They must have changed their price Nick as I quoted that from the site. I respect your opinion and your post. I have no problem with ghost writers and those who use a ghost writer, but this comment thing just appears so impersonal. I mean I need to ask myself would I want someone visiting my blog and Offering their words of prayer and comfort on one of my recent post and signing their name say Nick all to learn it was not you - you could not care less about what I’m going though that the comment was by oh I don’t know some ghost writer named Bubba who was just trying to get a link back to your here blog. See my point?

well link from blog comments are now contain NO FOLLOW tag. So it doesn’t have that much importance even some forums are using this tag

At the end of the day, the market (or the lack of it) will help Mr. Warass decide whether it’s worth the venture or not. No sense maintaining it if he ends up spending more than actually making money out of it.

Rose, I respect your point entirely, however, the facts are that links are important and there will always be services to help build those links.

If “Bubba” makes the first comment on your post where no one else has, then more people who do care what you are going through will also comment on your post. No one likes being the first to post and if there are already comments there, then more people will post comments.

That being said there are two types of posts used to build links. Those that come in and say, “Great Post” and then link to their website.

Then there are those that at least read the post, then comment on the actual post with a valid comment. Whether you feel they care or not, there is a benefit to your blog as well as them benefitting by a link back.

It’s business. It’s going to happen. When I first started managing blogs for companies I had several people in the “blogosphere” who didn’t like it.

I had hosted my client’s blogs at wordpress.com for example. I asked a tech support question about one of the company blogs. They found out I was managing the blog for a company and they deleted the account. They said, “That’s not a LEGITIMATE blog.”

In my opinion a “legitimate” blog is one that does whatever the owner of that blog wants it to do. That’s kind of the idea. It’s your blog. If you want to sell widgets by blogging, that’s your right. If you want it to be your diary, that’s your right. If you want to say Bush sucks, it’s your right and in that case I support it 100%. lol

The point is, people blog and comment on blogs for different reasons. It’s really not up to us to decide whether they are “legitimate” or not.

It’s all content and content drives the web. So whether we agree or disagree with what other people are doing with blogs, we can’t control it, nor should we do so.

Plus as seoz87 says, the no follow tags kill most of the comment links anyway, so the comment for links practice will fade over time.

ok, my 2 cents worth is done.

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

Rose, I do respect your opinion. I don’t see this practice affecting personal blogs. Why would someone pay good money to get a benefit for a blog that isn’t making them any money?

I do see it affecting commercial blogging and businesses that are driven by profit will see the value in pushing their business websites up in the search engine rankings using valid SEO techniques, of which blog commenting is one. Nevertheless, as others have said, I believe the market will dictate whether the practice sticks around or not - the market being those who would or would not demand the service, search engine policies, and bloggers themselves who can encourage or discourage the practice through community discussions (like this one) and through implementing such measures as nofollow tags that strip away the SEO benefits that are being sought.

I’m ambivalent as to whether the practice is unethical or not. I think sometimes we jump to judge certain practices too soon. If he was using a computer robot to send out the same comment to thousands of blogs at one time then I’d say that is definitely spam. But if he is using humans who actually read what they are commenting on and if those humans actually leave intelligent comments that benefit the blog owners and their readers the way that blog comments are supposed to do then I’d be reluctant to call that spam.

Thanks for posting, Rose. Your comments are valued.

[…] is a great discussion going on about yesterday’s post on blog comment spam. I’m very appreciative of those […]

There are several flaws inherent to this model before we even begin to discuss the ethics of it. (For the record, it’s spam.)

Are we not forgetting the number of bloggers who actually moderate comments? And, what kind of spurious nonsense do you think will be commented on your behalf if you’re paying $239.99 for 1,000 comments?

Then again, it could be one comment copied 1,000 times. Anybody care to comment on the benefits of that from an SEO point of view?

I pity the poor fool who has to do this for a living.

Oh, and you can’t criticize comment ghost writing if you agree with ghost writing per se.

lol Paul. I agree about the pricing. That makes me wonder what the quality will be like. However, I do not think it has to be spam. I charge $2 per comment for the same service.

For that price, I can get American English writers to post legitimate comments to blogs and it does benefit the blog owners whether anyone chooses to agree or not. It extends discussions and adds content to the blog and helps the blog look busy.

Those of you who have blogs that are already busy, maybe you don’t care. But there are a ton of blogs just hoping they will get some comments from anyone.

Our posters actually read the blog they are going to comment on. They add it to their newsreader. They participate in the discussions. And even $2 is cheap. I make no money on it at all. I simply pay the writers all the money so that I can do it for clients I am doing other services for.

It has seo benefits for my clients, costs them very little, and helps the blogs that are commented on.

I do my own comments on the blogs I like such as this one, but I get a link back to one of my websites as does everyone else who posts here. Would you rather comment without getting a link back?

I agree with Nick that we are too quick to judge what everyone else is doing as spam or black hat seo.

As to whether or not to believe in ghostwriting, you were joking right? Ghostwriting is totally legitimate on and off the web. Many of the autobiographies you have read were ghostwritten by professional writers not by the person whose name goes on the book. They dictate what they want to write about and the writer polishes the text. Common practice. Totally acceptable.

Akismet has caught 61,281 spam comments on my personal blog, so I think that people would pay to comment on a personal blog for the PR. After all the reason that they are selling blog comments is for blackhatters who are looking for good quality backlinks. My blog has a pr of five so I’m affected by this just as much as anyone else is.

They try to not post comments on blogs with the nofollow tag on the sites so I’m safe there, but I still think this is wrong.
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[…] Blog Comments Make For Some Good SEO […]

akismet mostly catches bots Rose. Using bots to go out and post on blogs and having real people doing it are entirely different concepts.

61,281 people did not personally go there and post spam. They used automated systems.

Forums have the same problem with bots as blogs do. Automated spamming of blogs and forums is wrong. I agree with you there.

The reason I separate the two is that the bot cannot possibly read the post or comment with anything relevant to the blog.

Again, there are people who are faithfully writing their blog every day and getting no comments on their blog at all. They would welcome any starter comments at all that get the conversation going for them so other people will come in and comment.

I see this as a benefit to a blog owner if it is done correctly.

“great post, i have a blog just like it at such and such .com” is not an example of a legitimate post. So I are not talking about drive by posting or bot posting. It can be done to benefit both the blog owner and the person wanting the links.

[…] Blog Comments Make For Some Good SEO 11 comments […]