How to Get Backlinks from Moderated/Abandoned Wordpress Blogs
That’s right, I’m about to post something useful. Hold on to your off-white hat.
In our never ending quest to build links, posting comments on relevant (or even irrelevant) blogs with a link to your site is still a powerful tool. However, how many times have you stumbled upon a great post that is just BEGGING for your comment, only to discover that comments are strictly moderated? Or worse, they’re moderated AND the blog hasn’t been updated in forever, indicating that it may have been abandoned by the owner altogether?
Don’t give up. There is still hope.
When someone goes to leave a comment on a Wordpress blog, they are presented with four fields:
- -Name (Required)
- -E-mail (Required, not visible to anyone other than site admin)
- -URL (Optional)
- -(Comment)
If the site owner has elected to hold comments in moderation (many do), your comment will not appear immediately after submitting it. It will be held in the moderation queue. Unless, of course, you have had a previously approved comment and you use the same email that you used the first time. Raise your hand if you see where I’m going with this.
The Strategy
…Is simple. Check out the existing comments on the article. Find one with a hyperlinked name. Follow that link to that person’s site, and look for a contact email. Once you’ve found it, return to the article and use the same info to leave another comment. You are now impersonating someone with a previously approved comment. The comment field should allow you to use html. Go ahead and leave your link with whatever dang anchor text you want in there.
As you might have guessed, this will not work 100% of the time. The main reason being you have no way of knowing what email was actually used to leave the comment. However, in all likelihood, the person that left that previously approved comment used the same email that they display on their website. This method also of course depends on the fact that the site owner has a publicly displayed email address.
And now the FAQ…
What if I Can’t Find Their Email?
Move on. Find another comment leaver. Depending on how much you want that link, you may or may not want to spend 20 minutes trying to find one that works.
Is This Unethical?
Sort of, but it’s not that bad. Actually I think it perfectly reflects the theme and intent of this site.
Will it Work with Other CMS’s besides Wordpress?
Do I look like an internet scientist to you?
Will this Post Upset the Natural Balance of the Wordpress Universe and Destroy the Internet?
Yes.
Will this Shady Shit Work Even on This Site?
Probably, dick!
A confidence scam to get links.
Love. It.
I’m going to test this theory out on Josh.
Wait a minute Josh has no email address on his site. It didn’t work! I want my money back.
Haha, yeah, luckily for him (and me) the email he used isn’t the same as his name + URL. Now that I think about it, I should just start searching for all of the WP comment backlinks to his URL and start impersonating him now that I know what email he uses.
Sorry, Josh.
…And all the other people that have commented on this site with their URL.
Clever trick – people will likely get emails though saying “thanks for your comment”…but I can see it still working in a lot of cases!
Right, but especially in the case of abandoned blogs…what the heck are they gonna do about it!? Haha.
If this works.. man you are a genious!!!
let’s see if it worked…
ha!
If you’re willing to be more patient, just contact the owner of “x” site that you want to impersonate. Ask them a question that practically begs an answer. When they reply, the odds are you now probably have their email to then use w/ this technique.
lol this is so wrong but i guess it could work at the same time i think it might be very time consuming “Baa” why can’t i make up my mind on what strategy i like best to get backlinks.
I never use my main email in the comment forms of blogs, but I’m sure most people do.
Nice and sneaky, just how I like it. Sweet! Now all I need to do is build a crawler and scraper and go crazy.