It seems to me that more and more real estate people are probably hiring third world or child labor (maybe through Mechanical Turk?) to cruise the web for established blogs and leave comments with links backs on those blogs ... Usually the comment has little or nothing to do with the subject of the blog post.
Are others seeing this? Are these people going to some seminar or online course that is suggesting they do it? Are you doing it?
Here are some recent comments and link-backs posted on my www.nelalive.net blog. No, I'm not going to delete them. But I do find them amusing.
See it all the time. Our stand alone blog used to get drug links but cleverly disguised as interested folks looking in to relocation to Maine. The highlight words say one thing, the link under it or their name hits something completely different. Those back links help SEO big time. The comment butters you up, praises your writing and folks leave them in or are unaware of the closet linkage.
I see them here on AR too. And as Andrew says the link backs are disguised to look like one thing and be another. Always someone trying to game the system!
Unfortunately, if anything that has my name/ any attachment to me needs to be of acceptable quality. Shortcuts to success never exist in 1 sentence.
@ Andrew and Dick and Dixie. I probably should check where the link back goes. On the other hand, maybe I should just delete 'em all.
More and more agents are hiring social media specialists to act on their behalf. There are only so many hours in the day.
I haven't noticed this. I will from now on. Interesting.
I get tired of the cut and paste comments such as "thanks so much for sharing, we learn so much on Active Rain". They are clearly just trying to get points.
yes I get them on my Typepad blog and so funny that you say Child Labor because they all read like a first grader wrote them. Delete, delete, delete.
I get between 15 and 30 of these spam comments per week on my wordpress blog. At AR, I just get Vivan and others contacting me because they 'swear' that I know them and that we have had someintimate relationship in the past. Why would someone bother? (for the pingbacks?)
Oh I see it. I hate it, not sure how they are doing it...darn splogs.
I am just deleting them as spam on my WP blog but it is a constant daily activity.
I love this article. It brings up some very valid points on blogging and SEO. It appears everyone is discovery the power of SEO, the internet and social media and are "going crazy". So, in my opinion, this is the root of the problem. Thanks for sharing and expect to see alot more of this activity.
Wow, "Mani" really has it down in the example you provided.! Regardless of how well someone butters my blog, I delete if spam.