The spammer's web of intrigue stretches far and wide, and as expected, has already ensnared blog comments as part of their prey.
As a result of the perceived spam threat, many potential business bloggers are very concerned about adding comments, to their business blogs.
I understand new the business blog owners' fears. No one wants their blog comments being splattered, with less than desirable non-comments, from the nefarious spammers.
I do believe, however, that spam fear should not stop a business from adding a blog component to their marketing, public relations, customer service, and SEO efforts.
Havng a blog is simply too valuable, for anyone in any business, to be frightened away by a few low life spam spreaders.
Many business people are new to blogging, but they are not new to e-mail. Sadly, as we all know, e-mail boxes are often polluted with spam. Much of that unsolicited e-mail is pornography of the worst and most hideously degrading sort.
No one wants that sort of thing trashing their blog comments either.
Because of those concerns, many potential business bloggers suggest that perhaps they should leave the comments turned off. Occasionally, the discussion of whether or not to maintain a business blog, is decided solely on the possibility of blog comment spam.
Sadly as a result, all too many business people either don't start the blog, or set one up without activated comments.
It doesn't have to be that way.
First of all, a blog is a conversation between the blog writer and the reader. Part of that personal interaction, is through the ability of readers to post thoughts and comments, on the posting in question. Many times, the number of post comments will total in the dozens. Literally.
That sort of real and friendly communication between blogger and reader, and often among the comment posters themsleves, is part of the true power of blogs. Many times, reading the comments is much more interesting than the initial post that spawned the discussion in the first place.
Remove the blog comment portion of the posts, and the life of the blog becomes a hollow shell, and a mere shadow of its former self.
Blog comments still receive spam. Some blogs do receive more than others, and for many bloggers, spam is a major problem. You would think those heavily spam assaulted bloggers would cut off their comments. Right?
Wrong.
Instead of removing their valued comments, they take steps to reduce or eliminate the spam, while maintianing their important conversations with visitors.
Here are some of the things savvy bloggers do:
They insert code to prevent spammers.
They place first time posters on comment moderation.
Sometimes posts remain moderated permanently, prior to being published.
They require a randomly generated alpha-numeric code be entered, in order to submit the comment, thus preventing automated comments.
They vigilantly watch their comments, as they are good bloggers who read all of their readers' ideas, and studiously delete the spam posts.
Many bloggers place the rel="nofollow" coding in their comments, to prevent any Google PageRank flow to the posted links, or any link popularity value from helping the spammers with search engine rankings. Unfortunately, this technique, recommended by Google themselves, also penalizes legitimate commenting visitors.
They check their comments regularly by having the comments e-mailed or RSS fed to themselves. By subscribing to their own comments with e-mail or RSS, they can check each comment as it appears. Spam can then be made to disappear.
While each of these techniques, and there are many more, are helpful to keep blog comment spam under control, spam still happens. Fortunately, even blogs receiving heaps of spam receive many, many times more good and worthwhile comments too.
Spam comments are merely a tiny percentage of the overall comment total. Of course, we all remember the day we stubbed our toe. We had exponentially more days when our toe was just fine.
When our toe was stubbed, we took steps (sorry) to make it well again, and to ease the pain. After that, it was gone.
So it is with comment spam.
Spam can be kept under control too.
Don't let fear of comment spam prevent you from starting a business blog, or setting up a blog without comments.
Don't let that one loudmouth, obnoxious spammer stop your conversations with all the other nice people who read your blog. The good visitors, with many great thoughts, ideas, and helpful feedback should not be denied their opportunity to begin a conversation.
That's the entire point of blogs and blog comments.
To create a conversation.
Keep those blog comments activated, and keep the conversation flowing.
And chase the spammers away.
