Spam is a real problem today in the world of internet marketing however there are good tools to help counteract it.
If you are hosting here at Wealthy Affiliate you get spam filters built in and are pretty good at catching most of it for you. If you are getting spammed continually from the same IP addresses you can add them into your blacklist list within the discussion section on the wordpress dashboard or get site support to do it for you.
If you are hosting elsewhere then taking care of spam will be different but you can add things like the Akismet plugin for wordpress that is very helpful and one I would recommend. Here is a post by Apina on how to install it.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/installin...
This way Akismet catches the spam and puts it into a spam folder for you to trash every now and then. I would recommend trashing every week at least especially if your blog is busy as the folder will get full and cause your website to slow down.
There are other great tools like Capcha forms and anti-spam plugins. I have not gone down this path yet as I feel the extra forms can put people off leaving comments at all. I would rather they did leave a comment and let Akismet find the spam.
I have all comments set to be moderated in my setting so I can decide to let them be posted anyway. This gives me control over what is visible. If and when my site gets busy I may have to hire someone to help moderate with me but that is some thing that can be done easily.
Its really up to you how you handle it but you do need to put in some counter measures or your site will be filled with spam links within weeks of getting traffic.
PS as a side line Akismet have anti-spam for the contact form on your site also. I was getting a lot of emails being sent from my website through the form until I loaded the counter measure. It has stopped completely now.
Again here is training on the subject https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/creating-anti-spam-... you Akismet once again!
Cheers
Darwyn
Reply
As a newbie if you get into the habit of leaving relevant comments on your own blog and others it will increase you brand and your popularity among the niches you are in.
Look at it this way if you leave good comments on other websites there is a good chance of gaining a lot of good traffic from them with their readers seeking you out.
Also when you post a comment the owners of those websites will be glad to write comments on yours as they know you will write something to reply that creates a conversation also gaining them traffic.
Then when you post something new you are going to get a good influx of comments fairly quickly. In the bootcamp here you get to see who is reliable for a comment and who is not fairly quickly.
Its a trade off but a good networking technique to build up your profile.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MarkThompson
I have 38k followers and have had almost 1 million views. :)
My Google+ url looks like this:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114721825627093918938/about
I did ask about the Google+ url previously when I first created my Google+ account and now realise that I still do not qualify to get a custom url yet.
I created my Google+ account during my first week at WA, so it's more over 30 days old now. But I only have all of 2 followers and that's cos I followed them first. :0
Wow! Even Kyle and Carson combined do not have half as many followers as you. Looks like you would be the best person to consult for Google+.
If you have any tips or advice for me, I would greatly appreciate it (if you could, please PM me).
You have probably been busy building your biz and a social VA might be worth having.
If applications are still open, I might apply after I manage to master the skills! :)
Lol, glad you did cos all 3 comments for WA reviews which I made today, I was afraid to use my Bootcamp website and used my niche website instead. That clearly shows how confusion can arise from all the recent discussions going on about how to/not to leave comments.
Not strictly truthful commenting but if someone doesn't care enough to leave you a workable comment then beef it up a bit. I don't see the harm.
Is this something I should try to 'get over' as in 'all is fair in love and war', (and business?).
If I can get over it, how do you edit someone else's comment??
just curious, Joseph
You can edit any comment on your blog just go into the comments section and hit the edit option, This means you can go through them and add links to new content you have created later on, it could be even content to answer a question one of your comments came up with.
