam still exists is because to some extent it works. I highly do not recommend or endorse anyone going down that road though I have to reason why Spammers would still continue to litter the blogosphere if there was no SEO contribution. If you do visit portals such as Elance or a similar marketplaces and search for projects related to Blog Comments it is evident there is no decline rather a steady increase in jobs. However, the criteria has become tougher.
My conclusion would be to plan ahead. It does not hurt to cash in while it lasts yet be prepared for Caffeine to kick in. Social Bookmarks, Niche Forum and other Web2.0 portals are undoubtedly going to be the next big thing.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:16 am
I totally disagree. Here’s why. It is work to put out blog comments. It is a sign that someone cares about the site. Also since the spam comments are deleted –from a Blog that looks at comments like yours– it is a great place for Google to find links that are relevant.
It is really easy for Google to eliminate spam comments. Spam comments show up on their radar just like they do on the active Blog owner. You can usually tell within 10 words if the comment is spam. So can Google.
I will continue to leave comment links.
Rick
January 1st, 2010 at 10:45 pm
With my project of http://www.socialmediainaustralia.com.au I have been talking to top SEO experts from large size Advertising Agencies and they have told me that they will be approaching Bloggers to get comments from specific brands on their blogs.
I believe Twitter will be more abused than Blogs.
What I wanted to know is if the content included at the comments section counts for the search engines when finding relevant content?
What do you think?
January 4th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
It seems to me, blogs are the best place for Google to find “FREE FILTERED” urls. In essence they are getting the accumulative screening abilities of BLOG owners for FREE. You can’t say the same for Twitter, free link sites, and even press release sites are mostly nonsense spam articles.
If Google devalues BLOGS, they are no left with much.
January 4th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
@dan davids - Just to be clear..I’m not suggesting Google is devaluing blogs in general and links from blogs.
ONLY .. the “spamy” blog comment links where the name is usually “viagra” and it links to a site that’s related to that name
So…Blog comments where name = anchor text .. that’s ALL I’m speaking of.
January 11th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Do you have a list of other link building techniques?
I really believe good content is king.. People stay with google because they find exactly what they where searching for without the marketing fluff and BS..
$ is bottom line for google, as you can see here » http://surfersparadiseqld.com/google-censoring-results-not-good/
and yes, google does censor and control results…
January 19th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
I think in the near future we’re going to see most “web 2.0″ and other link building sites that offer little value devauled to the point of being almost worthless for SEO
January 29th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
February 1st, 2010 at 5:54 am
I think it is really a stretch to think, that Google is now started to seriously devalue links from blog comments.It is really easy for Google to eliminate spam comments. Spam comments show up on their radar just like they do on the active Blog owner.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
thanks to share your views of about search engine technique with all of guys, its more benifitial for all of us, please write more about its
February 5th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Hai i’m new here and would like to introduce myself
I’m from Luxembourg and come to this forum from search engine.
Nice to meet you all
February 8th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Blog comments…. It definitely gives value to a site. But we must be careful on spam comments.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:33 am
believe Twitter will be more abused than Blogs.Hai i’m new here and would like to introduce myself
I’m from Luxembourg and come to this forum from search engine
April 19th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Funny enough I had a blog running for quite some time before I started thinking about SEO purposes. So I hired an SEO consultant and he told me that I already had great page rank, because I had so many comments with links from doing what I normal did reading other relevant sites and commenting.
Which is what google is looking for.
While that may change I doubt solid content be it posts or comments will be penalized. Good comments are sort of a wiki/collaborative effort that google won’t throw away as sometimes it outweighs or provides information that can’t be gleaned from the content itself (e.g. a video)
But I totally agree that google is going to start clamping down on the obvious short cuts…if the inevitable changes to wordpress/blogs doesn’t happen first. IMO wordpress commenting is still in the dark ages, in the future threaded, filtered comments like slash dot/disquss will be built in both for users and seo purposes.
We are already start to seeing youtube sorting and filtering comments, even when these are real and sincre expressions (e.g. “this video sux/rocks”) are hidden as most people don’t gain anything by reading that, nor is it a novel review/expression.
Troy.
June 4th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Hi Steve… I’m working like a dog on SEO for a couple sites… putting all the time I can in on it and following your advise about “not stressing”. I’m not seeing a ton of juice. I’ve been using our tools, in IMA… I’m only on a couple of forums. Do I need to be on more forums? (still working on that beer for the edu link)
Thanks - Craig
June 15th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
hi
June 15th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Thank’s for posting such a good information.I think it is really a stretch to think, that Google is now started to seriously devalue links from blog comments.It is really easy for Google to eliminate spam comments. Spam comments show up on their radar just like they do on the active Blog owner.
June 15th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
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July 1st, 2010 at 7:23 am
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July 7th, 2010 at 6:24 am
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July 11th, 2010 at 4:32 am
I think blog commenting is still a very good way to get backlinks. I think quality backlinks from blog post matter by the how well established a blog actually is. Just like anything else. The more trust a website has established the more trust your blog post will have too. Common sense junk blogs will give you junk benefit. It is simple as that .
google has gone toward brand and trust along with unique content.