Blog Content Provider .com

While Blog Content Provider paved the way into business blog ghostwriting, there are other services up and coming. We welcome them. It keeps us on our toes. But we’ve also noticed that most of these companies charge more than we do. Recently, a competitor engaged in a spam tactic that I think you all should know about.

Trackbacking is a legitimate practice that involves linking to another blog and the post from which you link appears as a comment on that other blog. Examples of this practice abound. But there are ways to game trackbacking and scam unsuspecting bloggers into approving an illegitimate trackback that is nothing more than spam.

It happened this way for us: On our Mortgage and Real Estate Blog I recently found a trackback that needed an admin approval (I highly recommend that you set your blog settings to require approval before all comments go live). You should also visit every site by a commenter or trackbacker to ensure the site is good. If the site itself doesn’t meet your approval then don’t approve the comment or trackback. I always do this.

When I visited the trackbacking site by clicking on the URL provided, I perused the blog post of the company feigning a legitimate trackback. The problem was that there was no link in the blog post leading back to our blog. In other words, they programmed their blog software to make it appear as if they were trackbacking to our blog, but the link wasn’t there. It was hidden. That way, the search engines see it, but human visitors do not, cutting off all traffic from their blog to ours. If I’d approved the trackback then the relationship between their blog and ours would have been one sided. They would have benefited from our traffic, but we would not have benefited from theirs.

This is called cloaking. It’s a practice that all of the search engines frown upon. It’s also a widespread practice by devious webmasters who try to gain an advantage in ways that are unfair. If your blogging company engages in this practice then I highly recommend that you drop them immediately and use a company that engages in legitimate and search engine approved tactics.

This trackbacker operating under the veneer of legitimate practices was a blog ghostwriting competitor trying to target real estate agents with their services. Beware of these types of spamming operations. They will hurt your business more than help it.

Spammers used to just pick up your articles at article directories and slap them on a Blogspot blog with AdSense. Or they’d use WordPress and trackback to your blog in hopes that you’d approve the trackback and send traffic to click on their ads. Now they’re getting even more clever than that.

I recently found an article I wrote on a plain blog, no ads. The spammer included by author resource box with all links intact. So far, so good. But I noticed that right in the middle of the article, throughout the article, the spammer inserted nonrelevant sentences with nonrelevant links pointing to other web pages that contained their AdSense ads. How clever.

I’m sure this is in violation of Google AdSense guidelines. I know it’s in violation of article directory guidelines and search engine guidelines. If this happens to you, report the offending website to each search engine and to Google AdSense. It’s a small measure, but one that might go a long way to clean up unwanted spam.

I still talk to people who are sold on Blogger.com being a great place to host a blog. Just because it’s free. I hate to be the party spoiler (actually, I quite like spiking the punch, thank you!), but the reason Blogger.com is not a good place to host your blog is precisely because it is free.

Human error has a way of killing good grass. Sure, you can pull out the weeds one by one, but the more “free” something is the more weeds you can expect to see. And pulling out all those weeds takes time. So to make it go easier and more quickly, you have to create something to automate the process - something like an algorithm, which is a fancy word for a mathematical equation that is supposed to search out and find the weeds in a big field of grass. In this case, it’s the free blog host Blogger.com and the weeds are spam blogs.

Big problem. Google’s algorithm actually flagged legitimate blogs as spam blogs. Thousands of them. And some of them were rather high profile blogs that had been hosted at Blogger.com for a long time. If it could happen them, do you think it could happen to you?

For every day that your blog is down that could potentially be thousands of dollars slipping through a hole in your pocket. It may be just a few pennies a day, but if you don’t sew up that hole then you could lose thousands over time. That thousand dollars over the course of one year represents hundreds of thousands over time. When you consider what you could have that $1,000 do for you, earning you more in an interest-bearing account, for instance, the problem is a lot bigger than it at first seems. You can’t afford to lose even a dime to someone else’s error.

It’s better, if you can, to own the property. And since you can purchase a web domain for as little as $10 per year, why not do so? Imagine opening up a storefront on the busiest street in your town for $10/year. Would you do that? Or would you opt for the empty warehouse across the railroad tracks that gets graffiti spray painted on its face once a month just because it’s free?

Sorry for the graphic image, but that’s how serious this is. Don’t use a free host. You’re much better off paying $25-$30 per month for a secure host and $10 per year than you are using a free host that could flake out on you at any time. It’s a business blog, man. Run it like one.

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.

The secret is out: Trackbacks make great links. And it’s a really simple thing. Someone writes a blog post that you like and you respond on your own blog. If you use WordPress, you can copy the permalink of the blog post that you are responding to in the trackback field below the Write Post field. Your blog post will appear as a comment on the other blogger’s software Admin panel. They can approve or reject it. If they approve your trackback then your blog post will appear as a comment on their blog post, giving you a reciprocal link. If they reject your comment then you will be providing their blog with a one-way link and no reciprocal link love. Should you ever do that?

You bet. Keep in mind that one-way links are more valuable than reciprocal links, especially from relevant sites. It is considered tacky to reject trackbacks just because you want that highly coveted one-way back link. The content that appears in your comments is important too, for several reasons. But that doesn’t mean you should approve every trackback. There are times when you’d want to say “No” to that trackback. When are they?

You might reject a trackback for the following reasons:

• The comment is from a known spam site - If you know that a particular site is a known spam site, even if their trackback seems legitimate, then you might not want to approve their trackback comment.
• The trackback itself appears to be a form of spam and not really a true comment - Sometimes legitimate bloggers are guilty of spam too. It might be inadvertent or blatant. Either way, you have readers to protect.
• You are being linked to from a site whose mission and purpose you don’t agree with entirely - You have to be careful with this one. Just because you don’t agree with what they are doing doesn’t mean that everyone will disagree or that their business model is a bad one. But if it is obvious that what the blogger is doing is unethical or illegal then you shouldn’t promote it.
• The site is a non-relevant site and you don’t want to lose your blog readers to a non-relevant site - Sometimes you’ll get a link from a non-relevant site and you just don’t want to lose your visitors to that site.
• The blogger linking to you links to you too often - Some bloggers just overdo a good thing.
• The trackback is inconsistent with your comment policy - If you have a comment policy and a trackback blatantly is in violation, don’t make an exception just because it’s a trackback.
• The trackback is from a site that exists primarily for advertising - If the only content on a blog or website linking to you is advertising, other than content that you created, then don’t link back to them; this is just like spam.
• The site is a malware or warez site - Don’t send your readers anywhere you wouldn’t want to go.

These may not be the only reasons you’d want to reject a trackback comment, but these are good reasons not to keep those trackback comments alive on your site. You have readers to protect, so protect them. And protect your own reputation as well.

Thanks to Lance Winslow for asking the question. What about those people who steal the content created by others, put them on a blog and earn AdSense money from them?

In the old days, people did that with articles. They still do. But there is another form of this type of content theft that people are using along with WordPress, which is the blogging platform that we at Blog Content Provider recommend. It’s called scraping.

Here’s what they do: They subscribe to your RSS feed and use a software program to search for specific keywords in your content. When they find the keywords they are looking for they scrape that content and add it to their blog, a process that takes just a few seconds because it is done automatically by the software program. The slap an AdSense ad next to the content they just stole from you and “trackback” to your blog, which creates a link to you, but also a link from you to their blog - that is, if you approve their comment.

Now, wait a minute, Allen. Haven’t you encouraged people in the past to trackback to other blogs for traffic? What’s wrong with that?

Yes, I have encouraged trackbacks and I still do. But what’s wrong with scraping is a little bit more nuanced than merely marketing original content. The proper way to trackback to another person’s blog is to write original content on your blog that references the content on the other. Then you can tell WordPress to trackback, which effectively makes you and the other blogger partners in an ongoing conversation. Using content created by someone else without adding your own flavor of original content alongside it is unethical. It is a form of stealing.

What these scrapers are banking on is that you will approve their comment and your website visitors will click through the link in that comment to their blog and click on the ad so that they’ll earn revenue from your content. They know that their blog will not rank for any keywords. It’s duplicate content so the search engines will ignore it. They likely aren’t doing any article marketing to promote that blog either because that takes time. These scrapers are lazy and want the easy way out. That’s why are stealing your content and offering a “trackback” in an attempt to appear legitimate. They are taking a legitimate practice and mirroring it so as to appear legitimate themselves. Crafty, isn’t it?

Well, all you have to do to stop them in their tracks is not approve their comments. When you notice a comment in WordPress, follow the link to the owner’s blog and read what they’ve written. If it looks like someone wrote the post and linked back to you then approve the comment. If it looks like a part of a post that you wrote with a link back that says something like “Read the rest of the article here” then don’t approve it. They won’t gain access to your blog’s readers and they won’t make a dime off of your content.

By Ian Hollander

One of the biggest problems any blogger faces, new, experienced or otherwise, is the exhausting and never ending battle with blog comments you just don’t want, need or have the time to deal with. Blocking spam on Wordpress is a huge piece of heavy lifting if you don’t know what you are doing, and I firmly believe, one of the primary reasons many people ultimately give up on their big buck blogging plans! A few days of having to remove Viagra ads, triple XXX website links and long strings of keyword spam can literally break the spirit of even the most audaciously hopeful upstart blogger. Let’s take a quick look at a VERY simple and easy solution to turn off the spammers, all whilst encouraging good and positive comments from your REAL site community!

We’ve talked a good deal about Wordpress plugins in the past, and how to selectively choose just the ones that are going to be most functional for your blog, rather than simply adding every unnecessary bell and whistle available. Well the ASKIMET spam protector plugin is one that you ABSOLUTELY need to have activated if you are worried about, or getting spam. Simply stated, all you need to do is go into your plugin administration area, activate the plugin (it should come default with your WP software) and then, enter your Wordpress API key when requested….and BAM! No more SPAM!

Note - you will have to go and set up your account with Wordpress.Com to get your personal key, which is required for Askimet to be activated. It is free, and takes less time than it would to heat up a cup of water in the microwave, so don’t skip this step. You can use the same API key in ALL of your subsequent Wordpress installs, and if you have been following my work for any length of time, I recommend you put up as many WP sites as you can handle, simply to add to your virtual asset base as we’ve covered before.

Have fun, and remember, you will occasionally have a slice or two get through the Askimet filter, but not often - and I promise - this is the one plugin all Wordpress bloggers need to be using, and now! Happy Blogging.

Want to see how we make money Blogging?

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_Hollander

Would you recognize a spam link if you saw it? They’re not that hard to notice really. I can spot one from a mile away.

Typically, bloggers who write blogs for popular search terms will receive an e-mail that goes something like this:

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I am interested in permanent placement of paragraphs on specific pages of your website. Paragraphs will be custom written and according to the content of your site.

So, I can offer you: USD 15 for each of the following pages.

This is a verbatim message I received from a spam link buyer for a website that I personally own. Below these paragraphs were a set of links to the pages this link buyer wanted to place his links on followed by, in case I couldn’t do the math, a total that he would pay for those links. I found it interesting that three of those links were for pages that I wouldn’t consider selling links for under any circumstances no matter what the price - I figured that would be obvious by the content.

1. The first page was to my e-zine opt-in page. Now why would any idiot sell links on a page where he wants to take opt-ins for his newsletter? That would defeat the entire purpose for that page. And the spam link buyer wanted his links on that page permanently. Yeah, I’m a moron. NOT!
2. The second page was a sales letter for a book that I wrote. This is a no-brainer. What used car salesman is going to take $50 to tell every customer he meets, “Go across the street; they sell more cars than we do?” Again, do I have Stupid written all over my website? Nope. Hit the next guy, Chump!
3. The third page the spam link buyer wanted me to pimp out was to a book review page. This is a page I use to write book reviews for books I like. After I praise or trash the book, I tell my readers where they can go to purchase the book. Obviously, the desired result is that they will purchase the books. Though I don’t make any money on some of them, there are books that I review where I get a commission from each sale because I’m a member of an affiliate program. Why would I lead potential customers to another website for a one-time sale?

Because this brave spam link buyer was batting .500, which isn’t bad for a major leaguer, I decided to offer him the courtesy of a response. So I told him under what circumstances I’d consider selling a link. (I really have no problem selling links, but I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM with selling spam links, as you will soon see).

My response to the Mr. Spam Link Buyer went like this:

William,

I appreciate your offer, but there are several problems with the way you have presented this. No. 1, links on three of those pages are not for sell at all. A careful review of the (Page 1), (Page 2), and (Page 3) pages will show that it would be counterproductive for me to sell links on those pages.

Secondly, I believe I could sell links on my website for much more than $15 permanent placement. It is likely that I could get $5-$10 per month per page on those pages for the right website. Then you would have to be clear about what the benefits are that you are paying for. If you are looking for PageRank transference, it is out of the question. Links would have to be nofollow links. The traffic alone would be worth it to you.

Thirdly, the links on your pages look spammy (he had the nerve to include examples of what he was talking about with his paid link scheme). I won’t involve myself in that at all. I don’t encourage more than one link per paragraph in most online content and I only link out from my website if there is a clear value to my visitors in me doing so. I would have to evaluate the content on the pages you want to link to in order to see if it would provide any value to my readers.

Finally, I would feel more comfortable with the arrangement if you provided me your anchor text and let me write the content. If I like the pages you are linking to then I will write the content to encourage my visitors to link to your site. If I don’t like it then the deal is off. I won’t recommend something just to make a dollar. I have over 20 years writing experience including academic writing, journalism, sales material, and I currently work full-time as an Internet marketer, blog ghostwriter, article writer, and SEO content writer so I can back up what I say.

Alternatively, if you want to work something out for my (deleted) blog at (deleted) then I might be more amenable to that. The price would be less there because it doesn’t have the same level of traffic as the website. But some of the same demands would be in place (though I’ll be more flexible in certain ways). Again, if I like your content then I can
offer you other benefits. But if I wouldn’t freely link to your content without you paying for it then I likely wouldn’t link to it if you do pay. That’s how I see paid link value and if you are still interested then let me know what pages you want me to link to and your anchor text then we’ll go from there.

I thought that was pretty straightforward and doggone clear. Mr. Spam Link Buyer, however, didn’t respond to any of the points. Instead, he simply responded

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I can adjust the travel keyword link vacations with informative and non spammy links, if you think you can go ahead with this just let me know.

In other words, he wanted to put travel links on my non-travel related website. Why?

The idea behind paid links is to get additional traffic and inbound links with PageRank value (though Google frowns on the practice for the purpose of PR value). I think traffic value is a lot better than PR value even if you have a PR of 8 or 9. If your PR is that high then you probably have lots of traffic as well. But that’s why I won’t sell links for PR. I will sell them for traffic. But that is a digression.

In order to make paid links work to their best advantage for you and for your customer, the links should be to a site that is relevant in terms of content. In other words, travel sites should link to travel sites, real estate sites to real estate sites, etc. Why put travel links on your real estate site? Unless the travel site you are linking to is local to you and provides real benefit to your website visitors it just doesn’t make sense.

If a reader can go to your website and tell a marked difference in the tone, voice, quality of writing, and subject matter from one paragraph to another on the same page then you have a credibility problem. How much is it worth to you to ruin your credibility? Well, that’s what spam links do for you.

As much as Net citizens like to create new words out of the fusion of older words, I’ve got a new word for blog spam - it’s Blam. This is when another blogger scrapes your blog posts and reloads them onto his own blog for one of the following purposes:

• Sell advertising alongside your content with no attribution
• Attribution may be given for your content, but it sits right beside AdSense ads, the other blogger’s primary source of income
• The blammer, blog spammer, and gratuitous traffic whammer, steals your content only to redirect your traffic via trackback to his blog so that he can then channel into another blog that sells similar services to yours (I love this one!)
• He’s promoting his affiliate programs
• She’s a kleptomaniac and just can’t help herself - you see, I’m an equal opportunity spam blam hater (at least I didn’t say she was a nymphomaniac - but then again, maybe she’s that too!)
• She’s got a lot of time on her hands and really doesn’t know what to do with it and it sounded like a good idea to use it to design a website, steal someone else’s content, and try to earn two cents with it because - hey, she’s a web designer, not a writer (give her a break)
• He’s just playing around
• Just goofing off

I could have titled this blog post, “Top 8 Reasons Blog Spammers Steal Your Content,” but see how boring that is? If you see this blog post on another blog somewhere it’s because you’ve encountered a blammer. Leave a comment for me (if they allow comments): Just say, “Spam, Blam, Thank you Ma’am” and link back to this post. Thanks.