With the release of Google Penguin, it’s more important than ever to make certain that your WordPress site does not have spam on it. Many Professional wordpress themes come with tools that make it easier for you to control the comments on your blog and to keep an eye on other problem areas for websites. WordPress itself has tools built into it, such as Akismet, which also work to fight spam. Here are some features that are compatible with WordPress that can really help you cut down on the amount of spam you deal with.

User spam

One of the most problematic areas for WordPress blogs where spam is concerned is the comments section. People who practice blackhat SEO techniques will sometimes try to generate backlinks for themselves by commenting on blogs and filling those comments with links to sites that they want to promote.

Manual intervention is the most effective way to prevent this type of spam. Simply change your settings so that you have to approve any posts added to the comments section of your blog before they go live. This does slow down the user interaction, of course, but it also ensures that the interaction remains high quality and useful. You don’t want Google or any other search engine to see your site as a home for spam links.

Akismet

Akismet is a basic feature that comes preinstalled in WordPress installations since the release of WordPress 2.0. It is a spam-filtering tool that looks for spam comments and puts them into a queue so that you can check them to make certain that they are actually spam or that they are legitimate. It will occasionally catch legitimate comments, but you can pull them out of the queue and allow them to be posted as normal.

Akismet can save you a lot of time. You will need an API key to set it up, but these are available free. If you’re using a theme, there may be a similar tool included with it or Akismet may be ready to go when you install. Either way, this plug-in or other ones like it are necessities. While requiring that comments be approved before they are posted can cut down on a lot of spam, using a plug-in that automatically filters out spam can save you the trouble of actually reading useless comments.

WordPress is very good at fighting spam because of the many plug-ins and other features available for it. Be sure you use them whenever possible and don’t be afraid to experiment with new ones.
Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse.com. She is passionate about WordPress, SEO and Blogging. Don’t forget to check out stunning Professional wordpress themes (warning: no boring stuff)

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