Is your blog driving the type of traffic that will make you money? Of course,…
Hello everyone. It’ s yet another Monday and as usual it’s time for community time-out.
Today, I want to share with you an experience I had in the past couple of weeks. I know we all accept blog commenting as link building tactic. But as much as this is true, I believe this experience will teach us some lessons, especially those who are misusing this strategy.
Link Building SEOs Who Careless about The Results
A few days ago, I received an email from a site owner who demanded I remove all links pointing to his site from my blog because they were not authorized by him!
When I read that email was pained in the heart because I’m very much aware that I’ve never exchanged reciprocal links with anyone and so saying that the links from my blog to his site were not authorized by him, trying to put me on the guilty box, was not agreeable to me. And I made this clear in my response.
Here’s the graphic of the emails between us:
and my reply:
(please I had to block the name and links of the person concerned to avoid more problems!)
A few days later another email came with some graphics of the backlinks in question and from this I immediately knew that those backlinks were created by someone who had been a regular commenter on this blog since 2010 to the early months of this year!
Turning the Tide – Becoming the Offended Instead Of the Offender!
This made me more annoyed, and I made it clear in my second email that I should be the offended one because someone in his pay must have abused the ‘dofollow’ generosity of my blog!
However, still ready to help because I now sense that he must have been a victim of some bad SEO company, I requested the URLs of the pages where those links appeared as a condition for me to remove the links. Here’s what I sent him:
I later received two other emails, one from the site owner who and another from an SEO company, who I presume has been hired to correct the wrong that has been done.
In these two letters they were both apologetic. They made it very clear that the problem was a result of the dubious dealings of an earlier SEO which has led to the site being penalized by Google. Removing the offending links was therefore a necessity!
And of course, the SEO company’s email contained the URLs links!
Good Ending to a Bad Story
The good news is that with the URLs provided it took me less than an hour to remove those links.
[Update: Here is a graphic of the email of this person later sent me]
However, the whole incident has brought up a few things that I hope we can learn from. Fact is, blog commenting can be a good way of generating traffic from other blogs, creating connections, and building back links for improved search engine rankings. But, it can also be costly when applied wrongly.
For example, this marketer has discovered how costly it can be to hire the wrong hands:
1. He spent money thinking he was doing his business some good but ended up with a problem. In an earlier issue we discovered here I talked about companies employing SEOs to send away clients from their sites because of using misspelt keyword phrases. This is another example of spending money to punish your business. Lol!
2. Precious time and more money is now being spent to correct the earlier mistake. I’m not against career SEOs but how long will online entrepreneurs realize that creating quality and customer-centric web content that is expertly optimized for the search engines, is more important than what most SEOs will want us to believe? Google’s algorithm changes in the recent times have clearly made us understand this. If you must invest your money in your business please invest it wisely.
3. As a freelance SEO content writer, I’ve always known that it is immoral and wicked to take a clients money and do something that will ultimately affect the client negatively. I think it is our duty to let the client know the implication of what we do because most clients do not have a basic knowledge of SEO but you who knows (that is why you are the expert) must stay away from ‘black-hat’ tactics. This incident has reinforced that belief for me.
4. Finally, this is a wakeup call for those who are here because they had been hired by someone to build links. Please beware because one day, that person may turn around to hate you if you build backlinks that turn out to be a problems for your clients. You’re warned!
Over to You: I don’t know if you learned any lessons from this incident. I’ll love to hear from you in your comments. Also, as a blogger if someone had contacted you with this problem how would you have handled it? Share with us in your comments below.
Chadrack, I’ve never had this happen. I do have certain people I’ve friended over the years I’ve been online where we have agreed to exchange links, in the way that you say you don’t – reciprocal links.
But by far I would rather have, as you are providing here, links to my recent blog posts which is more effective anyway.
By the way, we are so looking forward to you being on the Networking SuperStars hang out this week! We’d love to meet you. It seems we can be learning from you.
Patricia
@Patricia Weber,
This is really a peculiar situation as I have never encountered it before now. Yes, sometime ago when running a static website, I did reciprocal links but since starting this blog I’ve always turned down all request for that since I don’t see any good reason for them. Building natural links is more ok with me.
I really hope I can make it to the Networking SuperStars this week. I’ve been working on a new project and most of time is taken up with that. You can attest to that on my appearance on this blog. I think I’ll be one learning more there!
Thanks for the comment.
Chad, I never had this experience but I am learning from this, thank you so much for this. So does this mean that I have to be careful about links to my blog and whether or not I follow them? Wow. Thanks so much.
@Paul,
It’s glad to know that you are learning from this. I’ve also learned one or two things from this. About links for your blog, I’ve just done another post on that. I don’t think this will affect blogs in any way. You can read this post linked with commentluv below for the details.
Hi Chadrack, thanks for this post which has been an eye-opener, but also raised a few questions that I’d like to ask.
When you say that Google doesn’t like more than 3-4 links being exchanged between sites, do they include the links earned through commenting? Personally, I doubt this could be the case, as then people will avoid commenting on each other’s blogs or sites, and the web would lose its meaning.
I’ve been commenting at my friend’s blogs who are not in my niche, so would that be detrimental to both of us?
As for my blog, I do make sure to check if the person commenting is the owner of the blog or site link provided. But I guess this too can be deceived unless I only authorize comments on the basis of the email link provided.
I think you dealt with the problem aptly, and since my blog too experienced a drop in rankings recently, I doubt if my blog commenting is hurting me?!
@Harleena Singh,
Thanks for the comment. I had to reply a bit late because your comment has moved me to more critically look into the problem. After taking a look at the site concerned again and also checked some other sources, I have come up with another post that answered the questions you raised. I must say this is a learning experience for us all.
I’ve dealt in detail with your questions in the post and so cannot repeat that here. Why don’t you take a look and see if I have been to answer them satisfactory!
Chadrack…I have never experienced this…craziness. I have always had people welcome backlinks as long as they were legit…sounds like their SEO team were a bit outside the lines. Good information to keep in mind forward thinking. Thanks.
@Martin Casper,
You are correct about their SEO team botching things up. Actually, I’ve just researched the problem again following a question by Harleena on this post. I’ve found out that it’s a result of the new changes and updates that Google is introducing every day. The SEO never envisaged what will come up in the near future and went ‘wild’ with his blog commenting tactic.
I have just done a new post with some insight into the whole thing. It really an eye opener for me also.
Thanks for the comment.
Oh thanks for sharing this experience Chadrack!
I was just hoping this conflicts will never happen to me.
This is really bad.
Good thing he/she realized it wasn’t your fault.
@Nicholle Olores,
Of course, he was very sure from the beginning what the problem was. From his email he had also approached other blogs that are linking to him and but their responses were not what he expected. I’m sure he only took that approach at the first instant thinking that will get my attention. However, when I approach on a more germane manner, he had to apologize for his own approach.
It’s indeed an experience we have to learn from. Thanks for the comment.
Blog commenting is a great strategy for getting massive traffic, especially if you are commenting on popular blogs. It also give you the chance to build your own website, products and services being offered.
I think, this is good dofollow blog and it is good to see getting backlink from such a blog. Making comment to the blog topic or blog post is the main thing on which one must focus. It does help in reducing blog spam.
This is something different to know and learn and your answer is quite good to that email.
I read many article about “How commenting on blog reflect as spam?” and i come to know that which type of comment we should avoid. I am new blogger and i learnt a lot from such blog.Thanks to you fro such a great article.
Great Article! This is wonderful informative for me.sometime ago when running a static website, I did reciprocal links but since starting this blog I have always turned down all request for that since I don’t see any good reason for them.But back links its OK. sounds like their SEO team were a bit outside the lines. Good information to keep in mind. Thanks to tell us about it.
I have learned so much by reading your blog. It always amazes me how much there is to learn. It is also mind boggling how fast things change. For a newbie like me having a resource like your post.
Hi Chadrack!Thank you for sharing this.I realize a lot of things about building backlinks using blog commenting.That story is terrible.I hope nobody will dare do it to my website.
Blog commenting is the best way to get the backlinks and get the more as you can. But you have to take care the procedure for blog comments.