subject: How To Eliminate Spam Blog Comments And Build Your List At The Same Time [print this page] How To Eliminate Spam Blog Comments And Build Your List At The Same Time
I have been experimenting lately and I wanted to share something I have tried on my blog. I now require anyone who comments on my blog to sign up for my newsletter. I did this because of the sheer magnitude of spam comments I have been receiving lately. I found myself spending the majority of my comment review time removing bogus comments vomited onto my blog by bots and other types of software. This was even after my spam protection services filtered out three quarters of the spam comments to begin with.
My philosophy about blog commenting is that I want to give do-follow links to good commenters. However, the amount of spam that was pouring in was overwhelming. I refused to turn off the ability for my guests to comment on my blog but I had to do something. That is when I started thinking about how to do everything at once. I began rearranging things on my blog so as to give my loyal visitors the ability to comment and obtain do-follow backlinks as well as literally eliminate all of the automated comment posting once and for all. The first thing I did was create a new page on my blog specifically for comments and nothing else and I entitled it Article Comments. I then manually moved all of the comments posted to my blog to date to my article comments page using the Move Comments plugin for WordPress. After all, I wanted to keep all of my comments so as to reward my top commenters with site-wide do-follow links.
Once I had moved all of the comments to my newly constructed Article Comments page, I then proceeded to password protect the page that would allow only individuals with the password to access the page so as to comment. Beneath the Article Comments page there is another page entitled Unlock Article Comments. The Unlock Article Comments page has an opt-in form that required a name and email address. To get the password to the article comments page, a reader has to enter their name and email address and then confirm their email address by clicking on the confirmation link sent to them by my autoresponder. Once they confirm their email address, they then receive a second email that gives them a link to the Article Comments page as well as the password to unlock it. They are then free to comment on the blog.
Finally, I downloaded and installed the NoFollow Free plugin for WordPress that allow me to add a top commenters widget to the right sidebar of my blog. This plugin, combined with the password protected Article Comments page literally and completely eliminates spam and generously rewards authentic human commenters making informed and relevant comments on my blog on a regular basis with site-wide do-follow backlinks. The really nice thing about the Top Commenters widget built into the NoFollow Free plugin is the fact that you can set the number of commenters who make the list. Fly-by single-comment spammers are not rewarded with do-follow backlinks or recognized, but they do opt in to your newsletter. Your loyal visitors are are subsequently rewarded.
If you are an internet marketer, what could be better than eliminating spam, rewarding your loyal readers and building your newsletter list of subscribers all at the same time?
