Commentluv enabled blogs for inbound links?

[gfiedel]

Question 1: What is the general consensus on gaining links through blog comments on blogs with CommentLuv enabled?

Backstory: I was studying our competitor's links and tripped upon something I haven't seen before. There were a number of blog comments created in 2011 by an individual who was probably an SEO hired at least partially for the purpose of making blog comments to gain inbound links for the competitor. I haven't dug deeply enough to find if there are any more recent than 2011.

The interesting part was the name/link of the company for this individual which was not the company's actual name but a URL crafted from a main keyword. It  obviously has a redirect to the actual competitor's website which is where the link took me AND a link to this individual's "most recent blog post". This blog post on the company site was written by someone else entirely.

Question 2: Clearly some manipulation to build links- would these links be considered unnatural?

Question 3: Would it be smart for me to find blogs with CommentLuv to gain links to my blog?

[gfiedel]

Thanks, Andy.

I can't say 100%, but I am as sure as possible that the URL was created as a redirect. I checked on archive.org and wayback machine doesn't have URL archived. So, then, I also understand you to be saying that the links this company has obtained through blog commenting with CommentLuv aren't worth much and may be considered to have been manipulated.

And I think you're also saying that chances are, it's not worth my while in terms of search engines to pursue commenting on blogs with CommentLuv, but it may help me get more traffic to my blog. And that would make me happy.

I appreciate the advice to not just look at one type of link. I am not. I just tripped on this thing and got curious enough to pursue more info. Finding ways to get more traffic on my blog is something I have been investigating - links aside. Seems to be a don't put the cart before the horse kind of thing.

[SEOAndy]

Ok generally < so not to miss any questions

The links you describe to some extent could be considered manipulated, unless they were sites previously and have since been redirected - which is perfectly valid. However, if they have always been redirects then they are unlikely to have gained anything from those links - In my experience if someone links to a page which is redirected since existence (and google generally knows this thanks to its vast database) then it is unlikely to pass juice - but as i said if it was say a blog post on another site but the site has since moved it will carry some juice.

If you want to investigate that further nip to http://archive.org/web/web.php and enter the url which is being redirected - go back into its history (across the top) and see if a page exists there or not.

So to your main question, are commentluv links worth it. Basically it's hard to tell whether they or any other comment system offering a similar function are worth it. As with many website comments in general the links maybe set to no-follow and so not worth anything to search engines, but thats not to mean they are totally worthless - people still see and click them.

And finally, my advice is never to just look for one type of link (such as one from commentluv comments) - it's the same with any kind of link, if you manipulate a search engine by biasing towards something hugely their worth to you will diminish and your time wasted.

always look at the bigger picture.