Website spam comments and emails sent through your website contact and message forms can and should be prevented, but not all comments.
We’ll discuss the top 5 reasons to stop SPAM, and then tell you how you to set up the invaluable facilities to help stamp it dead in it’s tracks.
Leaving comments open on your website can be a fantastic opportunity for your readers and customers to discuss your content, products and services. If you engage your visitors not only will they appreciate the interaction they are also likely to come back again. The more they come back, the more likely they are to buy from you.
If not managed correctly a comments feature also allows a fantastic opportunity to receive a truckload of SPAM.
What are the top 5 reasons to properly stop website spam email and comments?
1. SPAM comments on your website can hurt your SEO.
Such comments can damage your rankings in the search engines. If you link to one (or perhaps hundreds- as we have found on one client’s website) of “bad neighbourhood” sites; certain types of dodgy industries and dodgy websites, Google can punish you.
2. SPAM Links and comments are often generated by automated software.
The auto generated text uses poor grammar, and is almost always overly general, so it can be plastered on thousands of sites in an attempt to bypass webmasters screening methods.
Poor grammar and spelling mistakes can be detrimental to your SEO campaign.
3. Why advertise dodgy products on your own website?
Your business website should not link to other websites it is not familiar with or have any connection with. It is fine to link to other businesses and other sites of interest, just be selective and make sure the sites are all reputable.
4. “If we let one of you in, we would let everyone in”
Spammers use tools to test the waters with their junk content, often with randomised letters and text that seems to make no sense.
If one of their test comments or links gets through, especially without any moderation, this can alert their software that your website is an easy target, and open the floodgates! Once this happens, expect to receive hundreds or thousands of SPAM emails.
5. Website vulnerabilities can shut your business down
Most webpages are poorly designed by people with no security knowledge, and can allow SQL injections and other simple forms of abusing and hacking your website without your knowledge. This could be happening right now! Not just hackers, anyone with basic knowledge can use tricks to hijack your own website into sending thousands or millions of SPAM emails, making you the spammer. You could lose a lot of customers and you personally could get into legal trouble!
Long story short, not only does SPAM waste your time and resources, it will hurt your ranking in search engines like Google.
With simple systems and programs 100% of SPAM can be prevented on your website.
If you require help to stop junk spam email being sent and received via your website forms and clogging your email inbox, or you wish to prevent your site being hijacked, damaging your reputation and costing you money, we can implement extremely quick and cost effective measures.
Everyone with a website should have these systems in place to prevent SPAM, do you? Contact us to find out how.