Comment Spamming - Anyone Tried This?

Doesn't Always Work

[MrBela]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/link_development/4871775.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 8:00 am on Aug 2, 2018 (utc -5)

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Sorry to barge into the forum like this (I couldn't find a visible intro section).

After the recent Google update, I was looking into some link building resources to consolidate a couple of properties.

What worked for me so far: posting comments on similar niche websites related to my website topic.
The actual backlink is displayed with your name - I did try to insert links into the comments, but in 99% of the cases the comments are not approved or there is a spam filter in place.
I managed to rank about 10 articles on the first page on medium tail keywords - it took around a couple of months.
Unfortunately it's not always working - it may be because the competition's other metrics are outperforming the SEO factors of the target page.

This may be old school, but I was just wondering if anyone tried the above or has any any helpful thoughts...

[martinibuster]

It's not old school. It was never a part of any legit school. Maybe Reform School.

You can say it's comment link building but it's still spam. That whole thing about no-follows was created specifically to target comment spamming. That's how spammy comment spam is.

So the first thing to do is conceptualize what you are doing in the correct terms. It's spam.

I am not judging you. I am answering your question. But to do that effectively, you must help yourself by looking at your link building approach in the most accurate terms.

Once you are able to do that, you are better able to see why there are limited results with that approach.

[engine]

MrBela, Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com...]

[MrBela]

Appologies for the missunderstanding, I was referring to actually contributing to the article in question by adding value to it or by asking questions that were not answered by the author.
I was generating extra content (3 to 5 paragraphs) by doing a little research.

Comment spamming is almost the same thing if you take out the content itself and add totally unrelated links to it. "Great article.. visit my site.com" or "Totally agree.. what do you think about unrelatedpage.com" will not create anything "relevant" towards the target page... I guess that's what you are referring to.

The reason I'm asking is because it's working great in some cases while in others there is just a little movement. Just can't figure it out why... we're talking about a success rate of 25-35% which is way better than any response rate of a cold email begging for a link or the work you would put in a guestpost which in most cases is not accepted unless you pay for it ( or you are already an authority in your niche and you are boosting someone else).

[not2easy]

The problem is that doing all that research and creative writing to get a link of low value is not worth the time for most webmasters. They can be adding more and better content to their own site which can generate links from related sites. Any self-generated link is never going to have the value of a link that is given in the content of a related site. A high success rate does not mean that you have built high value links. It has been years since comment links had value.

[martinibuster]

Comment spamming is almost the same thing if you take out the content itself and add totally unrelated links to it.

- Back in the Old School, reciprocal linking was considered white hat and Google Approved as long as the links were not to spammy and unrelated sites.

- Back in the Old School, paid links were considered white hat and Google Approved advertising as long as the links were not to spammy and unrelated sites.

- Back in the Old School, directory links were considered white hat and Google Approved as long as the links were not to spammy and unrelated sites.

- Even as recently as five or six years ago, when a $20 million dollar venture funded company was selling links, they justified it as Google Approved because, according to them, they were matching quality relevant "advertisers" to quality relevant publishers, a win-win that Google (in their words) approved of, because the links were not to spammy and unrelated sites.

That company had $20 million dollars that said what they were doing was legit. But it wasn't. They're not in the link selling business anymore.

Do you see a pattern there?
That whole thing that something is not spam because the links are relevant is a self-justification to justify a spammy activity.

This is how UGC spammers justify their activities. I called out a prominent marketer on this years ago because he promoted the idea that it's a win-win to post links on forums as long as it's surrounded by thoughtful content.

As a forum moderator and publisher, I trash those posts immediately. It doesn't matter how much "thought" and care went into the post, the purpose of the post is to get a link and not to be a thoughtful member of the community. That's what publishers want, community, not "thoughtful" promoters that come and go.

As a forum moderator, as a publisher, as a blog publisher, I and other publishers are interested in growing a community. Everyone that is there to post a "thoughtful" comment then disappear forever is considered a spammer.

That's one of the reasons you are having limited success.

I'm trying to help you here. You need to expand, broaden your perspective. You're looking at trees. Look at the forest. There's a larger perspective to link building.

[lucy24]

It doesn't matter how much "thought" and care went into the post, the purpose of the post is to get a link and not to be a thoughtful member of the community.

Really? So if I say “You don’t have to scour the used-VHS bins; that cheesy old movie* you were talking about is in fact available free online at {URL}” then, if the said URL happens to belong to me--which is how I know about it in the first place--that counts as spamming?

Tough. If it’s useful to the community, it doesn’t matter if it does or doesn’t benefit me.

:: back to irritably wondering why Google finds it necessary to crawl the same URLs 18-24 times a day, day in and day out, when they must know from past experience the content does not change by more than a comma ::


* Details changed. (Duh.)

[MrBela]

@martinibuster
I see where you're coming from, but comments are a form of engagement and it will be hard to say if someone is chasing a link or not, especially if a I suggest a better tool on a list of WP tools (for example).

You cannot say that you get paranoid on every comment is posted on your blog, because that's unproductive imo.. what if you're wrong and is a genuine comment?

Of course that there are the so called "traditional" ways to get backlinks, but for those there is always a form of payment. Not saying that any kind of link building is cheap (or "approved" by Google)

At the end of the day one must start doing something in addition to sharing on social mediasome, if there is no traffic on a brand new site.

[NickMNS]

The bottom line is that Google gives very little value if any at all to links in comment sections (UGC). Thus, whether or not linking to your own content constitutes spam or not is simply moot.

[martinibuster]

one must start doing something in addition to sharing on social media...

Correct. :)

it will be hard to say if someone is chasing a link or not, especially if a I suggest a better tool on a list of WP tools (for example).

It's actually very easy to determine who's chasing a link, with 100% accuracy once one knows what to look for. I won't divulge my secrets, but most experienced forum administrators know it.

what if you're wrong and is a genuine comment?

I can determine with 100% accuracy what is spam. For those that fall below that threshold, they are generally not spam. I have fifteen years experience moderating communities (not just this one) and have identified a truckload of tricks used for slipping spam past the moderators. And there are a lot of them.

[MrBela]

It has been years since comment links had value.

The bottom line is that Google gives very little value if any at all to links in comment sections (UGC). Thus, whether or not linking to your own content constitutes spam or not is simply moot.

I would've agreed on this until a month ago when my experiment showed puzzling results... I'm looking for any theories why is this happening when you (and the entire web) pointed out that it shouldn't.

[martinibuster]

>>> I'm looking for any theories...

- I believe Mueller is on record affirming that unlinked URLs are used for discovery. So if there are of those in the mix that could help pages get indexed then ranked.

- I'm of the opinion that content itself is playing a larger role in ranking. That sounds kind of strange, I know. In the past links played a larger role but I believe that content signals are asserting themselves anew.

[MrBela]

- I believe Mueller is on record affirming that unlinked URLs are used for discovery. So if there are of those in the mix that could help pages get indexed then ranked...

...content itself is playing a larger role in ranking

thank you for that - interesting: so what you're saying/suspecting is that after the URL discovery the pages got placed in the results and from then on content itself (time on page, bounce rate) kicked the pages up further?

[martinibuster]

>>>time on page, bounce rate) kicked the pages up further?

No, all that is a myth. Mueller recently confirmed that pogo sticking was not a ranking factor. Googlers have been saying this about CTR for years and years.

A year before Mueller said it about pogo sticking, I laid out a case on my blog, using published research papers and patents, to show that pogo sticking was not used for ranking purposes.

In many cases, you don't need to hear it from Google to know whether a particular "ranking factor" is real or not. You just need to know about research and patents to understand what is possible, what has been studied. This gives you a good idea of what is within the realm of possibilities.

If research and patents indicate that something has not be proposed as a way to rank websites AND Googler's are on record stating that something is not a ranking factor, then you can be 100% certain that such assertions about CTR are misinformed.

Back on Topic
What I'm saying is that, whatever good inbound links, existing link equity that the site may currently have may be enough to power the new content to rank. This isn't always the case, particularly for competitive money phrase keywords. But it happens, in my personal experience, including ranking in position zero (but not for high value, competitive money phrases).