Remove comments or leave them be?
-
We're finding a lot of comments that were posted by a previous company - they've been using a keyword as the comment name (UGH) and then the comments are usually generic, like "great information, will definitely be back to read more form you" - you guys know what I mean...
Now, this site is ranking well and so are the keywords. My question is, should we work on removing those comments or just leave them be and now moving forward, use the proper process - since we are doing this ourselves now.
-
If the site is doing well, avoid panicking - lots of webmasters freak out and go on a rampage trying to remove every link, when they should just sit back and relax. If we're talking thousands and thousands of junk comments, it's something you might want to be concerned about. If it's a lower number, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it and would focus on building quality backlinks going forward. Contacting blog owners is a nightmarish task because the sort who have blogs that auto-approve junk comments are usually not the most tech-savvy and often don't even think to include their contact info anywhere. Lots of them don't own their own domain, so you can't get their whois info that way either. If it were me, I'd put my time and energy into building good, diverse backlinks rather than spending tons of time trying to remove these links that don't seem to have negatively affected you.
-
To further confirm your feelings I completly agree with this answer. Wait until the penalty comes and then be proactive. In the meantime build high quality links.
-
No, this site is doing very well, the site and the keywords. Our mistake was having this particular seo company help us with link building.
Thank you for your reply, much appreciated.
-
Thank you so much for confirming what I was feeling Just needed to hear it from another in the field. I appreciate your time, thank you for responding.
-
If a keyword is ranking for poor quality content..then it's not a keyword worth having.
So for this reason, I would remove the comments. If they haven't already been picked up by Google's Panda update, then expect it to happen shortly.
Even if you take a hit with rankings for these keywords, it's better disposing of the generic comments now, rather than them having a negative impact on your whole site in the future,
-
I think it's a very pertinent question and I think you need to be realistic about the time it would take to outreach to the webmasters about your comments and then how likely they are to be removed.
The answer to me would be "a long time" and "not very likely" - which would essentially be a waste of time considering that you could be building better links during that period.
It might make you feel a bit uncomfortable, but I'd ignore them until you get an unnatural links message - at which point, I'd outreach and get ready to disavow (so you could make a note of which comments you think might trigger this, those on unrelated sites with a lot of outbound links for instance). Until then, I'd spend your time more wisely by optimising your site and building better links. There is also evidence to suggest that Google might be going down the route of devaluing links on the fly, which may happen to you in the future (or may have already happens). Should it occur and you see a rankings drop (but nothing too serious and no link warning message), it's important to have a number of high quality links built or ready to be built to replace those links devalued.
That's where I'd spend my time.
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
-
Should harmful links to your own website be removed?
Upon running a link report on a website, there are often multiple links flagged as bad or suspect that come from a blog that is integrated into the website, which means there are links (set up as article tags) in the site that go to other pages in the same site. They have likely been flagged due to their high frequency. A similar problem is occurring where blogs from a connected site (from an offshoot site of a company that is part of the original) are also tagging their blog posts to link into the original website. Should these links be disavowed? Will these links have an effect on the website if they are disavowed or not?
Link Building | | rachelmanning8880 -
Backlinks through dofollow commenting
I'm interested in building backlinks to my photography business site by leaving good, engaging comments on other photographers' DoFollow blogs. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Through a little research, I've managed to locate more than 40 dofollow photographer blogs that have a domain authority of 35+. The idea is to take an hour or so a week to leave 10-20 comments on their blog posts. Would you consider this a good strategy? I rank on the first and second page of most of my keywords that I'm working on, but I want to rank 1st or 2nd on them. I used the keyword finder tool on google adwords to find the keywords that are the most searched for in my area. Surprisingly the competition is not large, so I'm fairly comfident I can get there. I've already optimized my site substantially and I'm looking into link building. Thoughts?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
How do I get rid of these nofollow backlinks from 1 comment I made?
I wrote a comment on another blog and now every single time that blog posts an article, it comes up as a nofollow backlink in OpenExplorer. It is really annoying to see when I check for new follow backlinks. I just wrote ONE comment on ONE blog post. How can I stop this? There are at least 10 showing up today! Thanks!
Link Building | | 2bloggers0 -
14,000 blog comment spam links placed on one domain!!
Trying to clear up a manual link penalty a client has received and I have found the client's site has been blog commenting 14,000 times on just one domain!! I need to do a reconsideration request and show Google that I have cleaned up the mess (the client has 50k backlinks, of which I am not happy with about 75% so far!!) but I cannot expect the website in question to go through 14k pages. What would people advise here. Would you state the sheer number of links on this site in the reconsideration request and use the disavow tool? Doesn't this suggest that I have been lazy and not put the effort into to clearing things up up
Link Building | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Old Linkwheel, should I remove?
I just found a 2yr old link wheel that was setup by a SEO co for my site, it has tripod/webs.com/other web 2.0 type sites.. 8 of them. Each web 2.0 site has about 40 links to it and a single link to my site. Is it always best to get rid of all this stuff? I have login details for all the "web 2.0" sites. What if I paid a "designer" $5 to get a bunch of videos and images put on each site and then I wrote some text?
Link Building | | Adsau
They would be useful sites to surfers, I could theme each site. I see all this about hunting down dubious links.. but the other day I went to one of the black style forums and the same people as years ago are selling packages with PDF/Doc submissions, private blog networks same old stuff. It does work as people keep buying and using and reviewing it. If my link wheel hurts then what would stop me pointing it at my competitor? I wouldnt but... Now a site that has a decent link profile, can they get away with a link wheel or two?0 -
Adding Anchor Text in Blog Comments
Hi, could someone please let me know the correct html code to get an anchor text link in a blog comment please? Thanks!
Link Building | | Clicksjim1 -
Penguin Recover: Remove links vs Burry Links
The best is to do both. However with those with limited resources, would building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links be a better solution than painstakingly asking every webmaster to remove links.
Link Building | | reprisemedia10 -
How to search blogs for blog commenting?
Hi every one can any help me out regarding blog commenting I am doing blog commenting since last 6 months to my automotive website i am posting the comment in blogs which are related to automotive only now i all most commented in 1500 blogs and i am not finding the new blog so how can i do blog commenting is there any other way to comment in new blog or getting the list of new blogs Kindly suggest me plz 🙂
Link Building | | PrasanthMohanachandran0