It is SEO tunnal vision as some like to call it. Fortunatly for me I am exiting the tunnel.

Keep up the great work,

Jim

@ Thanksgiving–thanks much. My family and I will be here in Southern Indiana. I hope you have a great one as well.

@ PubCon-yes, I will be there. I will post my cell phone # right before I go. I’d love to hang out and compare notes. Give me a ring!

@ Dax-I like his objection redirection plugin and have used that in the past as well…never met him, but that would be fun at some point.

@ Akismet–There are a number of good spam comment stoppers, including Akismet. I use that for now, but I keep evaluating and changing with the times, but I like it so far.

About the Can you Add? I like that one..but I moderate every first time poster. That is easier for me.

Best

Eric

When I saw the update to this post, I noticed your name and it did ring a bell with me. I think we might know of each other since you are on REW. BTW - are you on Famous Agents as well?

Dax’s plug-in should be good. Dax has had some very good plug-in’s before. Like the third level domain plug-in. Forget what he called it and I do not have the knowledge to implement it within a blog.

Are you using the Askimet plug-in to controll some of the spam? I have seen some bloggers using the mathematical calculation to block the bots from posting. Do you plan to use that feature to assist you? Could you explain the why’s and why not’s?

I did like your wording on reserving your right tto discontinue do follow.

Maybe we might meet in Vegas for PubCon,if you are attending.

Hope you don’t mind me dropping in from time to time and adding questions or comments. I plead ignorance when it comes to SEO, but want to advance in my knowledge.

Hope you and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving holiday.

I don’t know you (at least I don’t think I do.grin.), but I am pleased to meet you. Being a do follow blog does not require bravery. It requires effort. I no follow anyone that I think is commenting on my blog just to get links.

I like the idea of the plugin that Dax modded for Greg Boser for individually routing out spam. I downloaded it the other day to try it out (haven’t yet), but for now, I just edit ‘em by hand but I applaud the effort.

In short, it requires more effort to do this…if it becomes too much of a pain in the butt, I will just no follow them all and say to heck with it, much like Matt Cutts did (at least apparently…) a few months ago. I can do it lose / lose or win /win. And I reserve the right to revise my thoughts at a moment’s notice and without cause (grin–saying that was fun!). If the search engines start to view do follows as a bad thing, then off they go as well.

I think that is a real possibility with the current popularity of blog commenting (grin).

In general, this blog is about SEO here in the LOCAL Southern Indiana and Louisville area, yet because of my friendship with many in the real estate community, I find a lot of real estate related folks commenting on what I have said and joining the conversation. I am pleased to have them all here and holding a conversation at “my place”. As long as the conversation is actually a conversation and not a spam fest…I am fine with it…if I think someone is just adding to a post in order to get links–no follows WILL follow. Spamming is the one thing that would kill the do follow movement.

I also will kill it off if I think there are organised efforts to chatter back and forth between parties just to run up links.

I hope that gives you a sense of where I am at.

I genuinely want to be friendly to everyone who wants to be friendly to me.

Pleased to meet you, by the way! Hope things are good in Florida.

Best;

Eric

I am not negative on the idea, just careful.

Sometimes though you just can’t figure out who the person is. Then comes the hard part: do you delete a legitimate comment just because it may be ’spammy’? At this time we have been leaving them up there because they are still providing content to the blog.

I think most people would agree that links from blog comments are pretty low value anyway. As soon as the word gets out, maybe people will stop spamming blogs with comments and great dialog will ensue. Or at least we hope so!

Great points as usual, Eric.

Taking it just a step further, persons that may be uncomfortable using their real names on the internet (for spam, stalkers, or whatever), should adopt a “handle” - and ideally, something that is NOT keyword related.

This allows them to remain a degree of privacy (albeit very small), and still communicate with others without having the appearance of being a spam-machine.

And as the relationships develop, you can then be more open as to who/what/where you are etc, as you become more comfortable with the others you are speaking with.

Great point. For the record, the reason only a few people have posted here is 100% because the blog just got started fairly recently. The only folks who knew about it were close friends. I consider you a friend as well and you have not commented here before (I assuming that you did not know about my blog as well.)

As for what Google will devalue next…it is what it is. My point here, as I have tried to make with scoial media like Squidoo and Active Rain (which you do a fair amount of if memory serves..)is that quality posts, comments and LESS spam make it a great way for conversations to happen and authority to truly be built online.

Squidoo had an issue, cleaned it up (in some measure–people still spam them, but there are more reasonable controls IMO and Google’s apparently) and they have been rewarded.

My goal is to keep conversation methods online open and free of as much spam as possible. Whether they be forums, social networking sites, blogs, swickis or whatever..isn’t it all the same thing?

BTW-Wonderful to have you drop by…PLEASE feel free to comment whenever you find something interesting here…there are a lot of people who could learn a ton about SEO from your experience. I know I have.

Best

Eric

I think this is the first time I’ve posted a comment in a blog other than a REW blog. I may be wrong, but it is certainly one of only a few times at best. I saw Wayne’s REW thread and couldn’t resist a comment.

Anchor text issues aside, I’ve been leery (and will remain so) of blog comments as I see blog comments the next thing Google will come down on. Even though your intentions are pure, I can see even this blog being a target for Google if the same 20-30 folks are commenting. And of course, the same 20-30 folks are commenting on each other’s blogs.

In looking through a few of the comments left on past blog posts, I can see a pattern of the same visitors posting comments.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Not sure if a past Google penalty has me shell-shocked these days, but my thoughts are certainly worth a consideration here.