Not a day goes by that I don’t get some tempting offer to buy some little blue pills. Or I might get a comment that sounds legitimate, but it has been posted 20 times by different people. Some comments also seem OK, but when you click on the link (or even just read the url) then it is obvious that it is not a link that I want my website going back to.

So why do people do it?

Probably because sometimes these tactics work. Some website owners may well just put the link up without checking what the comment is linking back to. Then the commenter will have a one way link back to their website.

That’s not enough!

The link is completely without merit. It does not have any relevance to the website that it has been left on, and often the website from which it has come has no relevant content to its own subject. This is not a link that is valuable to anyone. It has no use to the website owner where the comment has been left, there is no point to linking to the website because sooner or later the Google algorithms are going to work it out and ignore the website. It is a waste of time – especially if the website owner is me because even if the comment seems OK, if the website it came from is not relevant then the comment will not be added.

Your time and resources have been wasted in sending out all this spam mail when it could have been spent in building legitimate links instead.

Google likes links that:

• -are one way
• -are content linking to similar content
• – that are spread around lots of websites

Using spam comments on websites only fulfills one in three of that criteria and even then if you take into the account the need for similar relevant material, then it doesn’t fulfil any of them. Surely it is a waste of time and simply annoys the website owner who then deletes the comment.

I’m sorry to say that I have seen jobs for commenting on blogs on some job vacancy sites. It seems to me that it is not much of a job leaving spam comments on a blog that no one will ever read.

Finding backlinks is essential for all of us who maintain websites and blogs, but there are ways to do it which may be harder work but which are essentially more rewarding. Do comment on blogs, but make them relevant blogs to your company and make the comments add to or start a discussion rather than just simply ‘well done’.

Join relevant forums and answer questions. Most forums will let you link back to blog posts if you are a registered user. Answer Yahoo questions if they relate to your area of expertise or if you have a genuine answer. Offer link exchanges with websites which are similar to yours in size and content. Also you can write free articles for places like Ezine and GoArticles which allow the articles to be downloaded complete with a link to your website.

All of these are legitimate ways to gather backlinks to help your website gain some notice.

If you spam, then it can be seen as an unwanted nuisance. It is a lazy solution which just creates annoyance and inconvenience.

If you do want to sell some little blue pills, then I suggest you find another website to do it from!

Photo Credit: Photo on Flickr by adamkemper