Cutting down on Website Spam
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Building a successful business is hard enough without having to waist countless hours dealing with unwanted email, here's a quick way to help avoid it.
Posts Tagged ‘spam’
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2010
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2009
Aug
2009
Four Quick SEO Tips
I received a great question this week via my Model Mayhem account (it’s like Facebook for models and photographers) from a website owner named Bella Valentine, here’s her email and what I had to say about it, I’m sharing this (with her permission) because I believe Bella’s questions are the same questions many people have about Search Engine Optimization and online marketing.
Hey,
Saw your post in the forums and I was hoping you could help me out with a few questions that I have…
- How do you find related blogs?
- Do you write your site’s link as the signature when posting a comment on such blogs? (I’ve been looking for blogs that have the slot for your website’s url but have come only across one that was set up that way)
- Wouldn’t that be considered spamming?
- Should I try to stay away from sites that have a worst ranking then mine on Alexa or do all links back help?
Thanks,
Bella
Hi Bella, thanks for asking!
You can find related blogs using Google’s blog search function, it’s found under the “More” tab on Google or at http://blogsearch.google.com/. If for example you’re hoping to improve your ranking with Denver models, search Google for that phrase and you’ll see 92,000+ blogs appear but you’ll want to play with the keywords until you find the right combination to return the best results for you.
Many of these blogs will have a comment form at the bottom of the page and on these forms you will see a space for your name, email, website and comment. Now you have to be careful, some web masters such as myself frown on “keyword spam” which is when you replace your name with keywords such as “Denver Model”, so instead I always suggest people using their name in addition to the keywords they’d like to leave. For example, I will always delete people using “Denver Model” but look the other way for “Bella, the Denver Model” or “Bella a model from Denver”. I appreciate self promotion is part of the game, but not at the cost of my site’s reputation.
On that point, I will also point out that 75% of people surveyed prefer the Ben & Jerry’s brand vs. Häagen-Dazs yet … 75% of people surveyed prefer Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Why? Because as people, we like people … so website owners and other surfers are far more likely to “connect” to you if you’re a person rather than a keyword.
There is a fine line between blog spam and self promotion. I tend to think of it as the same line men often cross in a bar, keep it genuine and nobody gets hurt but when your comments are fake, false or generic … web site owners will reject you. Instead of leaving generic comments which will get flags as SPAM, only leave comments which add to the texture of the article or benefit the website owner. You’ll be surprised how quickly your comments get you traffic when you’re helping others in a positive way.
Commenting on websites with a lower PageRank value will not hurt your website, in fact each successful link regardless of where it comes from is either positive or neutral, but never negative. This is because Google knows that you can not control who links to you, so they don’t punish you for poor incoming links.
That said … the higher the PageRank of a link coming to you the better.
For example, if you can get a link from Model Mayhem (5) to your website it’s better than a PR 1, but a link from Apple (9) is better still. There’s a complex math formula that is used … way to complex for me to explain or even understand but basically, in the simplest terms possible assume that every PR point is worth double the value before it so … a link from a PR1 is worth 1 point while a PR2 is 2, a PR3 is 4, PR4 is 8, PR5 is 16, PR6 is 32, PR7 is 64, PR8 is 128, PR9 is 256 … OK, so that scale is completely made up but it holds some analytical water and more to the point, it reinforced that incoming links from high ranking sites is better but lower ranking sites are not worse.
Chris
If you have a question about SEO, why not ask me? I’m always happy to answer your questions and look forward to hearing from people!
Want to learn more about Bella’s website? Visit her at http://www.BellaValentine.com.
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May
2009
How to lose Twitter followers quickly
OK so as most of you know, I’m no Twitter expert. In fact, I’m completely useless when it comes to Twitter but I have figured out a few things in the past couple weeks and here’s the big one that I’m going to share with you … if you want to lose followers quickly, spam them.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with people making money online and promoting their businesses but you have to do it in moderation.
Take for example Canadian Affair (@CanadianAffair), pictured to the right. They’re an airline which flies directly from my little city of Fredericton New Brunswick to London and they do it really cheap, so I decided to start following them on Twitter but since following them all I ever get from them are sales pitches. Sure I signed up for them and they’re sending me something but not what I was hoping for, luckily Twitter lets me stop following them pretty easily as well.
So what would I recommend a company like this promote on Twitter to keep me happy and make money using Twitter? Actually it’s pretty simple, what I was hoping for was:
- last minute seat sale information, they could have even gone a step further and let me follow just my local airport
- flight tracking details
- special offers
- tourism information about destinations they visit
In short, the problem with following Canadian Affairs is that like many businesses they misunderstood the most basic element of online marketing, it’s about me … not them.
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2005
Jun
2005
Why I use nofollow even though I hate it.
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There’s an attribute that we can assign to the anchor tag called nofollow, it was introduced a while back by Google and has been stirring up trouble ever since it arrived. It’s designed to help stop comment spam but lots of people are not entirely sure that it works.
The nofollow attribute works by telling search engines not to influence the PageRank of my site by the comments left by others. Now, that doesn’t sound so bad until you really stop to think about it because I blog on a lot of really great websites and I want some of those people to influence my rankings, I also want to influence the rankings of others.
So then why use it? Until we have a better way of controlling comment spam, it’s the best way.
Jun
2009
Free Link Building from a PR5 Web Site is Back!
A couple weeks ago, I deactivated the link love plugin here on my website then I explained my decision why I deactivated the nofollow in another article and with the help of a great graphic from Josh, I think I got my point across. Link building only works if the links are genuine, remarkably since deactivating the plugin I’ve seen a tremendous drop in comments (both SPAM and otherwise) but not a noticeable trail off of traffic to the website.
The problem is that genuine comments tend to get lost and too many commercialized links slip through the cracks, after all working on my blog is a part time endeavor as I do actually maintain a full time job outside my blogging activities. The other problem is that while giving away free nofollow links to some wonderful websites is rewarding on a personal level, there’s no true incentive for me to keep it up which is what’s led me to deactivate the link love plugin and make the vast majority of the links on my website nofollow, including links to much my own content.
By ensuring the majority of links on my pages are now nofollow, it provides those links which I do want to promote significantly more value with regards to PageRank.
How PageRank Works
Simply put, PageRank is Google’s measurement of authority and it controls where you rank in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS). The higher your PageRank, the closer to the first page your website will appear on any given subject. While that’s an over simplification, the ideas are basically there.
When a web page links to another website, Google considers it a vote for the second website but it divides the ‘vote’ between all the links on a webpage except for those marked as nofollow. Simply put, the PageRank transferred is equal to the total PageRank of a page, divided by the number of links not using a nofollow attribute.
Spending Your Credibility
There are several ways I choose to spend my PageRank, and make no mistake that linking to other websites ’spends’ PageRank. Every time your website links to another website, Google assumes that you are voting for it by actually transferring a small part of your own site value to the new website. If you’re linking to higher value websites, there is no effect but if you’re helping to promote lower ranking websites Google counts your vote as your willingness to lose some authority while boosting another websites credibility. This process helps ensure link farming is discouraged while link swapping between genuine and reliable websites is encouraged.
Who I Link To
When I deactivated the Link Love plugin a couple weeks back, I was surprised by the reaction of a few commenters who’d assumed that my willingness to give a free PR5 link was something they simply had the right to have. In truth, nobody has the right to have links, not just from my website but from any website. I struggle everyday to earn quality links and honestly assume that everybody else does too. So who do I link to and how can you get a free link from my PageRank 5 website to yours?
Write a Guest Post
Take the time to write a guest post here on thisismyurl.com like Casper Christensen and build your website traffic by letting my readers know about your website. If thisismyurl.com isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps you’d enjoy writing a piece for one of my other websites?
Feature me as a Writer
A new section of my website called “What I’m Writing” can be found on the footer of every page and features a list of ten recent articles that I’ve written for other websites including my own.
Link to my Articles
If you’ve found an article interesting or a plugin useful, include a link to the posting here and find yourself included in the nofollow free Who’s Linking section on the bottom of every page. That’s where I list genuine, nofollow free Pingbacks to articles here on my website.
Do Something Amazing on Your Blog
Every week (sometimes more often) I write a summary article of what I’m reading on the web today, it also appears in the footer of my website and usual features a half dozen great links to wonderful articles I’ve enjoyed reading this week. It’s a great way to promote yourself.
If you’d like to learn more about how the PageRank tool works, I would encourage you to visit Ian Rogers great article on the subject.
Tags: Attribute, couple weeks, Cracks, Free Links, Free Web, full time job, Genuine Comments, google, Led, love, Measurement, nofollow, part time, Personal Level, search engine result, Simplification, spam, Time Endeavor, Vote, Web Page Links
Posted in Blog Posts