This morning, as happens frequently lately, I again had to mark a comment as spam on this blog. Usually Akismet catches them all, and I don't have to deal with them. But, now and then, one gets through for moderation. This one was the ridiculous "Very informative post, I'll bookmark your site" garbage.
The reason I know it was someone charging a real estate company for this "service" was that it linked to a real estate company, but the email address had ...linkbuilders@... in it. So, they're charging this company money to have their domain and IP identified as spam to one of the most effective spam-killers out there for blogs, Akismet.
As a business, you can't afford this type of marketing. You are spending your money with a person or company that has no concern for your website's future success. They have sold you a bill of goods about going out and building one-way links back to your site by commenting on real estate blogs. And, many will not catch this tactic, being flattered by the comment, and leave it up.
However, there are enough out there like me who will catch it, and your site will be damaged by the single click it took me to designate your comment as spam. It's caring about the content on my blogs, so I read and moderate comments, as do many of us. So, you'll get links, but you may get results you don't expect and you may never know what damage it has done.
What’s worse, they are paying someone to make comments on blogs which is something they can easily do themselves! What a waste of money!
Tony,
Thanks for the comment. I cross my fingers for the consumer who decides to use a broker/agent who they think was making all of those insightful comments, but only used their wallet.
Jim