If you are a proud and famous blogger, the one thing you have to deal with daily is spam comments. Without any doubt, it is a tiring process to press the delete button to remove them from your blog post. The more popular your blog becomes the more the chances of getting spam comments. It is a time-consuming process to differentiate between spam and legit criticism. However, this situation can’t be ignored, but it surely can be controlled. For this we are going to suggest some solutions that may help you before that let’s see how can we classified these spam comments:
TYPES OF SPAMS:
COMMENTS:
Comments are formed when a person accesses the comment form on your blog post to engage with your created content.
PINGBACKS:
It is an automatic way to link your blog post to someone’s blog when they directed so.
TRACKBACKS:
It is a form of manual notification to make you notice that your blog post is linked to someone else’s blog post or website.
WHY FIGHT?
You might wonder why to waste your precious time declaring a war against the spamming techniques. There are genuine and valid reasons why one should invest their valuable time to fight against blog spamming.
- When your blog post is filled with comment spams, generally, it creates an awful impression about your blog on your visitors
- GOOGLE is introducing a fight against the wrong links which means you could be a part of it and avoid it by making your blog spam free
- Consider a situation when the visitors on your blog go through the comments and find that many of them are not even directly related to your post
- Spam comments associated with some common issues may make visitors lose faith in you and your blog. This is undoubtedly not what you are expecting should happen to your blog.
HOW TO IDENTIFY THE SPAM?
Some questions need to be answered when analyzing a comment. This will help you to deduce whether you should allow it to be visible in your blog.
- Do I want my blog visitors to click on the author’s link to that particular comment?
If the answer to this is no, then don’t approve the comment. Or strip the link, you might get less than favorable response from the author of the comment if they noticed that you don’t support their comment but got hold of their link
- Is the author of a comment using keywords?
Most of the time, when in the name field of a comment, there is no real first and the last name, it is precisely the sign of an SEO spammer.
- Is the comment related to any of your posts?
Copy and paste the comments you have received on your post into GOOGLE search and look if they are used for many other places and blogs.
- Is the author of a comment using a legit email address?
It is essential to know if the person commenting on your blog post is authentic or not. If you are noticing someone commenting with the email address like priceless123@email.com then most probably this is not a legit email address. No blogger is going to approve comments from fake identities.
FIGHTING SPAMS:
Third-Party Commenting System:
A widely accepted mistake by most of the bloggers is that they accept without any second thought that it is a perfect tool. The popular third-party commenting systems are:
- Livefyre
- Disqus
- Facebook Connect
These tools may help you to reduce the spam comments but are not able to ideally discard the issue. There are two drawbacks of the third-party commenting system:
- The page loading time of the website increases
- The commenting system will not remain user-friendly
Now, the choice is all yours!
Simplification of Moderation:
An ample amount of time will be required if you are going to analyze comments one by one. Try these steps to simplify your work:
Turn off Trackbacks:
It is a technique that can work wonders for you. You need to assess whether these turn backs are adding any value to your blog or not. If not, then turn them off.
Turn off Comments after a Week:
When your blog posts recover Page Rank after a few weeks, it generally makes a sense if you can switch off the comments after a week or two.
Use a free anti comment spam plugin
Fullwork’s free anti comment spam plugin eliminates automated blog post comment spam. And if you want more power, you can upgrade to Fullwork’s pro anti spam plugin.
Conclusion:
Now that you are aware of how to control spam comments on your blog. Simply start working towards it to make your blog useful and engaging for the readers.
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