Value of Newspaper Comment Links
-
Although most newspaper comment sections are a no-follow zone, I have noticed that some comments I have posted with links end up being followed. The comments are participatory and the links relevant and even add to the conversation. My theory is that some comments are monitored and if the editors are looking to encourage discussion and don't feel like your spamming, why not take the no follow off. I do plan on doing some testing with poor, spammy comments on the same papers but am encouraged and would like to know what other people have found.
-
You are welcome!
-
Thanks Alan. And yes, staying relevant is always a quality factor.
-
My theory is that many comment sections start off no-follow as default specifically to avoid spamming but if a human reads it and determines it adds to the conversation, they turn it into a follow. I'm sure Google is able to determine the sites that screen comments from a human.
-
EGOL, I was just thinking today out of all the people who answer questions in Pro Q&A, you're at the top of my "pay attention to" list. So thanks for the compliment.
-
Alan, I should post your comment on my blog to discourage the link spammers. lol
Thumbs up!
-
Thomas that's an important distinction. The quality of the article to target page relationship is critical, and mostly for attracting new visitors regardless of primary SEO value. Even though visitor clicks do add to SEO as well, there's so much more to the process that if comment links are an intentional and significant part of an SEO campaign it's really more likely to be a timesuck.
-
Lets go beyond the excellent input EGOL has provided for a moment.
How relevant are the articles you're dropping links in the comment area of to the site you're linking to? How relevant is the topic to the target topic? How much of your link building energy is focused on this as a link building tactic?
Comment links offer such little value even when all conditions are ideal that it's really not a prudent use of time and resources. At least not from an SEO best practices perspective.
-
Thanks for the perspective - I guess after all is said and done, everything we need to know about tech is summed up "Garbage in, garbage out..."
-
Interesting thought on the follow, nofollow and the editorial approval or disapproval. Would love to hear your follow up.
Regardless of the do follow or no follow and the link value, I have found that traffic value is still a huge bonus. One quality comment on a high traffic article can produce a lot of visitors.
-
Comments are turned off on my blog because of this.
Also, since I link out to lots of sites from my blog (within the posts) I have a heavy rain of email from people who are trying to weasel a "mention".
-
I see it as mainly a webmaster's problem.... once the programmers start sending robots to spam your blog then you will be hit with a lot of comments to clean up.
For the person who uses blog comments as a linkbuilding strategy, I think that google can recognize blog comment links and probably counts them as very very low value links. If the link profile of your site consists almost entirely of blog and forum comments then that might put an unpleasant odor on your site. (I have no proof for this, just sayin' how I would treat the links if I was google and my confidence that they can recognize them if they want to.)
-
I know regular people who have seriously considered shutting down their blog or turning off comments because they got on a "dofollow blog" list and kept getting spammed because of that.
-
EGOL,
Interesting point.
Do you see that as only an issue for the site with the comment section, or also a cascading problem for the folk using this as a means to drum up links?
-
why not take the no follow off?
That will put you on every spammer's "dofollow blog" list. And the bigger problem is when your site gets on the blogspamming program database.
-
Please do post your findings!
What I expect you will find is that each website is set up a little differently - many as a matter of practice drop a 'nofollow' on entire sections of their site. Some don't. Some (take SEOMOZ.org as an example) have a more intricate process that determines whether comment links are nofollow'd or not.
I understand that there are some companies out there that do linkbuilding campaigns by linking from forums that don't seem to have the nofollow dropped on them (not that anyone here would do such a dastardly deed as to buy links...). One that was on their list is Adobe forums -- on my list of things-to-do is to post there and see if some link juice comes out of it.
Another unlikely source of a link that I got one time was from Craigslist.org, when I was bringing an intern onboard. Not exactly my idea of a high-value link, but hey...
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
-
Benefit of internal link in content
Hi, Is there a real benefit to having internal links in content other than at the bottom of a page for example and not surrounded by content. Would the benefit be 1 to 10 or 1 to 1.5 ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Links from MOZ, Harmful?
I have listed my domain in several Ask the Community requests. These have resulted in links from the Ask the Community posts showing up in MOZ site explorer. So actual links have been detected. Are these links harmful to my link profile? The content is not at all related to commercial real estate which is the subject of our website. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Internal Links not being Identified on OSE
Greetings Mozzers, When ever I check my home page on OSE it says I have a total of 5 internal links. Obviously this is WAY off. I've used all relative links, if I were to removed all relative and make them absolute, would there be a better chance of OSE identifying them instead of losing that juice? I think this is huge to resolve as when I compare my site to competitors, almost all factors are in our favor except this huge gap of only 5 internal links. I'm using Drupal CMS. For example, Drupal normally outputs internal links as "/about" and "/about/team" in the menus. If we changed it to "https://monsterweb.net/about", and "https://monsterweb.net/about/team", would that make a difference? Thanks for all the advice and clarification on this matter.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
How do I find the links on my site that link to another one of my pages?
I ran IIS Seo toolkit and it found about 40 pages that I have no idea how they exist. What tool can I use to find out what internal link is linking to them so I can fix them or get rid of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
What is value in a back-link from article with multiple links pointing to various other sites?
In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is. Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value. Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Are disavowed links removed from the GWMT?
Hi, I am disavowing some links. Does anyone know if Google removes them from the WMT?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is interesting for followup purposes. Thanks0 -
What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to build URL links too dilute link profile???
One of my sites has a very spamy link profile, top 20 anchors are money keywords. What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to help dilute the link profile by building links with URLs, Click Here, more Info, etc. I have been building URL links already, but due to the site age(over 12 years) the amount of exact match anchor text links is just very large and would take forever to get diluted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 858-SEO0 -
First link importance in the content
Hi, have you guys an opinion on this point, mentioned by Matt Cutts in 2010 : Matt made a point to mention that users are more likely to click on the first link in an article as opposed to a link at the bottom of the article. He said put your most important links at the top of the article. I believe it was Matt hinting to SEOs about this. http://searchengineland.com/key-takeaways-from-googles-matt-cutts-talk-at-pubcon-55457 I've asked this in private and Michael Cottam told me he read a study a year ago that indicated that the link juice passed to other pages diminished the further down the page you go. But he can't find it anymore ! Do you remember this study and have the link ? What is your opinion on Matt's point ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | baptisteplace0