3 Reasons I Would Delete Your Blog Comment

If you’ve ever blogged, you’ve undoubtedly encountered comment spam. It’s often bot driven and the comments are often just generic dribble making little sense.

But even non-spam comments can sometimes find themselves victim to moderation on the blogs I run and there are three reasons in particular that I would spam a comment.

• Commenter Clearly Hasn’t Read the Post

Blog commenting is great for links. I get that. In fact on my personal blog I have the CommentLuv plugin to reward contributors actually adding some value to the discussion with a do follow link to their most recent blog post.

But blog commenting should not be just about link building. I honestly believe that when someone comments on a blog, they should be adding value to the conversation. And if they clearly haven’t even read the post the whole way through (and this is reflected in an overly generic comment or a comment that ‘gives the game away’ that they didn’t read the post) then I will delete their ‘contribution.’

• Comment is Deliberately Antagonistic

I love it when someone comments on my blog disagreeing with my point of view. No, I don’t get a sadistic kick of out a debate but it does get my brain going! I think it adds an extra dimension and perspective to a post to have that sort of conversation. It’s great.

But if someone comments with a deliberately antagonistic comment (either to the post itself or to someone else’s comment) I will probably delete it. Have your say, but don’t get personal about it and don’t ‘shout down’ everyone else who is trying to engage in the discussion.

• Links to Inappropriate Sites

I am fairly lenient when it comes to allowing keywords in name fields on a comment. ‘Andy from SEO Manchester,’ for example or ‘Danny from Web Design London,’ would be fine in my book. At least there is a name included.

But if you put ‘viagra’ or something similarly spammy in the name field I will delete the comment. And by the same token, irrespective of what you put your name as, if your link is adult in nature I will delete it. People reading blogs about social media or SEO don’t expect to encounter links out to adult websites and I won’t link out to such sites from my own.
What about you? What are your pet peeves with blog comments?