After blogging for nearly two years, I find that there are plenty of people out there that don’t have the slightest clue what commentators can do to a post, left unchecked. Much more than that, what they can do to your site overall without some amount of auditing by the site author.
Keyword hijacking in the classic sense is where a blogger creates a post that is outside of their niche in an attempt to drive traffic to a page by means of popular keywords.
Doesn’t sound to bad so far, right? Just read on, take this example for instance:
A blog that focuses on selling fences creates a post titled “Pinay sex” and does their best SEO effort to rank for “Pinay sex”. Obviously a fence site has nothing to do with the keywords they are trying to rank for, but you can bet that if they were able to rank that particular post up to the first page in Google with those keywords, they would be snatching up a good amount of traffic (ignore the fact that the traffic is probably worthless to a fence company, but I’m sure you get the idea).
If you look up “keyword hijacking” in Google, you’ll find most posts that discuss this are focused around this type of hijacking. But there is another form of hijacking that impacts every blogger that allows comments on their blog.
Blogging, commentating and links
The main difference between a classic web site and a blog is the ability for anonymous (or virtually anonymous) users to leave a comment and a link back to a URL of their choice on any page that allows commenting. Users that decide to leave a link are placing a vote for their site, on your site. It’s up to you to allow it or not.
This means that the creative types out in the world have a nice mechanism to exploit for their own gain. They have a way to gain a link pointed to a site of their choice by means of leaving a comment on your site. For the “honest” people out there, this is akin to a blogger being able to thank the visitor for coming by and participating in the conversation. For those “dishonest” people, it’s a way to get a link to their site and pretend to participate in the conversation.
If you’ve been blogging or participating in blogs, you’ve no doubt seen the “dishonest” type of comments. Some are thinly veiled and quite transparent, while others done well enough that you might not notice at first glance.
I recently allowed one of these presumably “dishonest” comments to flow through unhindered by my Gestapo ways. I say presumably since you and I both know, we can never really understand the intentions of our commentators…at least, not the ones that comment, but really don’t add to the conversation. This commentator left this comment on my post titled Flowers for Halloween:
The keywords the commentator decided to use certainly benefits the site being linked to since it’s a florist affiliate of some type, and I certainly wish them all the luck in the world doing what they’re doing. However I sometimes feel violated when visitors do this, and some are quite blatant about it, and hence, rather annoying too. The comment itself is flattering, and that is part of the idea. Create a positive for the blogger, and perhaps I’ll decide to leave it because who wants a mediocre or negative comment, right?
However Mr. “Halloween Flowers” here didn’t bother me much since the post itself wasn’t one I expect to rank for anything. Not like some people (she) who used to hang around here have in the past.
So now that the link is there, will Google think that my post about Flowers for Halloween is giving a vote to theflorist.com for the terms “Halloween Flowers”?
I tend to believe the answer to that is “yes”. Google counts every link on a page, and this commentator has left a link…what else would one think?
It’s easy to do
Want to help promote one of your posts by leaving comments on posts that are related to your keywords? It’s easy to do. All you need to do is perform a search in Google for the keywords of your choice, and look at who pops up. You can go page by page, checking each item in the results. If you can comment on any of the pages that you visit, that could add even more weight to the link you leave.
Leave a link on some random, completely off-topic (keyword) site, or leave it on a page that is targeting the same keywords, or similar keywords?
I have no proof to support this theory, but it seems to make sense to me.
Would Google think a link is more important on a page that talks about flowers, and links to a site that sells flowers?
What if that same flower link was found on a site that talks about fences, perhaps Google wouldn’t give the link any additional weight, if it does indeed give added weight?
Maybe this is all hooey and I should just go back to bed?
So, should you care or not?
Personally, I care, but I also tend to be hyper-vigilant about things like that. Maybe more than I should. I just can’t accept it when a person comes to my site, leaves a link that is completely gratuitous, and doesn’t say anything of importance to the conversation. On top of that, expect me to leave a link to their site using keywords that are relevant to my own post!
This is how I came to define my commenting guidelines, which I should probably update at some point. I certainly don’t expect anyone to follow those guidelines, but I try to follow them for people. It’s how I roll. I’m here for you.
This is also how I came up with leaving a proper name for the comment. Link anywhere you want, but if you expect some type of response from me, leave a name. I won’t talk to “red barn doors for sale”. It’s quite obvious that anyone that does leave a comment like this does so for their own good, not the good of the blog they’re visiting, nor to strike up conversation.
However, there are exceptions of course. Not everyone should be lumped together like that, there are plenty of commentators that do this unwittingly. They just believe it’s quite alright. And perhaps it is for some. It all comes down to the site owner and how they feel about the whole topic.
I’ve been on sites that seem to be really nice, only to look at the comments and realize that the blog owner allows any and all people to drop a link. This reduces the value of the site in my eyes, and most likely in Google’s eyes too. The author doesn’t care to clean up his own front yard, as it were.
What are your thoughts?
Should you care about the links your commentators are placing on your site? Do you monitor your comments and disapprove certain types of commentators? Here is a snippet from Google’s Webmaster tools regarding comment spam:
Think twice about enabling a guest book or comments
A lot of spam doesn’t give users a good impression of your site. If this feature isn’t adding much value to your users, or if you won’t have time to regularly monitor your guestbook or comments, consider turning them off. Most blogging software, such as Blogger, will let you turn comments off for individual posts.
I feel it does in fact take away from the value of your own site, but I really don’t have any other evidence other than how Google has stated they view links, how links count as votes towards another site, and the possibility of you linking to what Google has determined to be a “bad neighborhood” as stated in their own Quality Guidelines for Webmasters.
Please link to this post
I never ask people to link to any post of mine, but I want to try something. I’m going to attempt to rank for the term “keyword hijacking”. So if you feel so inclined, please create some links to this post “out there” by using the keywords “keyword hijacking” as part of the link title.
It should also go without saying that if you comment with the word “keyword” or “hijacking”, or any similar term, I won’t approve your comment. Not only does this post intend to instruct and convey some ideas about keyword hijacking, I also am attempting to rank for those keywords as well, and it is my belief that if you comment with those keywords it will slow me down, or even remove the possibility of this post ranking on page one for those terms.
Lead Image © Roman Milert – Fotolia.com
You might also enjoy these related posts
- How To Increase Web Traffic with Keyword Questions I’m going to let you in on a secret today on how to increase web traffic. Using keyword questions is an easy way that I found late last year...
- The value of a link Links are the currency of the web. It is through links that we find new sites, recommend sites to others, and is what makes the Internet what it is. Without...
- 5 Tips for Commenting On Blogs Here are some excellent tips for commenting on blogs. If you are a blogger, you are probably used to commenting on blogs. If you operate a web site, you...
- Comments are open across the board and ratings are in place and live I’m still building out the syllabus for this years series on building a web site, but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I’ve re-enabled comments...
- What are meta-tags? You have no doubt heard the term meta-tag before, and perhaps you have an idea of what a meta-tag is, or maybe you don’t have a clue. If you’re...
Wayne John is a web developer in Southern California that shares his 25+ years of programming and web development experience freely and happily to anyone willing to learn. He also loathes speaking in the third person. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you 
.-=..."
Lindsay (1)
Switcher (1)
They could absolutely be bots, and most are. They are programed to leave comments that are so well done sometimes that you might not even recognize that their from a bot. But that also means that you get plenty that are so out of context to the post that it’s obvious. The comments are usually generic sounding, and sometimes genuine sounding.
It is not very hard to write an app (if you know what your doing) to crawl blog to blog, leaving comments into a detected form post tag and submitting that form automatically. Then moving on to the next site it finds…
For WordPress installs and I’d say every one of the other blog engines out there, the forms are predictable in name and location, therefore programmable. The form post call that will need to be fired is also very programmable.
I say SERP’s to mean “search engines in general” or something “having a position in the search engine results for a given keyword”. It’s loosely used many ways I guess. Thanks for bringing that up zzyzx! Hope that clears it for ya.
Just so everyone knows like Wayne does, I want to create my own blog, so obviously….I’m very “green” and not on top of the whole terminology of the blog community i.e., SERP….but I am very much understanding of what’s being discussed here and the importance of monitoring/maintaining the author’s own page for the benefits of the reader. Wayne, when ya mentioned about checking the IP of the suspected “hijacker” and marked it as spam plus…the fact that most of these are automated, the following question popped into my head…Could these be “bots”?
I’ve been seeing more and more Disqus on sites. I’ll have to check it out eventually.
I disable comments after about a month I think. I decided it was best as after the initial “hoorah” of a new post, it wears off quickly sometimes, other times it hangs around for a few weeks. A month seemed like enough time to keep up with comments and such. But doing a full two years worth? Forget it, lol.
I also wonder if stuffing keywords in the body of a comment actually does anything than annoy us. I don’t see the benefit for the spammer, what’s the real point.
I think the idiocy of it grates on my nerves. It’s pointless, and now I’m getting bent out of shape. Sigh.
I appreciate the time you spent to leave your comment Robert. Awful cool of you to do so. Cheers!
Comment spam and keyword hijacking is the pain of my life. I can relate to this 100%. I recently changed my comment system to Disqus in an effort to be able to moderate the comments from a central system
You know how difficult it is to moderate comments on posts that are over a year old. You miss a few, thats the killer.
Not only Keywords in the links, but what about stuffing keywords in the comment. Line after line after line oaf the same rubbish. It does not stop.
Robert Bravery´s last blog ..7 Reasons why you should quit blogging
Wow! Thanks for the kudos! That means a lot to hear. I kinda dig your writing style, and the Apocalypse series was awesome. So thanks Ryhen!
I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering since I’ve moved to WordPress, and that’s reduced the posts to a bit less than they could be sometimes. Things always circle back around, it’s what happens when your routine consists of projects that are in concept, progress, maintenance or done.
Rankings don’t bother me much either, I’ve become a person that will just let things happen. I try to guide, but don’t get hung up on it personally.
I sure do like when they go in the right direction though. lol
Readers are number one for sure, and hopefully the words convey that enough, right?
Thanks for taking the time to leave your comment Ryhen!
wow! it’s my first time to see you earnestly cover a topic like this. great article, Wayne! Comment spammers are indeed annoying and I sometimes get the urge to diss them, but I digress from the idea simply because that will only make me the idiot and I’m not sure what impression that kind of action will leave on other people who visit me. Honestly, I find it more convenient to encounter morons on the web than meet them face to face. I approve comments if they don’t look too much like spam. I also don’t worry too much about how they will affect my rankings. I have a strong belief that your traffic will eventually increase as long as you provide valuable information – something that strikes a chord in people’s hearts. I’m done thinking about how google will like my blog. I’m more concerned about my readers now. =)
Ryhen Satch´s last blog ..The 10 Commandments Of Creativity
Manz, I know that feeling all too well. You don’t want to kill off the community, but you don’t want to deal with the spam anymore. What to do, what to do…
Roger, I think you should. haha
Jan, only bloggers can stop and/or hinder the progress of hijacking keywords. Caffeine appears to be a new method of “Googling” search results.
Jim, you’re welcome. Hope you liked it.
I think many people do not realize the importance of watching their comments. Hopefully this will allow people to see the light. Thanks.
Jim Timpson´s last blog ..Auto Window Tinting
Thankyou for this very informative post. I’ve heard about keyword hijacking but never really understood what it involved. Sounds like something else that should be consigned to the gallows ASAP.
A question here for someone/everyone please? Will Google Caffeine be able to stop this or at least hinder the ‘practice’?
Kind Regards to all ~ I’m going to bookmark this blog for you now
So I shouldn’t just write sex, sex, sex..ah, nuts.
Roger Green´s last blog ..My Mom’s Birthday
This basically answers my question I left on “The Value of a Link”
Albeit, not exactly the same context I was talking about, but the thoughts are there.
I’m doing the yoyo on “keep comments/remove comments” at the moment. Moderation is a bitch!
Manz´s last blog ..Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (2008)
haha, please do! I also mod each comment, and have become quite proficient at not blinking or thinking twice when I hit “mark as spam”.
Although, some still make me pause and consider the other end. Is this a user that just doesn’t know better? Then I look at the IP and see it’s from India and then I hit the spam button.
Many of the comments are automated, they don’t even waste their time, just ours. Right after I left BlogEngine for WordPress, I caught a site that was offering an application for testing to see how well it performed at automated commenting against the BlogEngine platform.
What’s funny is that while the application worked and did so really well, the community quickly came up with a way to defeat the app. Leaving the spammers to only hit those that really don’t know the tech all that well and haven’t upgraded.
Of course, there are plenty of those that don’t keep up, so that particular tool is probably still working out really well for them.
As for commenting helping out with rankings, I believe that is due to a post being continually freshened up with additional content. Perhaps that is the one thing that make comments good for a site (outside of the community aspects of course). win win.
I’d love to read about your ‘trick’, got a post about it?
Boy, O, Boy… I could go on all day about this subject!
1) I moderate every single comment on all my blogs 100%. What drives me nuts, is when someone tries to post a spam comment on a moderated blog, WTF are they really that stupid to think they have a chance to post the spam comment, that’s just crazy, that they would waste any amount of time to try & get that spam link posted.
I had a guy once that was trying to spam my moderated blog almost every other day for a month. Needless to say I started getting tired of deleting comments from this guy, I wasn’t going to let one guy ruin my comments for my blog.
I believe in the comment system & that it plays a very important role in SERP position, I know this for a fact, by scrolling thru the Google SERP pages for my blog, a lot of the SERP descriptions are from comments posted on my blogs.
I think by removing a blog comment system that it’s only a shot in the foot, as far as ever ranking well with Google.
2) I have a trick to deal with comment spammers, & also a twist on Google SERP hijacking, I won’t post them here, they are a little black hat (from my evil side lol
).
One of the best blogs I read every day is by Seth Godin, called “Seth’s Blog”. He writes just a few paragraphs daily and doesn’t take comments. Admittedly he is a millionaire best selling writer and any comments he would get would number in the thousands and he promotes his books too. So Godin has got to a place where comments and spam are not an issue. Some blogs I read get 50 comments and more, but the author does not respond to them, that would be a full time job. Reading comments, writing comments and responding to them, takes a lot of time. My blog is a tiny fish swimming in an ocean of tiny fish eating giants and considering I am not in it for the money, I have thought about discontinuing comments and see if my 2,000 page views a month drops dramatically. It probably would.
Holte Ender´s last blog ..Bush/Cheney To Be Pressed Into Jury Service
We’re both tiny fish swimming in their ocean, lol. I’m pretty indecisive about my feeling towards my own blog and comments. Turn em off? nah. Leave em on? Sure, but then I deal with all the spam and crap from SEO sweatshops.
Holte, if you removed comments and your pageviews drop, what negative might come from that? it’s not about the money right? So why would the pageviews matter then? A little devils advocate here… We both know social traffic visitors aren’t ad clickers, so that leaves popularity. I don’t think you’re into that either, could be wrong I suppose. I try not to worry about any of it really.
The main point is that you don’t get fooled by slick willy commentators and reduce the potential impact of your hard work….I seem to attract a number of them here.