Many bloggers feel that a blog is not a blog unless it has worth while comments. Unfortunately most blogs do not receive many comments or comments of any particular quality.

Just consider for example a good blog post by Aaron Wall on How To Make Easy Money On Google. This is a somewhat controversial topic as the following extract shows:

AdAge has a good post about how Google’s promotion of fraudulent advertising is undermining their brand… In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, here’s a sales pitch tailor-made for the times: “Get Paid by Google.” It’s a pitch that’s compelling millions of people to visit sites such as Kevinlifeblog.com, Scottsmoneyblog.com, Maryslifeblog.com and Googlemoneytree.com, all promising some variation on one theme: Just buy our guide and we’ll teach you how to make thousands from Google, right in the privacy of your own home!

Despite the topic, at the time of writing some days later, this post has had only seven comments.

This post will explore blog comments and discuss what can be done to turn them into real conversations.
The Internet Can Support Communications

Via the Internet, you clearly have access to a huge inventory of information and knowledge. However that is not the most amazing aspect of the Internet. More importantly the Internet supports communications between different human beings. Having two people thinking about or discussing a topic is of much greater value than just one person’s opinion. That is why a number of people speak forcefully on how conversations can be supported on the web.

Sera Perez argues that blog comments still matter. Matthew Wingram points out that this view on conversations is supported by the New York Times. Louis Gray also suggests that blog comments are really conversations rather than just replies.

Along the same lines, you now have Disqus. This is a powerful comment system that strives to enhance the discussion on websites.

It is not just blogs that are involved here. Any online property where people may share with others or comment on what others have contributed can be enhanced in a similar way. Thus we see that the news feed aggregator, Google Reader, aims to start a conversation.

I’m a big fan of sharing (might be all those lessons I learned in kindergarten). And when I share something, it’s always nice to get a response like “Thanks!” or “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever read!” Whether you’re 5 or 50, you’re more likely to share other awesome things if you know people are excited to hear what you have to say.

That is certainly true. However other parts of Google may not feel exactly the same about these conversations.

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1. You have a big mouth about your SEO tactics
loud mouthA sure-fire way to get the attention of a Google engineer and potentially have your rankings manually reviewed, is to blabber away about all of the SEO tactics and tricks you’re using to get ahead.

For example, John Chow, the infamous make money online blogger, openly exchanged links with his readers on his blog to rank for “make money online”. While it did work initially, Google quickly made an example of him and penalized him hard. John recently got his rankings back after cleaning up his act, but for over a year, he didn’t even rank for his own name.

Similarly, a very well-known SEO mentioned to his readers that his affiliate links were designed in a way to pass weight back to his site. For whatever reason, someone decided to report this to Google spam king Matt Cutts, and unsurprisingly, those links no longer pass any weight.

If you have an SEO blog or are involved in the Internet marketing community, be careful what you tell others – either privately or in public. It could come back to haunt you.

2. Your sites are all tied together = easy target
network targetLike it or not, the big G has a lot of information about you and your sites. Google runs the most popular contextual advertising platform, owns a free analytics package that’s better than most paid versions, has access to all WHOIS information and IP addresses, and can analyze sites that you interlink. Not only that, but Google has access to your email, documents, and browsing history. Sound scary? That’s what I thought.

If you can, it’s best to separate your sites as much as possible (e.g. different IP addresses, no interlinking, etc). Why? If Google suspects something about one of your sites, they’ll probably look into your network for other sites you’re involved with as well. That’s definitely not something you want. If I can find your network of sites using a free tool like SpyOnWeb.com, you can bet Google can easily do it too.

Unfortunately, completely separating your sites isn’t always possible especially with Google’s growing dominance in so many verticals. This makes avoiding the other red flags even more important.

3. Your site is over-optimized for certain keywords
yellow flag refereeOptimizing the content of a page for SEO has always been pretty simple – target 2 to 3 keywords per page and place them in title tags (preferable the beginning), header tags, URLs, and on-page body content. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy anymore as Google automatically filters and penalizes sites that it thinks are “over-optimized”. This isn’t an exact science, but Aaron Wall of SEO Book explains how he got a ranking filter removed by mixing up the keywords and being less aggressive.

If you’ve tried optimizing a page for a keyword without much success in rankings, try taking this approach. Shift the focus away from your targeted keywords and don’t be so overly aggressive in your on-page efforts (i.e. forget about things like keyword density). Google actively tries to neutralize SEO, so this sort of filter is no surprise. You just need to be able to adapt to improve your rankings.

4. Your link profile is unnatural
link to meIn the same way that you can over-optimize for on-page SEO, you can also over-optimize for off-page link building. I wrote about this topic in my article, The Secret to Making Every Link Count For Your SEO Rankings, so be sure to read it before you move on.

In a nutshell, Google filters out sites in the rankings when it thinks the sites’ link profiles seem unnatural. Some examples include:

* too many links too fast
* link anchor text too similar
* not enough deep links to other pages
* too many links from low quality or unrelated sites
* too many reciprocal links
* all links are from the sidebar or footer of a page

Again, it’s Google’s goal to neutralize any sort of manipulation. If you want to be a successful SEO, you have to take this into consideration and appear natural in everything you do. Ask yourself the following question – how would normal webmasters with big sites obtain links? Then seek to emulate their links.

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