Semalt: Why Spam Comments Are Bad & How To Identify Them?

If you have a business website or a blog, the chances are that you will encounter the problem of spam comments. The more famous your blog becomes, the more spam comments it is likely to receive. Unfortunately, there is nothing more than getting frustrated or installing a few plugins to get rid of spam comments.

Comments, Pingbacks, and Trackbacks:

Before we go further, Frank Abagnale, a top expert of Semalt, explains here the difference between these 3 terms:

Comments – The comments are created when a bot or human uses the comment area of your blog to express his ideas or thoughts.

Pingbacks – The pingbacks are created automatically when a person links your post back to his own website.

Trackbacks – The trackback is a manual notification by spammers that they have hit your blog and created an automated process to irritate you with spam comments

Unfortunately, trackbacks, pingbacks, and comments are all harmful to your website, and you should get rid of them at any cost.

Why are spam comments bad?

Some webmasters and bloggers attempt to inflate the number of comments and keep approving app the comments they find to be legitimate. They don't even know that the spam comments have reached their blogs and are going to create problems for them.

Google and other search engines are cracking down on the bad links. It does not include the sites and blogs with low-quality or bad links, but it includes all types of websites that try to create their own links in the comment sections. Google does not like blogs or websites with lots of comments containing backlinks to other websites.

Spam comments show a lack of moderation and understanding. It's true that the spam comments prove that you have lack of understanding and are unable to moderate the comments properly. For instance, if you have a technology website and receive comments related to vehicles or education, the chances are that someone is trying to leave his links back in your comment area and this is what you have to modify.

Your visitors will lose faith in your products or services. It means when someone clicks on the links in the comment area and is redirected to something out of context, he may lose his trust on your brand and won't buy your products and services in future.

How to Identify Spam Comments?

It is tough to identify the spam comments, and some bloggers and webmasters will simply approve a large number of comments every day. But you can bear in mind the following things:

Do you want your readers to click on irrelevant things? If not, then you should not approve the comments that don't belong to your article and have nothing to do with your topics. Alternatively, you can remove the links to websites in those comments, edit them a little and get them approved.

The real name and email ID should be checked while approving a comment. Make sure the person has used some keywords in the comment, but there should not be keyword stuffing. For this, you can install an SEO Spammer plugin.

Is the comment related or specific to your post? You should properly check it if the comment is related to your article or not. There is no need to keep approving a large number of comments if they don't belong to your site or blog.

When it comes to tracking the spam comments, you just have to bear in mind the above points, and you should be alright. Some websites and blogs use specific plugins to get rid of spam comments, such as Akismet.