Are Blog Comments Useless for Link Building? via @shellyfagin
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Are Blog Comments Useless for Link Building?
Editor's note: "Ask an SEO" is a weekly column by technical SEO experts Shelly Fagin, Ryan Jones, Adam Riemer, and Tony Wright. Come up with your hardest SEO question and fill out our form. You might see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
This week for Ask An SEO, we have a question from Ed in Memphis. He asks:
"Are blog comments useless for link building?"
If you run or manage a WordPress site today, especially one that hasn't activated Akismet for spam protection, you know all too well that people love to try and comment on blog posts purely for the sole purpose of dropping a link in the comments.
I can see how it might lead some to wonder whether this tactic is an effective form of link building today.
To answer your question, Ed, blog commenting is a useless form of link building today.
In fact, Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti listed blog commenting as one of 18 link building tactics to avoid.
The Rise & Fall of Blog Commenting for Links
Blog comments were a popular link building tactic many years ago.
You might come across lots of older information that suggests using this tactic because it once worked extremely well.
Please hear me when I say this tactic used to work.
It does not anymore – and hasn't for a long time.
Like many other popular link building techniques, this one was quickly abused.
Gone were the insightful comments from people who took the time to read the articles and comment thoughtfully.
Instead, blog posts quickly became overrun with spammy, incoherent, generic comments left for the sole purpose of building links with keyword-rich anchor text.
Eventually, spammers developed tools to automate this process, and the spammy comments quickly caused significant problems for site owners.
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