This is in response to those who have left comments on my post “Spammy comments and Comment Abuse“. I think that some people have misunderstood what I’ve written there.

Website owners that do not have blogs are misreading what I’ve written. Please read the post again and this follow up.

I do not say anywhere in my spammy comment post that I will not accept a comment at face value from someone leaving a website url rather than blog url.

What I did say was that a few were spoiling it for the rest by abusing do follow blogs - leaving similar comments on all my blogs no matter what the post is about, adding extra links, leaving lame comments that don’t have much to do with the post or my blog.

Bloggers are doing this too, but for the most part it’s those with website urls that are the most abusive. This makes me a little more suspicious of links to websites.

However, having said that - if you haven’t gone around to all my blogs leaving deep links to your website or a different website url on each of my blogs and your comment is relevant to the post well - your comment will get posted and I’ll leave your link in.

I tend to visit all the urls that are left in my comments. By this I mean I visit blogs and websites alike. If you are leaving an url to a link farm, and your comment is not relevant or if it’s very spammy (full of links!) well I will likely mark your comment as spam.

Please don’t be offended that my guard is up.

There’s just a few rotten apples out there. I get so many comments on all my sites that it takes a while to approve the comments. When I see suspicious behavior across all my blogs my guard goes up.

I love getting comments. If you leave me a decent comment I have nothing against that. Period!

One commenter on my Spammy comment post thought I wasn’t getting the point. That comments mean an increase in site traffic and possibly that I’ve gained a regular reader.

I totally get the point.

Perhaps when you see examples of the comment spam that HUMANS are leaving you’ll get my point too.

Valid comments will never be discounted on any of my sites. Seeing comments on a post does help encourage others to stop and leave their opinion as well. It can get a conversation going and help draw interest in the blog as a whole. I know that.

However, the kind of comments that I’m calling spam will never add to my sites conversation or traffic. These people are just dropping in to get a link or to leave as many links as possible and they don’t really care what I’ve written or what other visitors have written either.

I think I’ll gather some examples of the abuse I’ve seen and make a post about it - just to make it clear why my guard is up.

Also, while I’m at it … Leave your name:

I do reply to most of my comments as well so when someone only leaves a business name or a SEO related term and doesn’t at least sign their comment it makes me feel a little weird replying.

“Good point lumberjack discount wood cutter” - now doesn’t that look strange?

I like to get to know my visitors.

I want to write about things that I’m interested in that also interest my readers.

Naturally I can only tell if I’ve written posts that interest my site visitors if they leave comments. I get it. Yes, leave comments. I love them! Just please be sure to leave a comment that is actually about the post and not an ad for your site. Oh and yes leave your name!

Not being able to put a name to a regular commenter is kind of weird. If you’d at least also leave a name in your comment I’d appreciate it. Please don’t add an extra link with your name though. I tend to edit out duplicate links.

Hopefully this clears things up.

I’m not against website owners urls. I’m against spammy comments that do nothing more than advertise another persons site rather than add to the dialog of my post.

BTW I’m not just a blogger I also have two websites. One sites been in existence since 1995 so yes I know about site promotion and I’ve been around long enough to spot people abusing a site. I don’t tend to leave my website urls in comments that I leave on blogs because my websites are about exotic pets and they’d look a little weird on most of the blogs I visit regularly.

I was sent an eBook the other day. It’s called Niche Secrets, and you know what? I do believe I’ve learned a few things from this 29 page eBook.

Niche Secrets is a very well written and easy to understand booklet. It describes exactly what a Niche is, how to discover your own Niche and then how to begin writing articles, websites or eBooks about that particular Niche.

I actually learned a fair amount about Niches, marketing a niche product and how to write great articles and make money by creating product for a niche that I have a passion for, and I plan to use some of this information right away.

I’m excited about this. I’ve already got some niche blogs and since they’re already established it should be even easier for me to apply what I’ve learned from Niche Secrets and begin seeing results and having success quickly. I really believe that I could begin writing a Niche article this evening and see results by Monday - it really seems easy once you know how to do it.

I knew some of this information prior to reading the eBook, but you know how it is - you read some good information on one site, and something else on another and you try to remember all these good tips that you can apply to your own sites or to your writing techniques, but since these tips you’ve found are scattered across the internet and you’ve found them over time you never fully apply the techniques as you should right from the beginning.

That’s what’s great about this eBook and eBooks in general. You get all the information you need in one place and you can begin applying the tips and techniques right away.

If you want to learn more about making money by writing about and promoting Niche topics visit Niche Research and get a copy of Niche Secrets. This eBook is only $7 until July 31st so get your copy now.

Are you tired of the look of your web site? Ready for a change?

Why not enter the “I need a new design” contest that’s being held by lifeBLUE Media.

LifeBLUE specializes in web design, graphic design, SEO, Internet marketing, application development, and web hosting. Visit the site and take a look at their portfolio. They are featuring some very nice web designs that they’ve done for past clients. You’ll be in good hands if you win the contest.

It’s easy to enter the I need a new design contest. Simply visit the LifeBlUE.com website and fill out the contest entry form. Unfortunately this contest is only open to US residents. Otherwise I’d probably enter this plain Jane site myself.

Once you enter the contest you can tell your friends, family and site visitors about the contest and ask them to vote for your site. As you’ll see by visiting the contest link above the site that’s in the lead is shown as a larger image in the collage of sites that have entered.

The contest began and July 9th and submissions and votes will be collected until August 8th, 2007. There’s still plenty of time to take the lead and win a professionally designed web design.

The winner will receive a custom design that will be in both graphical format as well as html format. The design will be created by LifeBLUE’s experienced design team.

The winner will of course have the ability to provide feedback on the design and information about the goal and direction of the site so that the team will be able to create a suitable design that will take your site well into the future.

There are actually two ways to win this contest as two winners will be selected.

One way is to simply submit your site as described above and then to garner votes. The person who has the most votes, and likely the worst current design as determined by their voting friends, family and site visitors will win a free web design.

The second way to enter this contest is to enter the random draw. Write up a blog post and use the following anchor text to link to the main index page of LifeBLUE Media:

Link url - http://www.lifeblue.com/web_design_contest/

Anchor Text: web design, web designers, website design, web design company

I presume that the people at LifeBLUE will be keeping track of incoming links with any of those link phrases and that they will add those sites to the random draw.

Why are you still here?

Get going! Enter the contest! A free web design would be fantastic wouldn’t it?

I run the do follow blogroll and lately I’ve seen a few trends going on. Over perhaps the last two weeks I’ve noticed more and more people leaving comments and using website urls when they sign the comment.

I do realize that not everyone has a blog, but prior to this, the majority of people that have left comments on my many blogs were bloggers and they would sign their comments with either their own name or the name of their blog and use their blog url when leaving their comment.

I’m suspicious since there’s been a steady increase in the amount of people leaving not just business related website urls, but they sign their comments with what could only be called a SEO term. I must suspect that they are doing this so that the links they leave will give them higher standing on the search engines.

For the most part the comments that are being left by these people are relevant to the post - but some are a little empty or seem to copy what someone before them said. Then these comments are signed with “cashmere sweaters” and a clothing business website url. That’s not a real example of what’s been left - but you know what I mean, who signs an url with a product name? Only someone practicing search engine optimization techniques.

I’m sorry, but this makes me feel a little used. That might not be the commenters intention but that’s the way I feel.

Considering that my husband and I have oh lets see 9 blogs on the do follow list and that I tend to approve all of the comments I see trends.

I see people signing their comments with different names and different deep pages within their site, people adding extra links into their comments, people using tiny url within their comments, and people that say pretty much the same thing on all of our websites that they visit.

When someone says pretty much the same thing on all of our sites I feel that the abuse is confirmed. Sure, they might actually comment on the post but then they’ll say something like “I’ve been following your site and visit it daily” on all the sites. Surely you didn’t become a fan overnight when I’ve never seen you here before?

For the most part the people on the do follow list are not abusing the list members although a few newbies need a talking to I think.

Unfortunately getting a link on a do follow blog seems to have gained popularity and people are copying the lists on to other sites and none do follow list members are going around commenting on all the sites.

Not all of these people are abusing our kindness but some are and few people abusing sites that are giving links away for free kind of spoils it for the rest.

I love getting comments on all of my sites. Especially if the comment is true feedback on my post. I just don’t like feeling used by those who are only commenting for a link. I’d prefer that people only comment if they truly got something out of my posts.

Oh yes, another thing making me suspicious of the comments I’ve been receiving lately is the fact that there’s a new company where an advertiser can hire this company to write comments on blogs to get their link out there. You can read the article that was posted on Problogger about comment spam to learn more. If I suspect that someone has left a paid comment I’ll be deleting the comment. Apparently they’ll be targeting bloggers who’s links follow.

Now that’s something to think about isn’t it?

I’ve noticed that one of the newish frequent commenter’s on several of my blogs is a Las Vegas Real Estate agent. She signs her posts with her business name and I know after reading some discussions on a forum that this has thrown a few people off.

Why? Well, we all get spammers coming around trying to leave comments so they’ll get a link to their site. This isn’t the case with this lady though. Yes she is a real estate agent but she’s also a blogger and she leaves legitimate comments that relate to the post.

Hey, I’ve got blogs and websites and there’s been times when I’ve been on a site that related to one of my websites and I’ve left the address for my site when I signed up to leave the comment. I don’t mind when others do this from time to time … I mean, not everyone has a blog, yet they still might enjoy reading them.

It’s the people that leave multiple links in their comments - even in legitimate comments that bother me. If the link doesn’t really relate to the post or the comment I really don’t care for the extra links.

I’ve removed the nofollow tags from my sites and as a result I’m actually giving away a tiny bit of my sites PR for each outgoing link. I don’t like to give out extra if there’s no good reason for it.