The way I see it is that there are 2 major types of comment spam.   The first is done by bot’s which run around dropping comments on blogs automatically.   The hopes are that they hit enough blogs that do not require moderation with the end result being thousands of blogs having this garbage with links pointing back to the website they are marketing.    The other method would be on a  smaller scale and is probably not automated.  This would be new aspiring webmasters and to some extend experienced webmasters using anchor text in the name field and a link to their site.    They are usually keen not to put a link in the comment area but the content they include is so generic you can spot it a mile away.

Some examples:

“nice blog about adsense - keep up the good work”

“nice article - I’ll bookmark your site and return every day”

“you could increase your blog traffic by doing such and such in addition to your link campaigns”

Okay.. you get the point. Obviously, those get deleted.

So, what would constitute a non spammy comment?   I comment that is real.  It really discusses the topic of the article without being too generic.   It’s got to have some meat on it. I guess if someone got super creative, wrote a 2 paragraph comment really discussing the article and adding some genuine input and if they were able to do that with the full intent of “spamming” that Kudo’s if it makes it past the moderator.

But, otherwise, the best approach is to write a real comment.     Here is an example below.  Let’s say an article or blog post was written about “one way links” or “blogroll links” how to find link partners.   A good comment would be:

“Thanks for this post on link exchanges.  I have been struggling with this and trying to find the best way to get other webmasters to agree to a link exchange. Whenever, I email them or contact them they do not reply so I feel frustrated.  I real about this and follow the “guru’s” out there and it does not seem to work for me.  Now I finally understand the concept of “small beginnings” and how over time if I engage actively on other people’s blogs eventually a relationship will develop which could open the door to advanced link exchange strategies.

By offering something of value to the other webmaster’s site - over time - a friendship is developed and we can begin to share ideas with each other which may lead to article exchanges, blogroll link exchanges and etc..   So, thank’s again for the well written article and I’ll see you at top!”

If you read thru that comment it would be very difficult to consider that a spammy comment and I cannot imagine any webmasters that would not accept a comment like this to be placed on their blog.  But, do yourself a favor and don’t copy it and use it (unless you drop a link in it back to my site!). Create your own original comment for each blog you visit and each post you like.  Than you will establish credibility.  Also, make sure the website you are promoting is a high quality site and not a spam site.  The webmaster will look at the site as well as part of the inclusion decision.

Here is a list of comment spam plugins for Wordpress blogs:  Just type the term into the search engine and you should find the link to them.

wp-spamfree

Akismet

Defensio

The topic of Link Building is of utmost importance to website seo (search engine optimization).  There are different types of links:   inbound  1 way links,  reciprocal links - 2 way links, internal links, deep linking, blogroll exchanges, links from within blog posts or articles, links from comments on blogs, signature files from forums or articles written and distrubuted to article directories.

There are good neighborhood and bad neighborhood links.   Effective link strategies and stupid link strategies.  Links from low pr sites and links from high pr sites.

Okay, you get the point.  There are lot’s of linking strategies.   A smart linking strategy is a natural approach to gaining links.  This would include writing nice comments on other peoples blogs that are relevant to the blog post.   Write articles and submit to article directories.  Write articles for other blogs and become an author for 1 or more blogs.  Exchange blogroll links with sites within your niche.  Participate in forums with intelligent discussions contributing real content to the forum.    The search engines want to see natural link growth with alternating anchor text.      For example:   a bad linking strategy would be to go throw 200 links out there in 1 hour with some type of automated commenting program.  Or to put out 100 links a day over 5 days.    Does the word “comment spam” come to mind?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be discussed regarding link building strategies.   Bottom line:  Don’t spam links.    Be natural, vary your anchor text, inbound 1 way links from good neighborhood sites, participate in forum discussions and add quality content to blog comments.  Write and submit high quality articles.   When doing these tasks make sure to employ deep linking stategies - rather than have the link point to your home page have it point to a page deep within your website that is relevant to the website, article or post that you are linking from.

What does it cost to hire a high quality seo firm to build links for your site(s) and remove that task from your plate of daily duties?   Glad you asked.

Plan 1:    200 inbound links from various sites pr2-pr7 sites:   $600.00  (effectiveness of this approach - moderate to low)

Plan 2:    100 inbound links from various blogs ranking between pr2-pr5.   100 - 150 word articles are written with an anchor text link pointed to your site:  $1500.00   (effectiveness of this approach is regarded highly as the links do not come from comments, blogroll exchanges, guestbooks - typical sources of spam linking techniques.  The search engines give more favor to a link from within a quality article on a site with a good reputation)  These articles and links would take place at an interval of no more than 5 per day to keep a natural sequence in motion.

Plan 3:  All out war.  Full Scale Link Building Campaign.

Directory Submissions

Article Submissions

Articles on Blogs

Press Release Distribution

Text Link Advertising

Price:   Min. recommended budget of $3500 a month for the 1st 2 months.  Than, we will take a look at the traffic and search engine positions to determine a plan to continue or to scale back.  The goal is to take your site to the top and maintain the top position.

Plan 4:   Forum Link Building - In Bound 1 Way Links

Forums:  250   PR0 - PR6

Links:   750  (3 links per forum)

Anchor Text: up to 75 variations

Number of URLS:  up to 75 (includes deep links - inner pages)

Link Building Report: At end of campaign a report showing which pages are linking to you

SERP Ranking Anaysis

Monthly Keyword Tracking and Reporting

Automatic Keyword Shifting

SEO Friendly approach to link building - frequency

Anchor Text and Keyword Link Spreading - natural seo friendly

Site History Evaluation

SEO Experience Sharing

Links from .edu and .gov sites

Customized Promotion Plan

Monthly Adjustments as needed to the link building frequency

Share SEO and Marketing Tips

Special Services Inluded:

Manual Submit to 550 directories

Manual Submit to 50 themed directories (in your niche)

Manual Submit to 50 directories - deep linked to your site inner pages

Manual Article Submission to 300 Article Directories

Manual Bookmarking Submissions: 50

Total Number of Submissions:  1000

Price for this package:  $2500

You can increase the package for even more links, etc…. but this is a popular package.

Blogroll Link Exchange

Many webmasters do not understand the value of a blogroll link exchange.  Quite simply put a blogroll link exchange is simply exchanging links on a blogroll.  Site A links to Site B and Site B links to Site A.  The best method of course would be to use anchor text in your blogroll link exchange.   Of course it would be best if the two sites were on a related topic.

As the net is searched for high pr directories, high pr forum pages, etc.. and one can find fairly decent results for those searches - when one searches for ‘blogroll link exchange‘ or “blogroll links” or “blogroll exchange” really not very many decent results come up.  Therefore, I think it is high time that we start a directory of themed blogroll link exchange sites.    Kind of like the ‘you comment - i follow’ concept.   “You link - I link” would be the new concept of engaging in blogroll link exchanges.

Perhaps the best way to start this would be to use the comment box below and let the community know that you are interested in a blogroll link exchange.  Than, we can begin a real nice list and add that somewhere else on this site and it will be broken down by website catagories.

Here are the rules of engagement to leave a comment for this topic of blogroll link exchange.

NO SPAM - sorry - but this is a real site helping real folks - no garbage permitted

NO SPAM sites - sorry again - but the administrator will delete comments that link to what appears to be a spam or garbage site

Your site must already be indexed by google.

Readers may also comment and let the community know if they see a site on this list that has been banned by google or is spam and the admin did not notice.. or they gamed us and built the site to look real to get links and than spammed it out than we would also want to delete that site.

Comments must have real value or they will be deleted

No links to your site in the actual comment but you may use anchor text in your ‘name’ when filling

in the comment form.

I am sorry for these stringent rules but the readers of this site are absolutely serious about good SEO and they only want resources that are effective and they do not want to link to spammy sites that will get banned by the search engines.

Okay, with all that said - comment away and let’s build a nice blogroll link exchange directory of related topics.

Here is a list from Mashable that includes 5000 Tools for Webmasters and Websites

This is one gigantic list and will take awhile to go thru - so enjoy!

Article Submission Sites - Provided by Davy Hua

• http://www.articledashboard.com PR 6
• http://www.ezinearticles.com PR 6
• http://www.articlealley.com PR 5
• http://www.articlecube.com PR 5
• http://www.articlewheel.com PR 5
• http://www.ebusiness-articles.com PR 5
• http://www.goarticles.com PR 5
• http://contentdesk.com PR 4
• http://easyarticles.com PR 4
• http://www.a1articles.com PR 4
• http://www.acmearticles.com PR 4
• http://www.add-articles.com PR 4
• http://www.altrana.com PR 4
• http://www.articlebin.com PR 4
• http://www.article-hangout.com PR 4
• http://www.christiannotepad.com PR 4
• http://www.earticlesonline.com PR 4
• http://www.free-articles-zone.com PR 4
• http://www.submityournewarticle.com PR 4
• http://www.1articleworld.com PR 3
• http://www.articleblotter.com PR 3
• http://www.article-buzz.com PR 3
• http://www.articlecafe.net PR 3
• http://www.articlecodex.com PR 3
• http://www.articlehorizon.com PR 3
• http://www.articlemotron.com PR 3
• http://www.articles24.com PR 3
• http://www.articleshop.co.uk PR 3
• http://www.freeeditorials.com PR 3
• http://www.goodinfohome.com PR 3
• http://www.linkgeneral.com PR 3
• http://www.nowlearnmore.com PR 3
• http://www.superfeature.com PR 3
• http://www.webmastertips.us PR 3
• http://bestinfobay.com PR 2
• http://www.afreearticle.com PR 2
• http://www.articlefree4all.com PR 2
• http://www.article-space.com PR 2
• http://www.blogtelecast.com PR 2
• http://www.directarticles.com PR 2
• http://www.dxarticle.com PR 2
• http://www.econtentking.com PR 2
• http://www.ezinesarticle.com PR 2
• http://www.mycontentbuilder.com PR 2
• http://featured-articles.com PR 1
• http://www.articlecounty.com PR 1
• http://www.articlefrenzy.com PR 1
• http://www.articlesindex.com PR 1
• http://www.freeliveknowledge.com PR 1
• http://www.itempad.com PR 1
• http://niche-content-articles.com PR 0
• http://www.articlemanual.com PR 0

Anyone who owns a Wordpress blog likes to know about useful Wordpress plugins.  Now, there are literally hundreds of plugins but on this blog I like to share the ones that our readers use on their sites and are happy with.

Here is a list of useful Wordpress Plugins:

Who Sees Ads?

Adsense Deluxe

All In One SEO Pack

A complete list of Wordpress Plugins

How to Wrap Text Around Adsense Ad Units

For those who want to wrap text around their adsense units there is a quick and easy bit of code they can use.

This code can be implemented with various wordpress plugins (in case you are using a wordpress blog).

You can adjust the spacing around the adsense unit by changing the pixels. If you have the ad unit on the left you might want some spacing on the right hand side so it is not too close to your text.  Than you might want the following:   5px 30px 5px 5px

There are 2 wordpress plugins that are very helpful and once you have them set up you take the above code with your adsense code inserted and plop the whole thing into the area the plugin allows. Than, when you write your post all you have to do is include a little snippet of code where you want your adsense unit to appear and that’s all there is to it.

There are a few additional techniques that can be used to manipulate where your adsense ad unit goes but more on that later.  This post is simply to help you put an ad unit in a post at your desired location and a couple of plugins thrown in.

The code is as follows:

< div style=”display:block;float:right;margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;”>
put adsense or chitika code here
< /div> (Remove the spaces in front of “div and /div” - the spaces exist so this post will
display the code for you to see, otherwise wordpress treats it like inline css and does not display the code!

Adsense Deluxe

Who Sees Ads?

Can you say: “My website is Search Engine Optimized”

Now let’s get real carried away and say:

My Website is Search Engine Optimized!Yell this out loud 3 times

Why am I making a big deal about this? Because if your site is not PROPERLY Search engine optimized you won’t get much traffic which translates in a very poor Click thru rate thus a very poor chance of a good income from your site.

The websites we build are properly search engine optimized for easy spider crawling. The websites make sense to the spiders and we give them the bread crumb food they are so desparetly craving. Didn’t your science teacher tell you to feed the spiders? :)  Well, probably not – but you DO want to feed the search engine spiders.  Think of your website as a living organism and you want your website to have spiders crawling all over it and eating it up. But, you need to give it spider food which they thrive on and not some type of spider eradicator.

Our internet marketing training techniques will give you a constant ongoing education about advanced website seo tactics that will help propel your site into the mainstream giving your website a traffic advantage.

If you are told that the reason your hosting fee is so high is because they are optimizing your site and maintaining your keyword than you need to ask what that really means.  What are the doing to optimize your site and  your main keyword.  Show me the results!  Are you (hosting company) engaged in an inbound link campaign?  Is it a 2 way (reciprocal link exchange) campaign or a one way link campaign?  How many inbound links does my site have now?  What is the anchor text in the inbound link?  How about the PR of the sites linking to my site and are the sites on topic or off topic?  Are you focusing on one major broad keyword or several niche keywords making sure to sprinkle in some long tail keywords in the anchor text?

Are you adding content to my site? Is it original content? Have you submitted any articles to article directories and have they been picked up and being placed on other websites?   Have you created any blogroll link exchanges between my sites and others?  (on topic or off topic)?

i.e.:  What are you doing for me when you say you are maintaining a keyword to justify charging me between $50 - $500 a month?  Please explain and show me the results.  Are you simply hosting my site or are you hosting it and optimizing my site for search engine spiders to come by and give it some good pr and search engine rankings?

The point is to understand if you are paying for hosting only, hosting + great customer service, hosting + customer service + SEO on your site?