Comments - A great form of feedback, now anyone can make comments on a particular blog posting. As blog commenting has grown more popular, so has spam commenting. In this newsletter, we'll go over why comments are a great form of feedback for your blog, how they help the credibility of your content, what spam comments are and how to prevent them from happening.
Commenting is great because it allows real people to tell you what they think about your form. It gives you feedback on what you are doing right and what you may need to improve. Comments can be encouraging to you and motivate you to post more quality blog messages. Or they can be constructive criticism to make you work harder to get better at writing content.
Bad comments unfortunately, spammers have now started to use comments as a way to spam. How do you know what a spam comment is? A spam comment is a comment that only advertises another site or product. If the comment seems bland or generic with a cheap link thrown in, then it's definitely a spam comment.
Here is an example of a typical spam comment: "Hey, this site is really cool. Check out my really cool site at spamsite.com."
Below are a couple ways that you can prevent spam comments from even being posted on your blog.
1) Close off commenting on older blog posts there are options for you to stop comments from being posted on any particular blog post. Lots of times, spammers will post comments in weeks or months old posts. So take away this opportunity from them to keep it from happening. Most blog hosters now offer this as a standard option in the tool panel. If one of your posts has been up for a couple weeks, close it up.
2) If you host your own blog using Bloggers or WordPress, you can use an option in that software to prevent spam. Even if you aren't using WordPress, you can still use other Spam comment blocking software like Spam Karma, Akismet, and Bad Behavior. While these aren't 100% effective, they have proven to be quite effective in preventing spam from happening.
3) People leaving comments on your blog will be required to complete a word verification step, similar to the one presented when you create a blog. What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments.
4) The ability to moderate comments as they are added to your blog can be very handy in certain situations. Perhaps you have very spirited discussions where tempers are prone to running a little high or perhaps you just want to catch any comment spam before it reaches your page. Whatever your reasons, the comment moderation feature will let you view all comments before they appear on your blog.
5) Take a look at your settings and see what can be tweaked to toughen your protection Lots of blogs now have settings to help prevent spam. If you already have a spam blocker on in your blog and are still experiencing spam, take a closer look at the settings to see if there's anything that can be tweaked to make your protection stronger. However, if you do this, you should closely monitor your posts to make sure legit comments aren't being blocked out. If they are, you might have to lighten up a bit.
6) Regularly read your blog comments, Be sure to keep an eye on your comments. Even the best software or setting can't prevent everything, so you will have to occasionally manually remove comments on your own. By applying the above principles, you can ensure that your blog is full of only good, quality comments, which will help your credibility tremendously. Comments are a great form of communication between yourself and your readers. They help the credibility of your blog!
Commenting is great because it allows real people to tell you what they think about your form. It gives you feedback on what you are doing right and what you may need to improve. Comments can be encouraging to you and motivate you to post more quality blog messages. Or they can be constructive criticism to make you work harder to get better at writing content.
Bad comments unfortunately, spammers have now started to use comments as a way to spam. How do you know what a spam comment is? A spam comment is a comment that only advertises another site or product. If the comment seems bland or generic with a cheap link thrown in, then it's definitely a spam comment.
Here is an example of a typical spam comment: "Hey, this site is really cool. Check out my really cool site at spamsite.com."
Below are a couple ways that you can prevent spam comments from even being posted on your blog.
1) Close off commenting on older blog posts there are options for you to stop comments from being posted on any particular blog post. Lots of times, spammers will post comments in weeks or months old posts. So take away this opportunity from them to keep it from happening. Most blog hosters now offer this as a standard option in the tool panel. If one of your posts has been up for a couple weeks, close it up.
2) If you host your own blog using Bloggers or WordPress, you can use an option in that software to prevent spam. Even if you aren't using WordPress, you can still use other Spam comment blocking software like Spam Karma, Akismet, and Bad Behavior. While these aren't 100% effective, they have proven to be quite effective in preventing spam from happening.
3) People leaving comments on your blog will be required to complete a word verification step, similar to the one presented when you create a blog. What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments.
4) The ability to moderate comments as they are added to your blog can be very handy in certain situations. Perhaps you have very spirited discussions where tempers are prone to running a little high or perhaps you just want to catch any comment spam before it reaches your page. Whatever your reasons, the comment moderation feature will let you view all comments before they appear on your blog.
5) Take a look at your settings and see what can be tweaked to toughen your protection Lots of blogs now have settings to help prevent spam. If you already have a spam blocker on in your blog and are still experiencing spam, take a closer look at the settings to see if there's anything that can be tweaked to make your protection stronger. However, if you do this, you should closely monitor your posts to make sure legit comments aren't being blocked out. If they are, you might have to lighten up a bit.
6) Regularly read your blog comments, Be sure to keep an eye on your comments. Even the best software or setting can't prevent everything, so you will have to occasionally manually remove comments on your own. By applying the above principles, you can ensure that your blog is full of only good, quality comments, which will help your credibility tremendously. Comments are a great form of communication between yourself and your readers. They help the credibility of your blog!
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