Almost any internet marketer needs to get links pointing to his web pages. This bare necessity turns us all into spammers of one degree or another. Now many people will be offended by that statement, being as the word spam has such negative connotations associated with it.

No offense intended. I just calls ’em as I sees ’em. If your primary motivation for posting content somewhere on the web (be it in a blog comment or social bookmark site or signature in a forum post or wherever) is getting a link to your site, I put it to you that you are spamming. Now there is certainly a difference between tactful spamming and blatant spamming, and the good guys stick to the tactful form - which is a bit of an art actually.

Blog comments have become a significant resource for obtaining backlinks. This is the type of spamming I want to address today. There are two types of comments, regular and trackbacks. Regular comments are what the artists use. They read the post and make a relevant contribution to the subject. Good posts tend to stick, rewarding the commenter with a nice anchor text link (being as you usually get to leave an URL and a name that will be the link to the URL when you comment).

Trackbacks are what the blatant spammers (whom we all hate) use. Automated software blasts them out in droves, hoping that a few will stick. It is usually obvious that they are spam as they do not mention anything relevant to the post, perhaps just saying "nice post" or something. Trackbacks are designed to let bloggers know when another blogger referenced their post in one of theirs, but the spammers are quickly ruining this feature altogether.

Google is banning sites that are blasting out trackback spam, even though they won’t admit that they are. I have verified this by fooling around with a trackback spam software myself, and I will never touch it again! This method is not recommended. Build your comment links slowly, manually, methodically, and artfully. That’s the way to climb in the rankings.

Technorati Tags: Trackback spam, Internet marketing