Today I was blog spammed by Function Rooms Melbourne

I thought I’d share what I think is becoming an epidemic on the internet and it is blog spam. Email spam is now illegal, but blog spamming isn’t. It may not be appropriate, and to a degree, most of us at one stage or another will blog spam by writing an article on a site which has a link back to our own site. We give to get a little and generally both parties are benefiting. The comment is legitimate because you’ve read the article and want to add value to the site by adding your information. In return the site appreciates the extra input and is happy to give some link love to the contributor. A win-win for both parties.

But what I suspect is now happening is people are purchasing article marketing programs which submit a generic article to hundreds or thousands of web sites automatically. The aim is to get more links so Google will raise the importance of the person’s site so they get more business. As a business strategy this is a good move, but is it right to post rubbish on others’ sites for your own benefit. I don’t think it is. The means does not always justify the end.

Google was built on the principle of the importance of a site was based on the number of sites linking to the site and in the early days of the internet that was a good strategy. For example Adobe’s site scores a 10 out of 10 in terms of PageRank (Google’s measure of importance) because so many people use Acrobat Reader and link to Adobe’s site so people can easily download and install the software.

Now however, the importance of a site if links are used, is only as good a someone purchasing a program and then spamming thousands of other sites. Blog spamming is possible, it isn’t illegal, but is it a good business methodology and in my opinion it isn’t. If a business uses inappropriate techniques it reflects on the ethics of the business. Just because something can be done it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be.

Right now I am looking for a function room, but I wouldn’t even consider Function Rooms Melbourne because of their approach to business.

Just as interesting when I checked their site, every comment on their site was blog spam. When I see a site with a lot of blog spam I consider that business to lack quality control.

If you’re considering automatically posting articles to sites using an article marketing robot or similar technique, ask yourself how will that reflect on your business. There are a lot of cowboys in the internet market who are prepared to make money and that could be at the expense of your business reputation. Be careful.

If you have a site, turn off the automatic acceptance of comments and review the comments. Most comments now are blog spam. In the past people didn’t know about blog spam so they saw lots of comments as a sign of activity. Now if you see lots of activity which is blog spam, it indicates the comments don’t have any value, even the legitimate ones.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au