http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2007/06/seo-search-engine-optimization-tricks.html
I want to share a little secret to those who are still adding comments with links in hopes of building up link equity.
"Google does not follow links in blogger comments!"
Surprised? Don't believe me. Check it out for yourself. The first comment on the page above is from a company called Wavestech. They claim to be an SEO company but obviously do not understand the statement above. You can check out who links to you in Google buy going to http://www.google.com and doing a search in this format (note no space between 'link:' and domain name):
link:www.domainname.com/
Of course, replace "domainname.com" with the actual domain name. To verify whether or not wavestech has anyone linking to it, check out their results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=link%3Awww.wavestech.net%2F&btnG=Search
Dang!! One result. I wonder how much time they spent replying to comments in the last year and wondering why they are not elevated. Another company called 123seoservices.com tried it too but they have no results and no link equity.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=link%3Awww.123seoservices.com%2F&btnG=Search
The rule of thumb here is simple. There are no easy and quick ways to get to #1 for any search term. You have to pay your dues. Let the natural path take you up there. If you make a good site, with good information, it will find its way to the top of the pile eventually. Take "SOA" as an example. Try a search for "SOA White Paper" on Google.
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=soa+white+paper&btnG=Google+Search
The number one result for this is a white paper I co-wrote for Adobe.
www.adobe.com/enterprise/pdfs/Services_Oriented_Architecture_from_Adobe.pdf
We did not get #1 by spending hours making comments on others blogs. We spent the time writing a well researched paper that tries very hard to explain message exchange patterns in SOA without pitching products. This time was much better spent making a good paper and letting people search for it, find it and get it to #1 in Google by its reputation.
People linked to it because they liked it and thought it served a purpose. There are 137 links to that paper:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=link%3Awww.adobe.com%2Fenterprise%2Fpdfs%2FServices_Oriented_Architecture_from_Adobe.pdf+&btnG=Search
Google engineers also monitor networks for patterns. It is easy for them to spot a pattern to catch cheaters. Even if you crack the hashcode algorithm (I think I am very close now) for the cryptic string you get back in search results to track what you click on, your spike in traffic would be caught if you used it. Better to spend the energy creating good work that people want to use.
Advice:
Spend time making quality sites; do not try to cheat your way up to the top. Cream rises naturally to the top. Put the energy into creating good content.
Hi D Nickull,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you at this point that blogger comments have no follow tags and this will not count as back links but this is a debating topic as when i check backlinks for a website through Google webmasters tool, this will show backlinks from blogs throough comments, and i don't know what weightage it will provide to the website.
Maximum Hit
@Duane:
ReplyDeleteIf you're assumption that Google doesn't parse links in comment is based on the "link:" operator, then that assumption is a bit misguided.
I blogged about this a while back, but the "link:" operator really doesn't show you all content with a link:
http://blog.pengoworks.com/index.cfm/2008/6/20/Do-not-trust-Googles-link-operator
If you actually read this Google post:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=55281&ctx=sibling
You'll see that Google says:
"You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site."
Note that is specifically says "a sampling of links..."
So, the "links:" operator is really misleading and it definitely caused me some confusion when I was doing a lot of SEO researching.
I've since pretty much dropped using the operator altogether as I know it's just not reliable for finding links to your content, because it seemed to be a very limited sampling.
So, I suspect Google is still grabbing those URLs, but just not showing them in the sample of links.
Oh yeah...
ReplyDeleteIt would be great if the links weren't honored, just because I'm tired of the spam issue to.
Especially the whole World of Warcraft monetary links--those are such a PITA.
I just wish people would stop buying the stuff from spammers. If they weren't making money off of it, they'd stop spamming.
Always have a good day.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for my intrusion here. I just want to gather some opinions about this seo contest in heartratewatchcompany.com/blog. I want to join here, what can you advice? I read your post here about seo tips, is it really working? I already bookmark this url so that i can gather more infos here later.
Thank you so much.
Dan:
ReplyDeleteConcur that the link: operator is sketchy at best and may not show all, however it has been indicative of truth. I have verified that Google does not maintain link equity for comments with a person at blogger as well as via other means to back it up. I used Google's link: as it was easy to show others.
Yeah - the World of Warcraft guys selling gold piss me off too. There is one particular guy that I got so mad at I trapped his IP address and reported him to the Chinese Chinese Ministry of the Interior (Stazi-like secret police) for all the Falung Gong and anti-communist government propoganda he sent me. He did spam me one more time but I haven't heard from him lately....
See: http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2006/08/patterns-for-solving-adobe-san-jose.html
Owen:
ReplyDeleteI checked out the contest and it looks fine. Rusty has figured out a cool strategy - award others for getting his site higher visibility. It will be cool to see who triumphs. I may enter it myself.
Duane
That's neat to know that Google ignores the comments from it's own Blogger software.
ReplyDeleteGoogle should allow a generic comment marker or class you could assign to an element that would ignore all links within that content. That would allow all bloggers (regardless of platform) to tell Google to ignore links.
Also, I guess it's important to differentiate that Google ignores "Blogger" comments specifically, not just comments in someone's blog. (Because when I first read this post, I admittedly read "blogger" as a generic term--instead of Google's "Blogger" service.)
I've known this for a while.
ReplyDeleteThough, when you go to blogs, that have high PageRanking, you tend to find a lot of people commenting, on nothing, just to add keywords to their domain url.
I'm glad finally someone came out to spread this fallacy.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteExcellent tips here, well done for sharing this information... Cheers.
ReplyDeleteSeo Company
very excellent tips for seo. I hope there are more tricks for the seo services?
ReplyDeleteGreat tips !!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for a really good and well written articles.
webplore
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
ReplyDeleteI really think that other bloggers or site owners makes use of blogging and blog comments techniques cause they think that it is one of the best ways to get a backlink for their sites. Well, whenever I receive comments that seems to be advertising, spamming or just dropping links, I don't approve them and I know that there are tons out there like me.
ReplyDelete**IMPORTANT**
ReplyDeleteDear Readers:
The spam comments above have been left here as an example of just how some people completely do not understand SEO. It is clearly stated by Google that they DO NOT follow links in comments. (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html)
"This is called comment spam, we don't like it either, and we've been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists."
Any of the companies above who do this are really demonstrating that they are really, really dumb when it comes to understanding even the basics of SEO.
Whether it is follow or no-follow links. They BOTH count. It simply doesn't look natural to Google to only have do-follows. So, mix it up!
ReplyDelete