I’m really disappointed to see that PR firms can stoop so low as to comment spam us bloggers on behalf of their clients. Here’s a comment that came into one of my blogs (to this page) a couple days ago, from Connors Communications (yes, I’ve nofollowed the link):

HitTail is a site dedicated to helping you chase the long tail of natural search… the first of its kind http://www.hittail.com

Doesn’t this smack of comment spam to you? Clearly these folks don’t understand the blogosphere. Granted they didn’t make the URL a clickable link like most comment spammers, but that was probably just out of naivete.

Talk about a public relations strategy that’s bound to backfire!

I’ve heard of PR firms starting faux blogs, ghostblogging, posting fake posts to discussion forums, and emailing bloggers with untargeted, brazen pitches. But comment spamming? This is a new one on me.

Anyone else seen PR firms posting thinly veiled ads for their clients into your blogs’ comments?

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz has graciously shared 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic, and there are some gems in there. I’d like to piggyback on a few of Rand’s points:

• 1. Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build) — I’d say that over 95% of the time, WordPress will do the job and will be scalable for future needs. I have yet to come across a client blog project that necessitated a custom-built blog software.
• 2. Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain — Rand makes a bold statement: “Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make.” I disagree. I can think of numerous examples where the blog is more trusted, more buzzworthy, and/or more linkworthy because it’s at an arms length from the company’s site. Consider the hypothetical example of an insurance conglomerate authoring a blog about getting a healthier lifestyle, in order to attract prospects to sell insurance to. Such a blog at Gettinghealthy.com sounds helpful and unbiased, whereas having it at metlife.com/gettinghealthyblog (remember, hypothetical example… metlife is just used here to illustrate the point) comes off as salesy and self-serving.
• 4. Participate at Related Forums & Blogs — I’d just like to make it clear that you’re not doing this for link juice (most links in blog comments and forum posts have “link condoms” (rel=nofollow tags) automatically added). Instead, you’re doing this to increase your visibility to, and credibility with, bloggers who read those blogs and forums.
• 9. Invite Guest Bloggers — I really like this idea, and I’d like to add my suggestion that you also do phone or Skype interviews of guests and podcast those on your blog.
• 15. Archive Effectively — Rand highlights a tough balancing act: “For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). ” I find the “Optional Excerpt” in WordPress to be invaluable for achieving this balance. The Optional Excerpt is one of the fields in the Write Post form that most bloggers ignore, but if you use it, you can code your non-permalink pages (like your category pages) to display the excerpt instead of the full post or instead of the paragraphs proceeding a “more” tag in your post copy. That’s exactly what we’ve done on my company’s corporate site, which runs on WordPress — for example, all the testimonials listed on our Testimonials tag page display excerpts. That gives you more flexibility to summarize and highlight particular sections or keywords from the full post.
• 16. Implement Smart URLs — Rand says that “just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we’ve worked with.” I would definitely agree with that. We too have evidence that a blog or site with rewritten URLs flows PageRank more efficiently throughout the site. So don’t rest on your laurels if you have a blog with dynamic URLs, even if your blog is fully indexed by the engines. Your pages will rank better if you rewrite the URLs.
• 19. Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days — What a great idea, to watch your traffic and increase your posting frequency and posting quality on days where your traffic is highest! It makes the best use of the traffic spikes. In fact, you might even want to hold back on publishing your very best posts and instead save them for high-traffic days.

Wayne Hurlbert had a good post this morning that bloggers should all take a gander at.  He reminds us that a lot (most?) people aren’t really aware of what blogs are and what they are all about.

What is not so obvious is the level of blog awareness among the general mainstream population. In fact, many people are not aware of blogs, even though they might even read blogs themselves. They just might not know that what they are reading is a blog. While that might seem farfetched to many bloggers, it’s not that outlandish to non-bloggers. After all, many people think bloggers are only self absorbed navel gazers anyway. If the mainstream media is a guide, them the only types of blogs that exist to them are political blogs, personal blogs, and the blog stylings of various celebrities.

Wayne’s suggestion is a good one, which is to start conversations about blogging with people.  Like, do you know what a blog is?  The explaining it and giving them your card with your URL on it.  This is a tough one for me, in all honesty.  On a number of occasions this summers I’ve been pressed to explain blogging.  It’s tough you know.  Especially without being able to show one at the moment.  All of my friends (non-blogging) and family (both mine and Lorraine’s) know that not only do I blog, but I get paid to blog.  They also know that I have several blogs on the go.  Because of this I tend to get cornered at some point in the evening on “what is this blogging thing” or “explain blogging to me”.  You know what I really need?  A two-sided business card template which has easy answers to “what is blogging” on one side and on the other space to add my own contact info.  Maybe something done up and saved as a PDF that can be printed on Avery stock card size?

Hmm, sounds like a good way for folks I know to promote their books.

Tags: what is blogging, blogging, blogging ideas