Why I Delete Blog Comments
I love blog comments. Legitimate ones. Ones that make me think or provide useful information for my other readers. Disagreement even can spark great debate. I love it. But sometimes I just have to say no. When I do, I kill the comment on the spot.
I did that just a few minutes ago. The commenter had a great opportunity to be brilliant. Instead, he just wrote, “Hey, those are great facts.” And he had a legitimate website, albeit one that has nothing to do with my niche. Still, he’s a reader and probably reads this blog on a regular basis. But I dumped his comment in the trash can. Why?
Because it contributed nothing. It didn’t enlighten, it offered no new information, it didn’t ask any pertinent questions, and there was no insight that could have been helpful to anyone at all. He simply threw some words into a comment box so he could get a free link back to his blog. It was rather obvious that’s what he was doing because he put no thought into his comment. And that’s the cardinal sin of blog commenting.
If you want to leave a blog comment, that’s good. I encourage it. But follow these guidelines when you leave comments on any blog in any niche online:
- Say something intelligent about the blog post on which you are commenting
- Be sure to provide the URL to your own website or blog
- Make sure that the URL is an actual URL (avoid typos and don’t use a fake URL)
- Don’t use affiliate codes in your URLs
- If you aren’t making a comment on the content of the blog post then ask a question about the topic (bottom line: make it relevant)
- Don’t include links inside your comment unless you are linking to a relevant article or blog post that will contribute to the ongoing discussion
- If you do include a link in your comment, don’t include more than two (three at the very most)
- Don’t engage in blatant self promotion
- Provide valuable insight that will help others
Blog commenting is a great way to build links back to your own website. But do it tastefully. Don’t just try to skate by on thin ice.
About the Author: 
Blog commenting is indeed something we see as a recourse by most people to date. But the real problem here is when you have to clean up. By cleaning up we are referring to spam comments which can easily be determined when you see URLs or nonsense keywords being used by the commenter. Honestly it seems pathetic.
As far as being approved or not, these people will not care. Seriously, all they care about is living up to their quota on being able to post and gamble on being approved. But if you delete them, it is no big deal for them. Besides, how sure are you that you are the only one they have commented on?
Thanks to the help of some scripts such as Akismet, administrators can be able to catch them and put them under moderation. At least you can still retain the value of your site after these cowardly comments right?
Kerry, I’m not necessarily talking about nonsense comments. I’m also talking about comments that may seem at first glance to be real comments. I just deleted a couple of them. They look sort of like this:
Usually, these commenters will include a real URL along with their comment, which cleverly disguises it as a real comment. And since they only used one link in the comment and used no trigger words Akismet didn’t catch it. That means I have to moderate the comment. Most bloggers would assume that because Akismet didn’t catch it then it must be a good comment, but not necessarily. Spammers are sophisticated enough now that they’ll have a real human leave a comment in order to disguise it. But you can tell the spam from the real comments because the spam is usually short and says nothing meaningful. The only purpose of it was to leave a link on another blog. That’s uncool and I don’t approve those comments.
Blog commenting is indeed something we see as a recourse by most people to date. But the real problem here is when you have to clean up. By cleaning up we are referring to spam comments which can easily be determined when you see URLs or nonsense keywords being used by the commenter. Honestly it seems pathetic.
As far as being approved or not, these people will not care. Seriously, all they care about is living up to their quota on being able to post and gamble on being approved. But if you delete them, it is no big deal for them. Besides, how sure are you that you are the only one they have commented on?
Thanks to the help of some scripts such as Akismet, administrators can be able to catch them and put them under moderation. At least you can still retain the value of your site after these cowardly comments right?