The reasons why I am mentioning this?

I think Erik represents the “good” human side of affiliate marketing and is learning his lessons well, and working hard. His affiliate blog is obviously wrtten by a person, not “admin”, has a privacy statement, and real about page which discusses why he is promoting the product as an affiliate, and lots of content.

But this also gives me the opportunity to offer a few tips.

It would be fairly easy to add some kind of disclosure statement in the sidebar about affiliate status, and depending on geographical location there might be a need for more contact details such as a P.O. box.

First link priority – Erik didn’t abuse my comment policy, but his second link with anchor text wouldn’t have counted, even if he had enough comments on my blog to get followed links, because there was already a link to the resource in his name field (where he used his name)

Email address – The email address used was for the new website – that might close some doors for spying out some of his other properties, but there are other ways to do that anyway, as I am sure he has multiple sites on the same domain, maybe common use of adsense etc.
However by not using a consistant email address over time, it is hard to build up a reputation on blogs like mine which enable dofollow links after a period of time, or after a certain number of comments.

The best practice, to be 100% above board?

• Always use a consistant email address
• Establish a real identity – gravatar etc
• Always use your name in the name field
• If your comment is just in response to a post, and won’t include a link to a resource, then you can justifiably link to your favorite money site (or maybe a pumper) as long as it is high quality and obviously yours (like Erik’s is)
• If you are going to include a resource, then for the name field link it is best to use a totally different domain, or at least link to the root domain there and use a deep link to real solid relevant content within the comment body

Including a link in the content you really need to be on target with a resource that is without doubt relevant to the conversation, something that if not mentioned would reduce the value of the discussion.

Quite often any link drop within the content will be held for moderation even on blogs where you have an existing high quality profile and reputation, so it must be up to human scrutiny.

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Most disturbing of all though are the SEO consultants and agencies who I have caught commenting on behalf of their clients, or as themselves with a link through to a client’s site. Some of them are totally dumb about it.

I now have a new comments policy in force though most of it is just a clearer interpretation of what has been in place for the last 3+ years.

Comment Policy Update: Nov 13th 2009 Keywords Etc

Looks like Friday 13th is a very bad day for comment spammers…

• No more keywords within anchor text in the comment fields
• No sig links under comments
• Highly relevant links in the body of a comment can contain anchor text such as the blog title but they will be judged on a case by case basis.
• Even after these changes, I still expect to delete 90% of human comments as the vast majority are just an attempt to get a link rather than adding real value to the conversation.
• SEO Consultants/Agencies – If I catch you commenting but linking to a client’s site, your online reputation, your firm’s and that of your client are being put at severe risk.

My full comment policy

I should really do an update about Disqus, but we can save that for another day – I still haven’t found enough time to fully clean up the mess they left my comments in, and some things will never be recovered.

This is part of my cleanup for when the new FTC rules come into effect at the beginning of December, though effectively the new US rules aren’t any stricter than rules currently in Europe & UK.

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This is a list of warning signs, which generally I spend just a few seconds on, though looking at a new commenter’s blog or website is something I try to do even if they leave a great comment.

• Short comments
• Off topic comments
• Comments that don’t add something very specific to the conversation
• Anchor text
• New Commenter
• Comment on very old post
• Difficult to determine referrer
• Link points to poor quality site
• Link points to site which doesn’t contain very specific personal information about the commenter
• Linking to something other than a blog (minor, just an alarm bell)
• Free email address (minor)
• Multiple comments in a row
• Deep linking (I like leaving deep links myself, but it is a warning)
• .ru .cn and a few other less common domain extensions – I have linked to Chinese and Russian sites, it is nothing personal – in fact I even once linked to a Chinese site scraping me because they did it so well with each paragraph being translated and the English equivalent as alt text.
• Linking to what is obviously someone elses site (an SEO link building for a client)
• Referral from a dofollow list
• Referral from a dofollow search engine
• Referral with something related to dofollow in the search terms
• Other complicated search expressions

I am a harsh moderator, I only have 2 options in the emails sent to me by Spam Karma

Approve
Mark as Spam

No delete option, so people who spam my comments rarely trouble me again, as the penalties snowball.

In the past I have also flagged otherwise great comments just because they linked to a junk site

You should never look on dofollow comment links as the sole reason to leave a comment, it should just be a bonus of taking a real part in the conversation making a real contribution to the community.

Here is a general rule of thumb – if I delete your comment, would it be missed?

There are regular members of the community here that if they write a comment such as “great post”, it will remain, because it is genuine feedback – a good indication of reaching that status is when you comments never get held for moderation.

I think I am going to add lots of this as an extension to my comments policy, feel free to add any points to your own.

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