Why Your Comments Never Survive the Moderation Stage
Posted by Mike | Filed under Blogging, Link Building
Hey there people. I’ve been getting a lot of comments lately and I must say that most of them don’t get past the moderation stage. I delete them the moment I see them. Why? Because of many reasons, and you’ll know those reasons today. 
But before that, let me ask you first. Have you ever been puzzled because you left a comment but unfortunately, your comment wasn’t approved? Read on, the reason behind the disapproval might be here.
1. You send comments which contain nothing but links. Seriously, what are you trying to do? You’re not helping anyone anymore. You’re just spamming my blog and trying to get some backlinks. Comments are supposed to tell me and the other readers what you think of the post and your other insights. They’re not supposed to give us headaches because of your links pointing to sites selling some pills!
We (the other bloggers out there and of course, yours truly) want to maintain the quality of our respective blogs. We don’t want fools to come here and bomb our precious blogs with links.
2. Your comment says “Great post!” and nothing more. All right, I do understand you if you really think that my post was great, but please add more opinions. Add some feelings to it, man! You know guys, I don’t like one-liners like those. Why? Because they’re too general that a person can say it without actually reading the post! Let me ask you people who leave one-liners like this. Why are you leaving those kinds of comment, and not add any more of your thoughts? Is it because you’d like to comment on a lot of blogs (hence the short message) and get more links to your site? Sorry mate, but this blog’s not a link farm.
3. You use [insert some anchor text here] as your name. It’s okay for me if you use “Mr. X of MyBlog.tld”, but if you use DebtConsolidationMesowhateverOMGStudentLoans as your name, then it’s clear that your main goal is to gain backlinks (backlinks again!?). What’s with the anchor text man? You want me to call you DebtConsolidationMesowhateverOMGStudentLoans? Don’t you have a name? Jeez! I’d like to stress that commenting is not done for the sole purpose of getting more backlinks. You’re SUPPOSED (supposed, yeah, but not everyone’s doing it) to comment because you want to share your thoughts about a particular post.
4. You’re harassing other people. So you think you’re so special huh? Just to tell you, you have no right whatsoever to harass the others who leave modest comments here. Little arguments and debates are fine, but if it reaches a certain point that you’re already offending or harassing others, then sorry but we all have to say bye-bye to your comment. Off it goes to the trash bin.
5. Your comment is not related to the post. This may sound a bit weird but I’ve gotten comments like “I had fun texting with my new N73.” on posts regarding SEO. What in the world? Hmm, maybe there’s a cool SEO trick that you can do with N73s. Wait, scratch that. It’s a stupid thought. If you’ve got nothing to say related to the post, then don’t say anything at all. It’s that simple!
6. You say “I agree” then place a couple of links to your blog. I hate those commentators who say “Yes I agree with you Juggler. Check out my blog about [insert topic here] and my posts: [link] [link] [link]” Dude, I check out the commentators’ sites IF they leave interesting comments. You don’t have to “force” me to visit your blog, ya know. The URL field has a purpose.
There you have it, reasons why your comments never survive the moderation stage. Now if you’ve got something else to add to this little “list”, feel free to do so by leaving a comment. Now make sure your comments will pass my standards! People, check out the comment policy before you send in comments.
By the way, here’s a tip to the link builders out there. If you really want to build links by commenting, PLEASE don’t use an anchor text as your name. I know there are some bloggers who allow that, but it kinda makes your comment “unnatural” in a sense. Just leave a good comment, and I’m sure the author will visit your blog. If he finds it nice, then he’ll probably link to you!
If you don’t want to wait or you really want to build links quickly, then don’t use blog commenting as a method of link development. Just my thoughts on the subject.
Very well said.
Most of such comments are spam and so I think there is no need to explain them. You will still get lot of such
Genuine commentors (like me
) will not do such things. :p
Meethere: Some people change when they read stuff like this.
I hope they get “inspired” by this post.
Ha ha ha, well said, Jug! If only there’s a WP plugin that validates the minimum number of words so that those one-liners will be sorted out
So very true about bad commenters. It only takes like 30 seconds to read a post & leave something meaninful - probably less time it takes than that to think of a name like OMGLOLu2cantext4free…the spammers would get much farther without it…
I disagree with the “great article” one though unless it’s someone who seems like a spammer or has never visited the site before - on blogs I read regularly I might just post something short and sweet like that just to let the blogger know I visited & liked what they wrote but don’t really have time to type a long lengthy comment such as this one
Chelle: Thanks for your thoughts.
Based on my experience, people who leave those comments are usually just hunting for backlinks, especially in this blog’s niche. Dunno with other types of blogs though.