There is nothing worst when you’re working really hard on your blog and you get spam. Here’s how to combat spam SEO.
Spam, for all us bloggers and web owner it a pain in the neck. You spend your days and nights working so hard on your blog/website for it to be hit with spam.
My gosh, I do feel the pain!
As I do believe it was the serious amount of spam attacks that destroyed my last website. Before I had this website, I had another site and it got hacked. I couldn’t log into my account, my host at the time was useless and I lost bloody everything.
So as you can imagine that when I decided to start up again, I wanted to protect my site and to combat spam.
If you were lucky and hasn’t faced this spam problem before, how to spot it:
- Comments on a blog post that add no value to what you’re writing on.
- Fill up your comments boxes with endless pointless links.
- Comments that override the no-follows rules.
- Spam referral links that showed up on Google analytic.
- A website that keeps repeating a certain keyword over and over again.
- Someone who cloaked a link so that the readers can’t see it, only the Google bots.
- Low-quality images.
- Links filled guest posts.
I’m sure your next question is, why would someone do that? It is known as black hat SEO technique and it a quick easy way for their website to move up on Google ranking. They don’t care what happens to your site, they just look out for themselves.
You do need to watch out for it as it will eventually tank your site and all your hard works will go to waste. If left un treated, like me your site might eventually be hacked.
I would also like to say that 3-5 years ago WordPress was quite an unsecured CMS and it has lots of loops holes and open coding. I do know that WordPress has closed any loose end and it’s now completely secure to use.
Despite me saying that WordPress hasn’t completely closed the gap on spam. However, it getting better and there are small techniques you can do with combating SEO.
Here how to combat spam SEO.
Set up anti-spam comments on your site:
There are several anti-spam comments plugins you can download. I use about 2-3 plugins to help me. There are:
I find them to be really effective (sometimes a little too effective!), I do recommend you downloading and using them.
Strange Referral on your Google Analytics
You might see strange, unusual URL popped up your referral part on Google Analytics. It essentially an empty URL and all it does is give you empty (no value) referral. It supposed to be more helpful to that URL with their SEO (remember everyone is out for themselves!) but really it doesn’t.
There is a way to block these empty referral spam, but every time you block something – another method overrun it. Do a Google search if you spot a strange URL in your referral, 9 out of 10 someone else is having the same problem and found a new way to combat it.
Keep your eyes on all avenue:
Do keep a vigilant watchful eye on all spam, as it might show up on your blog comments, or on Google Analytic or even on your organic traffic. Spot any unusual traffic spike, and if you have the Wordfrence plugins installed (highly recommended), look at all IP addresses and where they are coming from. Look at all aspect of your traffic, what are people searching for Google to find your site. Analyze it.
That was my tips on how to combat spam SEO. I will say, it not a once a week thing; you do need to keep a watchful eye on everything daily.
Do you have any tips to add?
