DoFollow 001Letting the link love flow

Last Thursday the British national newspaper The Guardian published an item entitled Are comment links just a form of spam?.

The journalist, Michael Pollitt, had received a comment on his personal blog that betrayed nothing out of the ordinary other than that the contributor had used the keyword "selling a business" for a name.

Intrigued, he investigated further. The link itself pointed to a firm of solicitors based in Stoke-on-Trent, England; and, what's more, they had been leaving comments on a number of different blogs using the same keyword phrase "selling a business".

The actual commentators of the piece though weren't the solicitors themselves, but a London-based digital marketing company called Pancentric.

Michael deducted that they had been using Stephan Miller's The Ultimate DoFollow Blog List to find "dofollow" blogs on which to leave comments for their client.

Pancentric are not a fly-by-night operation, but a major concern with Burger King, Whitbread, and Cadbury's as customers.

Pancentric employee, Lauren Hopwood, offered this as a defence for their SEO methods:

"The techniques we use include article and PR distribution, directory submission, link exchange, blog posting and blog commenting – these are standard and widely used practices. Our aim in all offsite activity is to ensure relevant and quality link building."

"In this instance, it does seem that some comments have been made on a number of non-relevant sites and further to your enquiry we are taking steps to remove," says Hopwood. "There is a clear distinction between blog spamming and blog commenting … blog commenting is a standard and widely practiced [sic] link-building technique."

Ouch - the journalist is so bitchy he's even gone out of his way to point out her spelling mistakes.

Also quoted in the article is leading search marketing expert, Jason Duke; Google's Anthony House and lawyer Simon Briskman.

Pancentric claim that many of their comments were placed on non-relevant sites accidentally, but that explanation rings hollow as there were too many for just the occasional error.

It seems odd that Pancentric should use this form of link building for their customers. Yes, you can work your way down Stephan's list leaving comments with "selling a business" for a name, but I can guarantee that 90% of them won't be published.

This isn't a "hit and miss" strategy - it's a waste of precious time.

I already wrote a post entitled This is pathetic: DON'T buy blog comments, which warns against losing control of your commentating to third party link builders.

It's not advisable to let somebody else give an opinion on your behalf.

The article itself falls down somewhat by conflating blog commenting as a free Adsense replacement and link building, but at least it highlights its use by big agencies rather than just the little SEO guy.

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