You’re the king or queen of combating spam; you’ve worked hard to keep it off of your website and blog by following all of the white hat SEO tricks. You may have even hired SEO trained writers who truly know the ins and outs of avoiding spam and therefore avoiding a Google penalty. As time goes on, you might start seeing more engagement in the way of comments, and all the sudden spam comments start popping up everywhere. What are you supposed to do? Will they hurt your rankings? Will you be penalized? Take a deep breath; don’t panic. Let’s take a look at whether or not spam comments will cause a Google penalty and how you can avoid getting spam comments on your content, period.
Can Spam Comments Cause A Penalty?
This was a major question for several businesses as Google caught on and became a very big deal. Even in the early days, many sites had things in place to help prevent spam, but occasionally a comment or two would get through. Nowadays, comment spam can actually still have an impact on your rankings and traffic. In fact, some people have reported seeing a drop in traffic simply due to comment spam. This doesn’t seem very fair to people because you are working so hard to follow the rules; you can’t manage everyone else and what they write, or if the spambots make it through your barriers. The next question many people ask is how can Google penalize you for a spam comment in your content; let’s take a look at the reason.
How Can This Happen?
While it seems like Google is capable of some crazy stuff, the reality is, what is checking your site for spam is a computerized algorithm, not a human being. It is rare to have a person go through your site and give you penalties, so this means that the algorithm probably isn’t going to discern what is a comment and what is your content. When the algorithm sees a spam comment, chances are you will receive a penalty from Google, lose ranks, and see a drop in traffic.
Some people worry that what causes this is that a comment is considered too long by Google. Because of this, some sites have instituted a “no longer than three words” policy, but many are finding this to be very limiting to their clients. However, don’t worry, the length of the comment isn’t what will make the algorithm mark it as spam.
Should You Allow Comments?
Now that you know that a spam comment could cause a penalty, you’re probably wondering if you should allow comments at all. You still should have comments available for your customers because they are important to an online business and can help make it very successful. Just how important are comments? Here are two reasons:
1. They Promote Engagement. Commenting does something that is absolutely vital in Internet business; they promote a sense of community and involvement. You won’t be able to rely on face-to-face interactions with clients all the time, and if you are solely based online, face-to-face is just something that won’t happen. This makes blog and website comments important because your clients are able to interact with you. You learn from your clients, you can talk directly to them, and comments do create that feeling of community for everyone involved.
2. They Allow Customers To Voice Their Concerns Or Praise. In addition to promoting a feeling of community, you will also notice that this can be a perfect opportunity for your clients to voice their concerns or praise. Many times, you might find that you hear from your clients quicker through a blog comment than through a survey, especially if they interact well will your blog or find something that stands out to them. This helps to facilitate point one and create that great community feeling.
User-Generated Content And Google
You should also make sure that you have a policy in place for user-generated content. Many times, you might think that this won’t have much bearing on your content and ranks, but user-generated content, such as a wiki, can cause you a penalty if it is filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Consider approving all user-generated content before it goes live to ensure that it doesn’t look spammy or that it doesn’t have tons of typos.
How To Avoid Spammy Comments
In the end, yes you should allow blog comments. However, that opens up the scary door of what to do to avoid getting spam comments. You don’t want to be faced with a Google penalty, but you also want to allow your clients to comment. What can you do? Let’s look at a few great ways to help you avoid spam comments on your blog to keep your ranks high.
1. Monitor All Of Your Comments. This might seem like it would be exhausting, but if you create a daily schedule to look at your comments once every day, you will be able to accomplish this. Simply go to your comment section and see if any new comments have been posted and look to see what they are. You should be doing this anyways because you should be engaging with new comments. This will help you knock out two things at one time, check for spam and engage with your clients.
A great idea is to consider dedicating about an hour to this right after lunch. This can give you your morning to do other tasks, but also give you enough time to look through all of the comments if you get distracted. You are more likely to put this off if you wait until the end of the day. After a few days of doing that, you’ll realize that the comments sure do pile up quickly!
2. Delete Any Spam Comments Daily. When you see a spam comment, delete it right away. Never put it off because you might forget it. Like I say, delete spam comments daily. This should be easy if you are regularly monitoring your comment threads for blogs, website, and other content.
3. Consider Approving Comments Before They Are Posted Live. This can help immensely with avoiding spam and making sure it does not get through to your website. Sure, this can mean a little more extra work, but it can save you time in looking through daily comments as point one suggests. All you will need to do is go to the comment moderation page and read through your comments to find which ones are legitimate and which are spam. This will help make sure you do not overlook a comment accidentally (which can happen if you are very busy!) and it can make sure that spam doesn’t slip through.
4. Use Items Such As CAPTCHAs. They can be annoying to some people, but CAPTCHAs work wonders when it comes to avoiding spam comments on your content. This will not stop a physical person from spamming, but it will stop automatic spam comments that every blog experiences at some point. Whichever site you are using should already have this capability in place, making it easy for you to switch on.
If you are worried about your clients not commenting due to CAPTCHAs, take the opportunity to write a blog post as to why you have them. You can explain that it is to avoid spam comments, but make it appealing for your readers by saying something such as, “The CAPTCHAs keep our webpage looking clean and sparkly for your viewing pleasure!” Make sure your customers know that you want to avoid spam, not just for your business, but also for them.
5. Don’t Allow For Anonymous Comments. Ah, anonymous comments; the starters of word wars and Internet drama. When it comes time to allow comments on your blog, it is a great idea to get rid of allowing anonymous comments. Many of your clients who comment will not want to be anonymous because they will want you to know who is posting. However, trolls (those who simply complain for the sake of complaining) and spammers, thrive off of anonymous comments. If you have clients with concerns about your lack of anonymous comments, you can encourage them to submit questions privately through an anonymous question website, but make sure they understand you won’t allow for anonymous comments.
6. Install Plugins That Help Moderate Spam Comments. No matter what site you are using, you are likely to have available plugins to install that will help you moderate and avoid spammy comments. WordPress offers this to all of their users, giving handy guides on how to install the WordPress spam plugin. You can also find other plugins to use for your various websites if you do not use WordPress. In fact, Search Engine Journal gives a guide on where to find these plugins and how to set them up on your blog and website.
Until Next Time
Comment spam is a real problem for anyone with a webpage, and it is obvious that you need to make sure you keep on top of it. Follow a few of the above steps to avoid comment spam on your site to help keep your traffic and ranks high. Not only will you see benefits on the Google-side of things, but you will also notice that your website looks gorgeous and not at all like the hot mess it can look like when you have a lot of comment spam!
Image source: Hormelfoods.com
