Does this captcha look familiar??
You see them when you are buying online products and are signing up for various forums.. Although recently they have started appearing on Wordpress Blogs!! Could this be slowing down your readers opinions?
Think about it. Your viewers are on your blog and have to enter a stupid captcha form that tests their visual skills before they can submit their opinions. Why should they even bother? With a blog being created every second* (*According to BBC and Technorati’s statistics), there surely must be another blog that offers the same type of content that you do.
Instead of trying to screw spam-bots using the Captchas, why don’t you just install Wordpress’s default spam filter.. Askimet? Then you don’t hassle the “Real” commenter’s that have said their piece on your article, and the ones advertising free viagara are blocked. (Note: For putting the word Viagara in this post, I have no doubt that I will recieve hundreds of bots commenting on this post, trying to obtain links through my keyword choice)
So just a warning to everyone that uses the image captchas.. not the ones that ask “Is the sun hot or cold?” - those are all fine and just require a 3 letter answer, don’t expect me to leave my opinion on what you wrote. I just don’t have the time to figure out the screwed up words in your annoying spam filter 
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While reading one of my commenter’s blogs (Archie @ SomeExtraPennies.com), I stumbled across a small 125×125 advertisement that advertised a product called “Website Auditor”. I don’t usually click ads, but I made an exception and did. What I found will change the way I create websites from now onwards.
The product is called Website Auditor and displays more information about onsite search engine methods than most SEO firms would tell you.
Instead of trying to tell you about all of the information it tells me, I’ve generated a report about my blog and where it ranks for the popular term “Blog Tips” - at 60.3% optimized, I’d say that some work still needs to be done!
The Full BradBlogging Report - See What This Tool Can Do
Who would use this SEO tool?
- Bloggers (who doesn’t want better search engine exposure?)
- Webmasters (why not make the site better than it already is?)
- Affiliate Marketers (useful for those landing pages, getting them higher in the search results to make more money
)
- “SEO Firms” (if there is such a thing..
)
- Anybody that has a website
Pros of the software:
- Displays more information about my website, and more importantly, about my competition than I could ever ask for.
- Dead easy to use.. Its a mere fact of filling in your website URL and typing in the term you want to rank for.. The software does the rest.
- Incredible amount of search engine support.. Choose Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and more.
Cons of the software:
- The Scoring Algorithm might be a little off - In the website review, it says that “Icon” and “Set” are worth more than “Blog” and “Tips”.
All in All, I was very lucky to find this product, and hopefully you will take advantage of this great tool and increase your search engine rankings. I always try before I buy, so here is the link to the Free Trial Version.
Have you ever thought of using SEO Software to boost your rankings? If so, do you have a specific tool that you use?
The Mindless Following Mentality Of The Internet:
Want to know why its so hard to start up a new blog, taking months to grow the site as well as increase traffic? It’s because your a nobody, at least, not yet in the eyes of the average internet user. It just drives me crazy the amount of people that won’t even consider reading your blog or website, if you don’t have the credentials of some of these “SuperBloggers” that are on the internet today.
The only exception to this is search engine traffic, as they are clicking over to your blog to read an article about a specific topic.
To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, heres an example:
Site #1 - Newly started blog, has no comments on any of their posts, has 5 RSS Readers indicated by the RSS Chicklet in the sidebar and puts a couple of “advertise here” boxes to try and generate some revenue.
Site #2 - Has been around for 2 years, has over 50 comments on each post and has 20,000 readers. They do not have any “Advertise Here” squares due to the amount of advertisers that are interested in buying ad space.
If Site #1 sees the success of Site #2, they will most likely work a little harder to get to the success level that Site #2 has, but what they don’t realize is the fact that the average internet user isn’t interested in a “Newbie’s” blog content. Why go to Site #1 when you can go to Site #2?
Which brings me to the conclusion of the mindless internet swarm that won’t give anything new a chance until they have the numbers to show that they are an authority in their niche. Being a blogger, this mentality just defeats the purpose of trying to start a new blog due to the amount of time it takes to grow it into something worthwhile.
In conclusion, RSS Inflation may not be that bad of an idea. Although most bloggers and webmasters can easily detect the inflation (due to the subscriber to comment ratio), the average internet user might see that and give your blog a second chance.
What are your thoughts on the average internet user, and the way that they stereotype blogs?
(I’m really curious as to what people think about this, as this is just one side of the countless views that people have.)
Take a look at these 5 “to be moderated” comments that I had in my moderation queue:
The first 3 seem natural, however, the other two are obviously spam comments that got by Akismet. Now, the interesting thing about the comments by John Taylor is that they seem like they could of been written by a human. Although, the bot owner is obviously too stupid to set a delay for each spam comment, and two of the same comments were dropped on two different posts - in the same minute.
The first one seemed legit, and I almost pushed “Approve”, however, When I don’t know about whether a comment is legit or not, a quick search on Google usually clears the confusion up.
Results for: “I follow your blog for quite a long time and must tell you that your articles always prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.” - 189,000 results.
What do all 5 of these spam comments have in common?
- They all got past Akismet’s spam filtering plugin, which means that spam isn’t as easy to detect anymore. A nice, warm fuzzy comment about how high quality your blog is might just be a way to get a backlink to a spammers site.
Conclusion:
- It doesn’t take that much of a genius to figure out which ones are spam and which ones are not, just make sure that the comments being said are actually intended.
- If you use a “Top Commentator” or “Recent Commentator” plugin, make sure that the comments you approve have URL’s that aren’t spammy looking. Failure to do this may result in loss of rankings in Search Engines and a loss of trust in your blog’s audience.
What are some of the ways that you combat blog comment spam? Does it prove to be effective?
Only 8 positions are filled, please see previous post if you are interested.
Thanks!
Be one of the first people to try out the “Secret” project I’ve been working on. Although it still needs some final touches added to it, I’d really like some people to try it out.
Oh! I almost forgot - You have a very good chance to make money off trying this new website… All you need is a blog
Let me know if you are interested through commenting below (don’t forget to include a valid email address in the comment form so I can send you the URL). Limited to 20 bloggers!
Thanks, have a great weekend!
I recently found a really unique program called the “Backpage Ad Auto Posting Software” made available by http://backpageautoposter.blinkweb.com/
Anybody that has used Craigslist, Backpage, EcoWeb, etc, will know that posting an advertisement, job offer or position is very time consuming. With this program, I can easily post numerous advertisements in much less time than doing each one manually! Here is what I liked and disliked about the program:
Pros:
- Fills in the advertisement for you, and then automatically submits the ad, redirecting to the next page.
- Once the captcha is filled in, it automatically (I would say within a couple seconds) goes to the confirmation page, then redirects to the next city category. This sends the confirmation email to your email account, allowing you to post the ad.
- Backpage doesn’t delete very many advertisements as compared to Craigslist, which recently cracked down on most people posting in multiple categories (ghosting their advertisements, or completely blocking their IP address).
Cons:
- Doesn’t fill in the captcha for you. Thats one of the main drawbacks of this program, but then again, it would be a very hard task to accomplish as you would need to continually update the program for the new words that have been scrambled.
- Would of been great to be able to select more than one city (rather than editing the urls.txt) to post on.
- Original software developers offer no more support for the product - The site returns a 404!
Overall, For $39, this program is a steal for the amount of time it saves when posting an advertisement to Backpage to more than one category. I’m surprised they aren’t charging more for this… You could easily purchase this and start marketing a product, make new clients to your business, and even more.
Once again, the link is http://backpageautoposter.blinkweb.com/ and I would highly recommend this to anyone that posts advertisements on Backpage.com
