Blog Tips

Moderating and managing comments, including replying to and deleting spam comments is a daily occurrence, and takes up quite a bit of time if your blog receives a good number of comments each day. When websites weren’t blogs, there was less “work” involved - all comments and thoughts about your site went to your email inbox, if you had one. That isn’t the case anymore, and you need to know how to save time when moderating and editing comments.

Spammers often target larger blogs, those that traditionally would receive a large number of comments. For this reason, you have to separate what is a non-spam and spam comment, even if that means deleting a perfectly good comment. People who visit your blog don’t want to see any spam, and if they do, they will likely never return again.

Every day, set a time period that you will moderate spam and reply to comments. This will save time in the long-term, allowing you to focus on writing content during the period that you would normally be scrambling to moderate comments after an influx of new spam comments.

Another good idea is to check the IP addresses (if available) of the blogs/commenters that have left comments. If they match with comments that have been previously marked as spam, create filters that automatically delete them. Email addresses and websites, along with time periods should also be checked, as computers/bots often send out the spam on rather predictable intervals/methods.

Use spam-filtering plugins or other prevention methods, such as forcing the commenters to use their email address and name, as well as filling out a CAPTCHA (a challenge-response test). Less than one percent of spam comments will get through if you employ a method such as this. After all, nearly 99% of comments are spam.

Some additional tips:

1. Don’t fall for comments that say “Nice post.,” as they are often from a spammer or someone that is trying to take advantage of your site.
2. Don’t approve comments that contain 2 or more links. They are likely redirected to spam sites, unless they have any relevancy to the actual post.
3. Check to be sure that the person’s site isn’t for an agency or business that isn’t in your niche - they are targeting your blog for traffic, even if it was automatically added.
4. If you happen to delete a “good” comment, you should go back into your “deleted” comments and try to retrieve it. Otherwise, ask the person (if you remember their website/email) to kindly repost.

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