6 Surefire Ways To Make A Blog Look Like Spam
With millions of blogs springing up on the Internet every year it is becoming more and more difficult for publishers to make sites stand out from the crowd.
Search engines are looking for signals of trust and it is more important than ever to make sure your blog has the signals that Google algorithms are probably looking for.
Of course there are exceptions to all the points below but in general if you can steer clear of making these mistakes your blog will stand out from all the millions of spam blogs out there.
Use Blogger
Although Google would never admit it the vast majority of blogs using the blogspot.com domain are spam. Out of the hundreds of blogs I read every day about 2 of them are hosted on blogspot.com.
Put simply if you don’t use your own domain then your blog is lumped in with all the other spam blogs on blogspot.com and your content has to work much harder to get the recognition it deserves. Google doesn’t penalise blogspot blogs because it owns Blogger but the fact that these blogs get a lot less links than blogs hosted on their own domains means they rank lower anyway.
Of course you can use Blogger and have your blog on a seperate domain but then you really should be using Wordpress (or some other similar platform).
Have a huge blogroll
Blogrolls were popular about 3 years ago and most of the sites that still have a list of 200 sites in their blogroll haven’t had a design update since they launched.
Of course there are exceptions and times when a blogroll is a great idea (such as when you are an industry leader wanting to make friends with lots of bloggers) but in general if you have a small blog with a small readership adding a massive list of links to your sidebar is a great way to make you appear spammy.
Fail to provide an “About” page
Blogs that don’t have an about page are quite often spam. If a blogger is too lazy to change their about page to make them stand out from the million spam blogs that keep the default text on their about page then it’s quite likely the rest of the blog isn’t a good standard either.
How hard is it for a search engine to use About pages as a signal of trust?
Fail to include a prominent “Contact” page
Have you ever seen a well respected blog that didn’t have a way for people to contact the author? It is quite rare.
Every blog should have a contact page - it makes readers more confident and in most cases actually helps the author connect with people. If you don’t want to read the emails then you can always delete them.
You don’t have an “Advertise” page
Ok I hold my hands up here - Blogstorm doesn’t have an Advertise page but that’s because we don’t host many adverts and don’t accept any new advertisers.
If a blog is covered in adverts but doesn’t have a page where advertisers can find out about rates then it might appear like a made for affiliate marketing blog.
Even if you just create a simple page saying “To advertise on this site email xxxxxx” it is still a signal of trust that people (and search engines) can use to evaluate your blog.
Your theme is the default Wordpress theme
If you install Wordpress and fail to change the default theme (or use a free theme without spending the time to personalise it) then your blog will have a hard time standing out from the thousands of other sites that look exactly the same.
Making a blog stand out is hard enough so spend the time to create a custom design and it will save you time in the long term.
Categories: Blogging
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Arrogant rubbish that may have validity in some narrow sectors of blogging - perhaps the ‘get rich quick’ sector - but utterly ignores the wider usage of blogs.
For starters, in British blogging, many of the best-respected and most widely-read blogs - including most of those that have got book deals - fail at least your first test and generally more. For example, on blogspot, Rachel North, Abby Lee, Belle de Jour, Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes (during his rise to prominence if not now), Bystander’s magistrate’s blog, WPC Ellie Bloggs, the original Copper’s Blog that started the emergency services blogging craze, and the teacher Frank Chalk, while Tom Reynolds is on Blogware and Inspector Gadget on WordPress.com (as is rising star NightJack). Go to www.libdemblogs.co.uk and you’ll see most of the syndicated blogs on there are on bloglines or similar (including many of those regularly nominated in the best-of-the-year awards) and much the same is true in other parts of the UK political spectrum.
What you say might work for the relatively narrow field of blogs set up to make money off people but, in the real world inhabited by most people who blog, what you’re describing isn’t spam but normal behaviour. If you want to announce that these people aren’t worth your precious attention then that’s up to you, but I for one feel sorry for you if you do, given what you’re missing out on.
This ‘advice’ says nothing useful about how to run a blog, but a lot that’s worth knowing when deciding how seriously to take the rest of what you write.
Andy May 3, 2008 11:10 am | Reply
Andy I’m not saying that all Blogger blogs are spam and I read and respect a good number of the blogs you mention above (not all on a daily basis).
What I am saying is that given the amount of spam blogs using the blogspot domain it is a good idea to seperate yourself from them and use your own domain. Don’t forget that a lot of the really great Blogger blogs that you mention above have been around a few years and have fantastic content. Perhaps if they were on their own domain they would have even more readers than they do now?
I won’t be the first person to recommend that bloggers always use their own domain and I certainly won’t be the last.
The fact is that if you start a new blog today you will stand a much greater chance of success if you run the blog on your own domain, have an About page, have a Contact page and have a custom design.
Patrick Altoft May 3, 2008 11:21 am |
ReplyIm really liking this post Patrick. A lot of good points to steer away from!!
Steven Finch May 3, 2008 11:19 am | Reply
“Of course you can use Blogger and have your blog on a seperate domain but then you really should be using Wordpress.”
Disagreed. I’m a huge, huge Wordpress fan, but really saying that you should use Wordpress instead of anything else isn’t exactly right. Movable Type is also a very viable choice, as is TextPattern. And done right using blogger to power your blog on your own domain isn’t that bad of an idea especially if you don’t want to be bothered with setting up WP, or don’t have a hosting contract.
Lindsey May 3, 2008 5:43 pm | Reply
Sorry Patrick, but this is a load of rubbish. Google has far better ways of spotting spam than these factors.
So what if you dont have a contact us page, authority and rankings are gained from links from authority sites.
Matt Cutts’s blog has massive authority and certainly isn’t spam, but:
1) He doesn’t have a contact us page
2) He uses a default wordpress theme
3) He doesn’t have an “Advertise” page
4) He doesn’t really have an “About” page
4 out of 6, but he clearly isn’t spam.
Sean May 3, 2008 6:11 pm | Reply
Obviously Matt Cutts is one of the exceptions to the rule.
If he wasn’t so high up at Google then his default theme and lack of an about page would probably have affected the growth of his blog.
Patrick Altoft May 3, 2008 8:13 pm |
Well-said Patrick.
Rajab Bader May 5, 2008 5:12 pm |
I’m a big fan of blogs and I see validity in your points. However, here is why I use a blogger account:
Anonymity - I want something that isn’t hooked onto my facebook, my linked in, my stumbleupon, or anything else that can be used to track me, especially by employers/potential employers/over-eager family members.
Ease of use- seriously, it’s just so easy. One of my friends that kept telling me to blog registered me a domain, and installed wordpress for me. But I really just don’t know what to do now.
Anyways, just my $.02. I may figure out this domain thing, and move my little blog over. Cheers.
E May 3, 2008 9:32 pm | Reply
Patrick were you hungover when you wrote this post? This has got to go down as the worst post of yours I’ve ever read.
Of the several hundred blogs you say you read I wonder how widely spread the subject matters are.
To me you seemed to have some very short sighted thoughts if you truly believe that these six point indicate a spam blog.
Another post like this and you’ll be moving from the daily read section to the weekly skim over list.
Mick May 4, 2008 8:10 pm | Reply
The post was intended to show new bloggers that starting a blog on their own domain, including things like good design, a contact page and an informative “About” page were good practice and should help traffic in the long term.
Obviously its not the best post I’ve written but these are sound principles that have been stated by loads of other people before.
The fact that I’ve written 500 posts and this is the first time people have said the post was a bad one is a pretty good ratio really. Hopefully normal service will resume next week.
Patrick Altoft May 4, 2008 10:02 pm |
It is a pretty good ratio but if the post was aimed at new bloggers then it certainly could have been written that way.
To be honest the post comes over pretty badly - so my blog with 30k uniques a day that has no about page, no advertise page and a huge blogroll - that to you is a spam blog.
I can assure you it’s anything but spam. There is no need for an about or advertise page. As for the huge blogroll, well there are others ways to survive online without Google. (the site isn’t banned I chose to run this site without any dependency on SE traffic)
You picked 6 areas that simply don’t define a spam blog, they may be traits of many spam blogs but to bluntly say a blog with no this and that is spam is madness. Thats why I asked were you hungover.
Lets hope you sober up Patrick
Mick May 4, 2008 10:45 pm |
Buddy boy, there’s a fine line I suppose, between saying that certain features are going to make you look like SPAM and giving some helpful pointers for folks looking to start a blog. I’m thinking that most folks are thinking that you’re falling a bit too far on one side of that bugger.
I hear what you’re saying dude, I just think it may have been worded a bit differently to make your main point clearer.
That said, good post and some solid thoughts. It’s actually pretty damn good advice for people hopping into blogging.
Judd Exley May 5, 2008 3:44 am | Reply
I think the most important thing to note is ” vast majority of blogs using the blogspot.com domain are spam “.And I think even if you have a blog with lots of hits , still adding the pages mentioned can help the growth of your blog.
Nishadha May 5, 2008 7:42 am | Reply
Very well said, it just take a little extra to be out of the spam arena and make yourself stand out.
The Black Ink Project May 5, 2008 2:59 pm | Reply
[…] 6 Surefire Ways To Make A Blog Look Like Spam comments that Blogger is a no-no: “Use Blogger Although Google would never admit it the vast majority of blogs using the blogspot.com domain are spam. Out of the hundreds of blogs I read every day about 2 of them are hosted on blogspot.com.” […]
Make your blog credible | Blogging for Dollars Blog May 6, 2008 12:25 am | Reply
Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule. The fact that Matt Cutt’s blog or that some other blogs that y’all have named aren’t spam is irrelevant. The point is, that there are factors that contribute towards Google trusting you and factors that don’t. I for one, will be adding all of the above pages to several of my blogs. Thanks for the tip!
Rafael | Rafael's Internet Marketing blog May 6, 2008 4:11 am | Reply
[…] With millions of blogs springing up on the Internet every year it is becoming more and more difficult for publishers to make sites stand out from the crowd. - Blogstorm […]
6 Surefire Ways To Make A Blog Look Like Spam | BlogOnExpo May 7, 2008 11:45 am | Reply
[…] 6 Surefire Ways To Make A Blog Look Like Spam (This is something that all bloggers, especially new ones, should take a look at. Great tips […]
Woot Off - And A Thursday Link RoundUp May 9, 2008 3:10 am | Reply
Some nice pointers here, Patrick, especially about taking the time to fill in About Me and Contact pages, and personalizing even the cheapest blog packages to make yours stand out. I think too many very good blogs these days look too professional. Very bland. No personality, no personal branding. Mine is guilty of quite the opposite, but in time I will hit a comfortable middle road!
Ultimately a blog is going to stand out for the depth and integrity of its content and views expressed. The posts should be about some coherent relatively narrow theme. The ads or links should point to very similar areas of interest.
zowoco May 10, 2008 4:11 pm | Reply
I agree with you that a blogger should really use their own domain. I took that advice (from Problogger I think) when I started my own blog a couple of years ago. But I disagree that using Blogger makes a blog look spammy.
It all depends on the domain that is being blogged. You make the comment that you only have two blogspot blogs in your reader — I’d wager those are in the blogging domain — but I read quite a few very good blogs in the domain I blog in: massive online games.
I expect that this is because the writers of these blogs are gamers and originally wanted a quick easy platform to get started. In a couple of cases recently, some of the better blogs in this niche have moved to their own domain and self hosting, but some of the biggest havent and have actually said they won’t.
I reckon if you go into other, more diverse niches, you’d find a lot of blogspot or wordpress blogs of excellent quality.
Stropp May 11, 2008 8:52 am | Reply