Value of Newspaper Comment Links
-
Although most newspaper comment sections are a no-follow zone, I have noticed that some comments I have posted with links end up being followed. The comments are participatory and the links relevant and even add to the conversation. My theory is that some comments are monitored and if the editors are looking to encourage discussion and don't feel like your spamming, why not take the no follow off. I do plan on doing some testing with poor, spammy comments on the same papers but am encouraged and would like to know what other people have found.
-
You are welcome!
-
Thanks Alan. And yes, staying relevant is always a quality factor.
-
My theory is that many comment sections start off no-follow as default specifically to avoid spamming but if a human reads it and determines it adds to the conversation, they turn it into a follow. I'm sure Google is able to determine the sites that screen comments from a human.
-
EGOL, I was just thinking today out of all the people who answer questions in Pro Q&A, you're at the top of my "pay attention to" list. So thanks for the compliment.
-
Alan, I should post your comment on my blog to discourage the link spammers. lol
Thumbs up!
-
Thomas that's an important distinction. The quality of the article to target page relationship is critical, and mostly for attracting new visitors regardless of primary SEO value. Even though visitor clicks do add to SEO as well, there's so much more to the process that if comment links are an intentional and significant part of an SEO campaign it's really more likely to be a timesuck.
-
Lets go beyond the excellent input EGOL has provided for a moment.
How relevant are the articles you're dropping links in the comment area of to the site you're linking to? How relevant is the topic to the target topic? How much of your link building energy is focused on this as a link building tactic?
Comment links offer such little value even when all conditions are ideal that it's really not a prudent use of time and resources. At least not from an SEO best practices perspective.
-
Thanks for the perspective - I guess after all is said and done, everything we need to know about tech is summed up "Garbage in, garbage out..."
-
Interesting thought on the follow, nofollow and the editorial approval or disapproval. Would love to hear your follow up.
Regardless of the do follow or no follow and the link value, I have found that traffic value is still a huge bonus. One quality comment on a high traffic article can produce a lot of visitors.
-
Comments are turned off on my blog because of this.
Also, since I link out to lots of sites from my blog (within the posts) I have a heavy rain of email from people who are trying to weasel a "mention".
-
I see it as mainly a webmaster's problem.... once the programmers start sending robots to spam your blog then you will be hit with a lot of comments to clean up.
For the person who uses blog comments as a linkbuilding strategy, I think that google can recognize blog comment links and probably counts them as very very low value links. If the link profile of your site consists almost entirely of blog and forum comments then that might put an unpleasant odor on your site. (I have no proof for this, just sayin' how I would treat the links if I was google and my confidence that they can recognize them if they want to.)
-
I know regular people who have seriously considered shutting down their blog or turning off comments because they got on a "dofollow blog" list and kept getting spammed because of that.
-
EGOL,
Interesting point.
Do you see that as only an issue for the site with the comment section, or also a cascading problem for the folk using this as a means to drum up links?
-
why not take the no follow off?
That will put you on every spammer's "dofollow blog" list. And the bigger problem is when your site gets on the blogspamming program database.
-
Please do post your findings!
What I expect you will find is that each website is set up a little differently - many as a matter of practice drop a 'nofollow' on entire sections of their site. Some don't. Some (take SEOMOZ.org as an example) have a more intricate process that determines whether comment links are nofollow'd or not.
I understand that there are some companies out there that do linkbuilding campaigns by linking from forums that don't seem to have the nofollow dropped on them (not that anyone here would do such a dastardly deed as to buy links...). One that was on their list is Adobe forums -- on my list of things-to-do is to post there and see if some link juice comes out of it.
Another unlikely source of a link that I got one time was from Craigslist.org, when I was bringing an intern onboard. Not exactly my idea of a high-value link, but hey...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Internal links decrease dramatically
I have an unknown problem with my internal links. but after many searches on Moz community and other sites, I didn't find any answer. the question is: why homepage doesn't enough internal links like other pages? the homepage internal links decrease dramatically in 2 months but it doesn't happen to other pages in the same domain 6l6Bh D0bC1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | canadaoptimize0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Rank Without any back linking ?
Hello, I am thinking , I will rank my site without SEO . I will add quality content on my site . Will not do any backlinking ! Can anyone suggest me if it is really possible. I know some guys or some websites those are ranked without any SEO attempts. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | businessowner0 -
Link Type Analysis
Howdy Moz Fans, Just wondering if anyone knows any tools to which can identify link types. E.g. is the link - navigational, in the footer or in the body text. Specifically for internal links. Any suggestions? Cheers, RM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
How to ping the links
When i do link building for my website, how can i let the search engines know about that. is there any way of pinging?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raybiswa0 -
Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text. We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for. I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links. Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization. Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertrRSwalters0 -
Links from Directories
We are currently listed in a number of Association Buyer's Guides. We signed up for these last year in an effort to increase our external links. With recent Panda changes, do these links carry any value for us? Here are some examples: http://buyersguideforeducators.com/ http://wasteindustrymarketplace.com/ http://wefbuyersguide.com/ We're in about 40-50 of these different directories. Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colbys0