Snoskred – Life in the Country

Archive for the 'blogging tips' Category

Google Reader Can Make Your Life Easier – Here’s How.

September 25th, 2007 Comments(12)

If you use Google Reader and you only read one post today, make it this post because what I am about to tell you will change your way of reading blogs forever. If, like many people, you do not use a feed reader at all, make sure to read this post. There are only so many hours in a day so you have to make the most of your time.

Watch Out!

In Space a black hole is a hole in the fabric of space-time. A deep well into which matter and energy may fall but may never exit. Out there somewhere are bloggers who have fallen into these holes and never seem to find their way out again. These holes are known on earth as Feed Readers.

The Temporal Vortex -

In Space a temporal vortex is a rift in the spacetime continuum that allows people to travel from one point in time to another point in time without any time passing. On Earth, this is known as Web Surfing.

Time Goes By -

There you sit, happily reading posts in your feed reader. Something catches your attention and you click on a link, which leads you to another link, which leads you somewhere else. Before you know it, two hours have passed and you are left wondering – where did that time go?

Never Fear –

Because Snoskred is here, and I have a plan which will help you -

- read more blogs more efficiently
- make better use of your time
- show you some neat features in Google Reader which are very useful and time saving.

First Up –

Feed Reading For Beginners

This is for people who still surf manually to blogs or use bookmarks. If you are already using a feed reader you may want to scroll down till you see STOP in bright red. Just to save yourself a little time.

Why Do I Need To Use One?

How many times do you visit a site and they have not posted anything new? That’s time (and internet bandwidth) wasted, right there. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way that people could slap you in the face with a wet newspaper when they’ve written a new post? Imagine if some genius invented such a thing! Well, someone did. It’s called a feed reader.

What You Talkin’ Bout?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get too technical on you. Every blog you visit has a RSS feed – RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is well named, because it is really simple. It means you can “subscribe” to a blog. Whenever that blog updates, you will see the new posts in your feed reader. This means you can stop wasting time visiting sites only to find nothing has been written.

How Fast?

Generally a new post will appear between 30 minutes to 6 hours of being posted by the blogger. Bloggers can make this quicker by “pinging” and using a service called Feedburner, which we have discussed before and I will link to those discussions at the end of the post.

How Do I Get A Feed Reader?

There are many free feed reader services out there. Bloglines and Google Reader are the two most popular. I use Google Reader so that is the one we will talk about today. All you need to get yourself a Google Reader is a Google account, which you may already have if you use a Gmail address – or if you use Blogger.

How Do I Add My Blogs To It?

There are two ways of adding a blog to your feedreader. 1. If the blogger involved has the universal feed symbol on their blog, you can click on that. You will usually then be asked what kind of feed reader you want to use, and then you will be asked to confirm your subscription by simply clicking on “Add To Google Reader”. 2. Simply click on “Add Subscription” in Google Reader and enter the blog URL into the box you see below. The reader will then find the feed for that blog.

STOP

Bloggers – Two Questions

Do you have the universal RSS symbol at the top of your sidebar? If you do not, I highly recommend you put one there – you will gain more subscribers if you make it easy and simple for them to subscribe. See this post of Sephy’s – All About RSS – for info on how to do that.

Do you have a feedburner feed? If not, you should consider creating one ASAP. Again see this post of Sephy’s – All About RSS – for info on how to do that.

Faster Feed Reading.

Divide And Conquer -

Google Reader allows you to use folders with your blogs. Why would you want to use folders? Folders allow you to spend shorter amounts of time reading one group of blogs. Most of my folders I can get through in 5 minutes or less – I am a fast reader. I have 18 folders. 18×5 = 90 minutes a day.

I never sit down and read for 90 minutes at a time. I divide it up. At the end of each hour during the day I take a break from what I am doing and spend 5-10 minutes reading blogs.

Making a folder is simple- When you add a feed to your Google Reader, you click on feed settings (in the right hand corner of your screen) and select new folder. You will then be asked to name your new folder.
The Painful Truth -

We all have blogs that we LOVE reading, and then we have blogs we LIKE reading, and then we have blogs we read to inform us and give us information, and some of us have blogs we feel obliged to read because the blogger involved is very supportive of us and comments on our blog a lot – sometimes these are blogs we feel neutral or even don’t like but we keep doing it anyway.

Temptation Island – Don’t Go There!

It is very tempting to put the most loved blogs all together in one folder, and the liked blogs in another, and the information blogs in another, and the blogs we don’t want to read into their own folder. I don’t recommend doing that – what that would do is ruin your reading experience. You’ll have one folder which always gets read, one folder which gets read most days, one folder which gets read when you have the time, and one folder which never gets read. You’re setting yourself up to fail.

Mix It Up Instead –

Try to make sure you have at least one loved blog in each folder. This will ensure all folders get read regularly.

Different Views –

By clicking on Show updated or all – You can choose to view all folders and blogs – which will look like this – Or you can choose to view updated folders and blogs only – This means you will only see folders and blogs which have new posts in them. As you read the posts, the read ones will disappear and you are only left with the unread posts. This makes it a lot easier to stop in the middle of reading a folder to do something else, because when you return you’re only going to see what you have not read.

List View -

If you read any of the Bumpzee communities, you will know you often have to sort through a lot of echo chamber type posts (where everyone is talking about the same thing) in order to get to something interesting to read, and there can be a lot of new posts in those communities daily – most days the Do Follow community has over 170 posts. How can you easily filter out the noise? Use list view. What you will see is this – click for a larger image As you can see, it makes it a lot easier to pick the posts you want to read.

Expanded View -
If you choose expanded view, you will see as much of the post as the feed allows you to see. If a blogger has a full feed, you will see the entire post. If they are using a partial feed (and nobody should be using that in this day and age, if they truly want to keep their readers happy) you will only see the partial post.

The 100 Metre Dash -

Imagine you are at the Olympics in that huge stadium full of people, and you’re about to run the 100 metre dash. Next to you are the big names in running. Ready, Set, GO! You all take off, but every 5 metres you stop to do up your shoelace. That is exactly what can happen if you interrupt your blog reading to make a comment. You’ll get to the finish line but it will be a lot later than everyone else.

How To Comment?

But you want to comment on blogs, right? Of course you do. We all do. It is just that interrupting one task to do another one isn’t very efficient. So what you can do is.. open each blog you want to comment on in a new tab or window and when you’ve read that whole folder go and make your comments. There are some short cut ways to do this.

Firefox Users -

If you have a mouse with a middle scroll wheel thingy you can simply click on a link using the middle scroll and it will open the link in a new tab.

You can also right click, and choose open in a new window or open in a new tab.

You can hold down shift and click the left mouse button, and it will open the link in a new window.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Users -

If you’re using Internet Explorer 7, you can also use the middle scroll to get the link opening in a new tab.

You can use the right click, and choose open in a new window or open in a new tab.

You can hold down shift and click the left mouse button, and it will open the link in a new window.

Check Out The Trends!

If you want to be surprised, click on trends in the left hand sidebar. I bet most of you had ever done that before, right? Neither had I until 5 minutes ago, and what I found is fascinating. Before I post the graphic let me say if your site has less than 100% read rate for the last 30 days, it could be for two reasons – I’ve had to mark all read several times because I was too busy moving to read any posts those days, and if you are one of the new blogs I am reading I mark your posts read when I add you to my reader and that drags down your average. I have usually read your last 10 posts on your actual blog. This only lists 40 blogs and you can’t see the whole list in this screenshot – I have 172 blog subscriptions. According to the stats there, on average I read 143 blog posts a day. Whoa!

Technorati – Sending Out An S.O.S.

September 18th, 2007 Comments(9)

Technorati has been screwed up for a while. If I used swear words on this blog, I would say this using a different word that begins with F in place of the word screwed.

I hate to say it –

but Technorati, I feel like our relationship is deteriorating, and I think it is time we faced it. The only trouble is, there is nobody like you out there. And it seems some advertisers believe in you. I have lost faith in you myself. I think you’re cheating on me. Seeing other blogs. Sleeping around like a cheap sheet in a dodgy motel. Lying to me! Please, get yourself together before it is too late for us.

Favourite Nightmare –

Currently there is no way for me to add any new favourites. I have over 200, and apparently this means I am a demon from hell and should not be allowed to have any more favourites. Or something like that. And I am not alone – Andy Beard wrote Technorati Favorites – Interesting New Message. I am now able to delete favourites but still cannot add any.

Changes?

There may be changes afoot. On the 16th of August the CEO Dave Sifry quit, and also fired about 8 staff. You can read his goodbye post on the Technorati blog here – A Change In Seasons – and also a couple of interesting reactions to it – Technorati Loses A “Great Leader.” PodTech Also Loses CEO and Technorati Update: Time To Freak Out?

What Does This Mean?

Hopefully it will mean a better Technorati for all of us, but there is a LOT of work to do before that happens. Many people have been experiencing problems with pings. A lot of people feel they cannot use Technorati to read blogs anymore because it is very unreliable.

Some people have given up on it completely because it was increasing their page load times on a regular basis – and that is fair enough, too. People have often reported having trouble getting any kind of technical support, though this may have been fixed recently.

When Will It Be Fixed?

I guess the biggest question is – how long are we all expected to just hang in there while they try to sort things out? Just 7 days ago Andy Beard posted about some of the issues he had spotted over there, and these are not just small things. Technorati Topics Announced & Bugs. Do make sure to read that one – you’ll see a blog there called automattic which is not a blog at all, yet it has a Technorati authority of over 14,000. How can that be fair?

Your Blog Is Important -

It is important to you, and important to your readers. It does not seem to be so important to Technorati. My advice to anyone reading this? Don’t become reliant on Technorati for anything.

Don’t Use It To Read Blogs –

Some of the blogs in my favourites list say they have not been updated in over 100 days or so, and yet those bloggers are still blogging, still writing, and I am getting their posts in Google Reader.

No feed reader is perfect but you should expect feeds to show up within 30 minutes to 6 hours if you’re using feedburner. 100 days is a different century in net time. Use Google Reader or Bloglines or some other feed reader to get your blog fixes. Don’t rely on Technorati for this. You will be disappointed if you do.

Consider Removing Their Widgets -

This is what I have seen a couple of times lately – One time I was willing to overlook, two times seemed like carelessness but I was still willing to forgive. Three times, you’re off my sidebar. I’m sorry to everyone who is listed in my favourites. I know often people clicked on those posts but I can’t afford to have something non working on my sidebar like that. When I remove a widget it is rarely ever likely to make a comeback, so Technorati you’ve done your dash there.

Google Search Is Better -

I’ll also take off the search box because I found it quite unreliable. I have found a way to put a Google Search Box on my blog instead. You can do the same because Sephy tells you how to install a Google Search Box onto your blog. I highly recommend that you do it – this will make it easier for your readers to find what they are looking for.

That Only Leaves –

Giving people the ability to fave your blog on Technorati. Which is fine, if they are *able* to add people to their favourites. If you want to give people the option to do that, why not check out this post from The Random Forest for a lovely icon which I just installed in my sidebar – Free for all, two new Technorati icons – much nicer looking than the Technorati ones as you see below. You can click on this one to fave my blog.

In The Meantime –

Regularly visit Technorati and ping your blog manually. This is a simple and easy thing to do. It is one way to make sure your blog is up to date. How do you do it?

Visit Technorati’s Ping Form.

If you are logged into Technorati you will see your blogs there.

Either click on the ping next to your blog name, or enter in the URL of the blog you want pinged – the second is handy if you want to ping the blog of a friend.

I Feel Sad -

For all the staff who work there and believe in what they are doing. I don’t know what is going wrong there. I don’t want to know what is going wrong there. I want someone to fix it. I want Technorati to be working at the full potential I think it is capable of, and I think all bloggers would agree with that.

But -

We have blogs to run as well, and we cannot afford to sit back and be patient while widgets don’t work, while we can’t add people to our favourites, while this service is used as a way to rate bloggers yet at the same time it is giving incorrect ratings to blogs that don’t exist!

Previous Tuesday Think Tanks -

Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS

Demystifying Blogger Template Editing
Blog Design – Open Your Eyes

Say No! to Nofollow
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!

Stumble It -

If you liked this post, be sure to give it a stumble.

Check Sephy Out –

Sephy has a companion post to this, which you can read here – The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati – this covers blog authority, rank and reactions and how they change as well as some other useful stuff.

Make A Request –

This week’s Tuesday Think Tank came as the result of a request from Julie, who had some questions about Technorati and why her ranking has been changing recently. If you have something you want to have covered in a future Tuesday Think Tank, we always are willing to take suggestions; all you need to do is send an email to either myself or to Sephy, and we will tackle your topic on a future Tuesday.

Over To You -

How do you feel about Technorati? Are you ready to break up and move on with your life? Will you stick it out a little longer? Are you going to remove some of their widgets? What have you been using it for, is that still working or have you had to look for other options?

Do you have a blog topic you’d like to know more about? Simply mention it in the comments.

Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.

September 11th, 2007 Comments(24)

Today’s Tuesday Think Tank is all about Site Meters. I’m talking about how unreliable they are, how readers of your blog can stop them from working, how you measure your worth as a blogger, and possible ways you could increase your traffic and make sure readers stick around once they get to your blog.

Sephy has written a companion piece to this post – Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics which you should check out.

Site Meters Are A Free Service -

It’s rare on the internet to find something that is actually free. Blogger is one thing that is free, and it provides you with a lot of options and things you can do at no cost whatsoever. But if you stop and consider for a moment how much it costs to provide this service to any man – and his dog or cat! – who want to blog.. it costs bandwidth, it takes up CPU time (computer processing unit, your computer has one but so do all the computers at the other end when you look at something on the internet).

Most people who run a website have to pay to run it. They have to pay for server space. That could be as little as $7 a year but the more people who visit your site, the higher that cost can increase. Most of my stuff which is on Fraudstars is being hosted on a $400AUD a month dedicated server. We share it with a friend, and we pay towards the cost of running it.

Consider The Source -

Free can sometimes mean you get what you pay for – i.e. nothing. If you consider these services which are used by so many bloggers but also websites across the www, it takes an enormous amount of “internet juice” (bandwidth, CPU, etc) to run these things. So these people are supposed to provide you with a great service which *costs* them money to provide it and is always reliable and always works, for free? Err, are we asking a bit too much here?

Things Happen -

Servers go down regularly, as any good internet host will tell you. You cannot expect that the information given to you by a free site tracking service is going to be 100% accurate. Unless you want to sit there and check it is working 24/7, which would be a great waste of your time.

These sites also have customers who are paying for the service and if anything goes wrong the first people who they will look after is their paying customers. It makes sense from a business point of view. We cannot expect this free service to be accurate. You can use it as a guide, but that is where it should end.

There May Be Delays –

The information available to you may not be live information. There can be delays – sometimes up to 24 hours or more – with information being tracked and translated. If you post something and then check your counter and think “Nobody’s reading my post!” you may have incorrect information. There could be 50 people reading your post. You might see that days later in your tracker – or maybe not at all, if there was an outage.

It Matters Where You Put It -

If you put the code for your tracker at the very top of your sidebar, you will get different results to putting it lower down on your sidebar. If the code is right at the bottom of the page and it is not Javascript, everything on the page has to load before a “visit” gets counted.

I’ve been trying to find out for certain whether Javascript loads all the scripts on a page at the same time, or one by one in order and not having any luck, so if you know about that can you leave a comment?

People Can Hit Stop –

If your page load takes too long, most browsers have the “Stop Loading This Page” option. You would be surprised how many people use it and how quickly they use it, too. If they stop the page loading before your counter script runs? No data will be sent re their visit.

It Matters What Kind Of Code -

Some trackers are Javascript. Some internet users (myself included) use a Firefox extension called “No Script”. This actually stops any Javascript from loading in a page unless I (the user) personally authorise it. This means if I visit your blog for the first time, and you have a bunch of Javascripts running, they won’t load.

Take for example Statcounter. I have approved statcounter Javascript for any site I visit. That means if I visit a site the Statcounter will load, but none of the other Javascripts will. As an internet user this gives me a LOT more control over how I am viewing the web, but it can also mean my visits to your site won’t be tracked at all.

Why No Script?

I use it because there have been security problems with javascript from time to time, and I sometimes visit websites created by internet scammers. It is a quick and easy way I can tell what is running on a page without checking the source code, and anything I have not previously approved will be unable to run until I do approve it. Here’s what a page looks like when I view it with No Script – Click for a bigger view. You can see that a little yellow bar runs across the bottom of the page, telling me which scripts I have previously approved are running. It also tells me how many scripts in total are running on the page and when I click on options (the screenshot shows me clicking on options) it gives me more information. I can choose to forbid any of those approved javascripts at any time.

Results Can Vary Widely –

I run two site meters on the site currently – Google Analytics and Statcounter. Feedburner also has a counter built in. Last Wednesday September the 5th -

Statcounter shows – visits 419, page views 861

Google Analytics shows – visits 349, page views 802

Feedburner shows – visits 323, page views 810

Do you see now how these are a bit unreliable? That is a huge difference, especially given two of the scripts (Statcounter and Google Analytics) are right next to each other in the sidebar. Which one of the above should I believe? How can I know how many people actually visited my page?

Don’t Invest Yourself –

If you define your worth as a blogger in how many people visit your site and you are relying on these free tracking tools, you are setting yourself up for heart break. For no good reason. Site Meters should only be used as a guide to the general traffic on your blog, and not as the bible of internet usage or any kind of measure of how many people are reading you.

How Do You Measure?

How can anyone possibly measure their worth as a blogger? At the end of the day, it could boil down some or all of the following -

If you are happy with what you are writing
(if not, work harder on the writing)

If you are happy with your blog template
(if not, test out a new one and consider changing it)

If you are happy with the look of your blog
(if not, take a good look at it, remove anything you don’t like)

If you are happy with your header graphic
(if not, create a new one. If you don’t have the tools, ask for help from other bloggers, run a competition on your blog to have your readers create a new one for you)

If you are happy with the amount of comments you receive
(if not, network. Get out there and meet new people, comment on their blogs, they will comment back)

If you are happy with the quality of your content
(if not, learn more about writing, edit, improve, read this- 10 Easy Ways To Improve Your Blog Writing. )

If you are happy with the relationships you have built with other bloggers
(if not, work on building relationships with other bloggers)

If you are happy with the amount of links back to you from other bloggers
(if not, link to them more and you will find they link back to you, a weekly wrap up is one good way to achieve this)

If you are not happy with any of the above, these are all things you can work on and improve.

You’re in charge -

You can create positive change in any area of your blogging. If I can do it, you can do it. Anyone can do it. Daisy The Curly Cat is doing it, even though it must be hard to type with kitty paws. Love your work, Daisy.

Bloggers, don’t make excuses for your inaction. If you don’t have the time and energy to put into your blog, that is one thing. People have real lives. We all have to do the chores, etc. Some of us have jobs to go to. Some of us have kids and family. There is only a certain amount of time and energy we can each devote to blogging. We have to accept that, and be ok with it.

But..

If you DO have the time and energy and you waste it by constantly checking your blog stats instead of networking and building relationships with other bloggers and the zillion things you can do to improve your blog- that IS something you can change.

Consider taking some time to learn to manage time better. To begin with, you could try setting yourself a target – for example, comment on 5 new blogs a day – and then set out to hit that target each and every day. Be pro-active and you will see results Be inactive and you’ll get exactly what you put in – nothing.

There Are Ways -

To improve the traffic to your blog. See the article – 75 Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic – by Tay from Super Blogging for some great ideas. Try some of them out. If they don’t work, try something different.

They Say -If you build it, they will come. I have found this to be partially true. They won’t come unless you tell them where it is first. It is like throwing a party and not inviting anyone, yet expecting people to somehow know you’re having a party and find it anyway, and when nobody shows up you fret and get depressed about it. What did you expect? That people are psychic? That they are somehow able to read your thoughts? That people would magically find your blog out of the literally millions of blogs out there on the net?

Stay Positive –

If you look at your stats and find it makes you negative, unhappy, or inspires you to write posts lamenting the lack of readers and traffic, stop right there.

It is one thing to say to your readers – how can I improve this blog – and actually listen to them when they tell you, and make the changes they suggest. That’s fine, and something we should all do as bloggers from time to time.

It is another thing to throw a full blown tantrum which makes the people who do read and are loyal to you feel like they aren’t worth anything to you as readers. Vent elsewhere. Never do it publicly on your blog.

Don’t Be Negative –

You may remember me writing – 14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog. As a blogger, it is also not good to -

- engage in bitch brawls with other bloggers (not only will the blogger feel attacked but their readers will too, it’s one way to make many enemies at once!) or spend time attacking other bloggers in a negative manner
- post whiny, whinging posts regularly (more often than positive content)
- post things which made your readers feel physically ill (keep your poop and vomit stories away from me!)

Some Things Should Never Be Blogged About.

You know how we all have topics we simply refuse to write about? For some of us it’s sex, religion, drugs, rock and roll, bowel movements, whatever. I suggest it is in a bloggers best interest to add “lack of blog traffic” to the list of topics they will never ever blog about. But feel free to blog up a storm when traffic is good or exceeds your expectations.

I Know This Is True –

Once they arrive, if you do not build it, refine it, work on it, tweak it, make it better, make it load fast, make it pleasing to their eye, and create good content, they won’t stick around long. It’s no easy task and it requires you to be the master of many different subjects – or at least to know a little bit about them.

Blogger can let you down-

Sometimes my page load is slow because of Blogger – again we’re back to what you get for free. Sometime in the next few months this blog will be moving to WordPress, and I will have a lot more control over things like that. It will cost me money but I’m worth it – and so are my readers.

Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!

September 04th, 2007 Comments(25)

Today on Think Tank Tuesday I’m taking a look at No Follow and Do Follow and how these relate to blogs and spam, and Sephy is going to let you know how to turn no follow off on Blogger, WordPress, and various other kinds of blogs. It is a lot easier than you think, you’ll be glad to know!

So what is NoFollow All About?

Most blogs come with no follow installed on the comments section automatically. This was originally done to prevent link spammers gaining anything from their spammy efforts. Unfortunately nofollow does not work – nofollow blogs still get spam comments.

That means anytime someone comments on your blog their link is not followed by the search engines. The commentor does not receive a link back on either Technorati or Google or Yahoo or any of the other search engines.

Is It Fair To Your Commentors?

By making a link no follow, you’re effectively saying to the search engines – I don’t trust this link. Given that most of us do actually trust the links of our commentors, this is not a Good Thing.

Choose Not To Give Link Juice -

When you have a blog, you can choose to make certain things no follow. For example, if I wanted to link to someone in a post but I did not want the search engines to see that link, I would put in a bit of code that turns the link into a no follow link. Why would I want to do that?

Link Bait -

Sometimes bloggers post controversial things in order to get links back to their blog. I can name a few who do this regularly. If you feel a blogger is link baiting but you still want to discuss their post there is an easy way you can make the link no follow.

Sephy has shown you how you can do this in his post on this topic – Say No To NoFollow, it is simple and easy to do.

You will still be giving their blog traffic if anyone clicks on the link, but it is better to do that than leave your readers wondering what the heck you’re talking about – and much better than giving the blogger what they are looking for by being controversial, which is backlinks to their blog. Don’t reward them by giving them link juice.

Links Mean $$$ To Some -

Why do bloggers link bait? To some bloggers, backlinks can mean money. The more back links your blog has, the higher ranking you get on Technorati, the higher your page rank, the higher price you can charge advertisers.

What Is Do Follow?

The Do Follow movement is basically people who have decided they want their commentors links to be followed by the search engines. These Do Follow bloggers have taken the time to remove no follow from their comments sections. Depending on what kind of blog they have this can be an easy task or a difficult one.

Sephy has explained how to make your blog do follow with instructions for Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Movable Type and some others.in his companion post to this one, make sure to read it. Here is the link again if you have not already opened it in a new window or tab – Say No To NoFollow

Will This Increase Spam?

In a word, no. I was getting spammed before I became do follow, and I have been spammed since. What will add to your chances of being spammed more often is by joining one of the Do Follow link lists that exist on the internet. These are targeted often by spammers looking for a way to build backlinks fast.

The Bumpzee Community -

There is a No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community at Bumpzee. Being a member of this community is worthwhile if you are a do follow blog because your posts go out on the RSS feed for other do follow readers to view. It has meant more traffic to my blog.

I believe three times since I joined the community, which was some months ago now, I have been spammed by people who came directly here from the Bumpzee community. These are the paid commentors. Their comments are easy to spot and easily deleted. So as far as I am concerned the issue of being spammed by people who know you are do follow is not much of a problem for me.

What If I Get Spammed?

You can easily turn no follow back on – but that won’t stop the spam. Spam is a problem we all have to deal with here on the internet. We just have to be adults about it, set a comments policy for ourselves, and then follow it.

Since I put in a comments policy on the page where people leave a comment, I have only been spammed once. The paid comments people seem to have got the message – it is a waste of their time to comment here and they won’t get paid for the comment because I delete it quickly. If you can do the same thing, you can keep your blog spam free.

How Can I Tell When It’s Spam?

The number one give away is the link they are using. When I see a comment that is possibly spam, the first thing I do is copy the link and take the link over to Technorati. For example, this is one of the comment spammers that has been here recently – on Technorati and another one – and as soon as you search for the URL you can see they have a lot of recent reactions with different names – Tom Paine, Lais Edwards, Richard Andrews, Clebsch Gordon, etc.

Why It Works -

Looking at the backlinks, some of the bloggers I most respect got caught out by these spammers. There’s a lot of familiar names and blogs there. I didn’t have the time to email or comment on all the posts, otherwise I would have.

The two blogs mentioned above now have medium level authorities on Technorati – (one has an authority of 51) (two has an authority of 65). You’ll note I am not linking to the blogs themselves, only to Technorati. I do not want to give them any link juice.

Team Up With Fellow Bloggers -

The major mistake these spammers made was – they visited Sephy’s blog not long after visiting mine, and left similar comments. Sephy and I discussed them on Skype and figured out it was spam, and then deleted them.

Don’t be afraid to contact a fellow blogger who has received a comment you suspect is spam and ask what their thoughts are on it. Sephy posted about it here – Paid Comments Not Allowed

Search The Name or URL-

Lucia spotted what was going on and wrote a post about it here – Jimmy Spam (& SEO Tip)! and many bloggers have been finding out it was spam via the search engines because of this post.

Post About It Yourself -

If spam has become an issue on your blog, it could be worthwhile posting about it so that other bloggers can be aware of it. When they google the names you keep seeing as spam, they will find your post and then they can delete the spam as well – and if they read your post, when those names turn up on their blog they can hit delete fast.

Just make sure not to give any link juice to the spammers – you can make individual links no follow easily (See Sephy’s Post for info on how) so please do so when referring to the links spammers leave, or use the name only, don’t put a link in, like Lucia did.

Moderation?

From time to time all bloggers find themselves switching to moderated comments. I’ve had to do it here, when trolls have arrived. Using moderation takes all the fun out of it for them. You usually don’t have to leave it on for too long before they give up and go somewhere else to troll.

You can also use moderation to combat spam and this is a tactic some bloggers are trying out recently. If you are available most of the time to moderate comments, you may wish to try this but be aware – it tends to stifle discussion. And what happens when you sleep? Comments stay unmoderated for hours at a time. ;(

Moderation After The Fact -

I tend to stick with a moderation afterwards policy here. If I spot a comment which is inappropriate, unacceptable or spam, it is quickly deleted. Sometimes not quickly enough because the search spiders are here fairly often. So they may get a some link juice if I’m not on the ball.

Trusted People -

If you have a couple of people you really trust who live in different timezones to you, you may choose to make them an administrator on your blog. This gives them the power to moderate comments. You discuss with them what is unacceptable, and they keep an eye out, deleting anything which would be against your policy, or anything which is clearly spam.

What About Captcha?

Blogger users will be familiar with Captcha word verification, it looks like this – The reason it is exists is to stop spam bots posting comments on your blog. However it could be stopping regular human people from posting on your blog. You only need to turn word verification on when you’re being targeted by a spam bot – as in you’ll be getting a boatload of comments in a very short amount of time – and this will stop the spam bot from posting more comments. May I recommend you turn it off in the meantime?

Julie Pippert recently posted about Captcha and if you read her post you will see you might be missing out on comments if you’re using it. I have turned word verification off here for now, we’ll see how it goes..

The Bottom Line -

Spam is an issue for all of us. We get it in our email. We get spammed in our comments section. Unless you are being targeted in a major way and receiving hundreds of spam comments a day, it’s not that big a deal to hit delete. Have a good comments policy, make sure it is visible on the screen where people leave comments (blogger users – find out how to display your comments policy) and be vigilant in deleting anything you suspect of being spam.

Snoskred – Life in the Country

Archive for the 'blogging tips' Category

Google Reader Can Make Your Life Easier – Here’s How.

Technorati – Sending Out An S.O.S.

Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.

Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!

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