Why spamming is stupid (the way you do it)
We see a lot of new sites trying to gain some visibility by spamming other sites, especially WordPress sites, because they are easy to comment. Do you think it works? No. Spamming is really stupid and here is why (and how you should do it properly).
First of all, let me say that even though I hate spamming I do see that it’s a huge business and just like with any other huge businesses, there must be some use cases when spamming is in fact effective. If you want to spread some viruses and infect your visitors’ computer then spamming is a numbers game and can be effective. But what I typically see is really really far away from that.
Spamming, the way new site owners do it doesn’t make any sense. The main reason is that they have no clear idea of what they are doing and what they want to achieve. And for this reason the end result is much more negative than positive. Let me explain!
I just want more visitors
First of all, let’s assume that we have a new online entrepreneur, John, who just registered a domain name, created a brand new website and is now trying to gain some visibility over the internet.
The site is not yet in Google, family members and friends have already seen it, Quora or Pinterest links don’t really work as anticipated. There are just a really few number of visitors each day, Google Adsense income is somewhere around $0.01 per day, millions seem to be far, far away.
And then a great idea comes. Let’s spam every single WordPress site that we can find around the internet. Regardless of the niches of the sites we find, just copy and paste, copy and paste around the clock. And then wait for the millions of pageviews.
It’s not going to work. Why? Because John has no clear vision of what he wants to achieve!
Spam, spam, spam
Let’s say John manages to place his spam on 10.000 different websites! Quite a lot of work unless automated. What does he expect? Visitors? Backlinks? None is going to come. Why?
First of all, nowadays almost all forum/discussion links are no-follow links which means they are totally irrelevant from SEO point of view. Every link John posts anywhere will have zero value in that regard.
Okay, but people will click on it and visit John’s site. Well, why would they? Most probably John’s spammy comment won’t even appear anywhere, because site owners and automated plugins will filter these out. No one likes spam. On the other hand, even if his spam appears, it’s not very likely to get thousands of clicks.
But even if they do…
Ok, somehow John managed to place 10.000 spammy comments, a few percent of those have somehow managed to slip under the fence of anti-spam software and the vigilant eyes of site admins and now they are there. And there are let’s say 1000 people who are willing to click on a spammy link of John to get to his site. Now what?
John should be aware that his hard earned visitors will most probably close his site in 3 seconds! Why? Because John’s content is totally irrelevant to them! As spam is mostly untargeted it will reach all kinds of people. Is John trying to get into the Keto Diet business? Or sell stuff through Amazon affiliate? Does he seriously think that random people from Serbia, India, Brazil, Vietnam or Laos will care even a little? No, they won’t.
What John gains by placing 10.000 spammy comments throughout the web is a 99% bounce rate which will rank his site in Google somewhere on the 87th page of results if not blacklisted.
Okay, anyway, but they will click ads and bring in some cash!
Well, no. I mean, not much. Did you know that 1000 visitors can make you not more than about $1-$10? Even if your site is full of Adsense ads, 1000 visitors will make you very little money. So John’s hard work of copying and pasting his link to various websites will gain him less than making hamburgers at McDonalds for the same amount of time.
How to spam properly?
First of all, you need to understand that having 1000 new visitors to your site is not what you need. What you need is new visitors that are interested in your content. And it’s a huge difference.
You don’t need 1000 people who you can fool into visiting your site once in their lives. Rather you need a hundred people who will like your content and will visit your site again and again and again for new content. They will lower your site’s bounce rate, increase the time spent on site (which is also a key indicator of your site’s worth) and will more likely become your fans/customers later.
So random visitors is not what you need. You need visitors who generate buzz, likes and shares, explore your site and thus generate more pageviews and see more ads. One targeted visitor is worth more than 100 visitors who just followed a spammy link by accident.
How to get more targeted visitors?
I would say that these days almost every link is a spam. Every answer on Quora is a spam, every comment is a spam, even posts, articles, facebook shares, funny images, Youtube videos, the whole online world is spam whose sole intention is to gain more visibility and redirect the reader to a website or a cashier.
But there is one big difference between a true spam and a carefully composed answer on Quora. The latter at least offers some value to the reader. Even though it has the same link at the end, but at the same time it has value in itself and even those readers will benefit who don’t click the link.
Bottom line and final advice
Posting links on the internet is normal. Promoting your site is normal and without links your only hope is Google searches which is quite tough, especially getting to the first page of hits. So you won’t be able to move forward without a pinch of spam here and there.
But what you want to make sure is that every time you post a link you also add some value that either has value in itself or raises interest in a healthy way.
What you want to have is visitors who don’t just randomly bump into your site, but who arrive to your site with some natural curiosity that your website can satisfy.
8 COMMENTS
Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful!
Its very helpful for new bloggers like me
Thank you for sharing an excellent article.
My question is, what to do not spam the article or content. If I write an article of any topic, so how to google knows the content is excellent without a backlink.
Thank you once again, giving a basic idea about the blog.
thanks for the wonderful update.
this blog post was much needed, thanks for the great information.
This is a really helpful post, I’m thinking of starting a blog next year and I’m doing MEGA research because I don’t want it to fail, all your posts have been really helpful and you should keep focusing on beginners… Thank you
thanks for the wonderful update.loved it
Thanks for the great information