Lots has changed in the world of link building but it seems that some “SEO Professionals” still believe that random pingbacks will help, rather than hinder, their clients.
Take this example, found on the website for my local Pilates class…
I’m not sure which alternate reality makes forex, bonsai and contact lenses relevant to Pilates and Yoga but I’m betting that GoogleBot has seen and discarded these links.
If your blog is on WordPress the cleanup is relatively simple… but potentially mindnumbing
- Make sure you have Akismet turned activated
- Go to the comments and mark as spam any pingback that looks spammy or that can’t be proven to be legit. Don’t waste time on the proving – just clean up as quickly as you can.
- Change the pingback permissions on any post where pingbacks aren’t appropriate (such as a Pilates timetable page). You can do this quickly using the quick edit option on the page that lists all your posts (and do the pages too!)
Is this option turned on by default?
I have never seen ping-spam any of my WordPress sites before.
Granted, i do enable Akismet on all of my sites…. Well It’s effective 😀
I think it is, and newbies don’t know what they are so they leave it unchanged. That’s fine, but they also don’t know to check for them and spam them when necessary. The unfortunate side effect is that “good sites” representing real businesses get tainted while crap sites controlled by SEO savvy people forge ahead.