Spam or not to spam?

[App Developers]

I was doing a check on one of my main competitors and I realized they got some really NICE high PR links. I went to check them out and they were comments in a blog. Now, others have figured this out as well and you can tell there are people spamming. Some are not and some are. I am tempted to post but make it pertain to the blog and not as the spammers did. BUT really it is still spam isn't it?? I would love those high PR comments but where do you draw the line? I don't know. Now, with that being said after I analyzed most of their links I realized that most of their links are just like the one I mentioned. And they have maintained a high position in google for the keywords for a while now.
IF I comment and that is IF can this then damage my site if spammers have commented?? any advice here??

[RealEcon]

The best backlinks you can get are ones that your link is on the actual page with PR. For these types of links you are going to have to spam high PR blog posts or high PR forum threads or pay a link broker or subscribe to a network like whats in my sig;-)

[App Developers]

I don't get it then. How are they able to stay on top with spam?? I just don't get it. Does it really ruin your rankings? I don't know. I just get aggravated with trying to get the best backlinks I can get and they are able to find a ton of high PR not in their niche and stay on top. does that make sense?

[JSProjects]

Little biased here since I rely heavily on blog commenting for my own sites. Commenting done manually isn't spam, though it can be considered "grey hat." Nothing wrong with providing a good comment and leaving a backlink if the blog owner allows it.

Now, if you're using Scrapebox to blast away at a hundred thousand blogs, that definitely leans towards spam. But chances are most of those blogs are not moderated and already have a lot of other comments. So I doubt the blog owners care.

[App Developers]

Originally Posted by JSProjects

Little biased here since I rely heavily on blog commenting for my own sites. Commenting done manually isn't spam, though it can be considered "grey hat." Nothing wrong with providing a good comment and leaving a backlink if the blog owner allows it.

Now, if you're using Scrapebox to blast away at a hundred thousand blogs, that definitely leans towards spam. But chances are most of those blogs are not moderated and already have a lot of other comments. So I doubt the blog owners care.

Okay, so yes I am talking manually commenting on blogs. So, I guess I am speaking more grey hat than black hat! And I don't mean I am going to spam the heck out of it. I am talking about a comment with a link. If the owner allows it I suppose it isn't spam. I did SEE spam on those sites of course and that is what kind of alarmed me.

I have been looking for such sites for a while to comment on but havent found any. I suppose my competitor is a little better at finding them!
thanks for the feed back.

[M7D]

Originally Posted by App Developers

I suppose my competitor is a little better at finding them!

I recommend you use a tool that can help you find their backlinks ranked in descending order by pagerank. I use SEO Spyglass and Market Samurai for this. You only need one or the other, I just happen to have both. It reveals a lot about your competitor's traffic sources. I hope that helps.

[dadamson]

Blog commenting can be spam or it can be white-hat, depending on how it is done.

You could use software like Scrapebox but this creates mass comments on a huge number blogs and your comments would likely be unrelated and very spammy.

OR you can take the time to read each post and construct a helpful comment on the post. Not just "great post", write something that really contributes to the post. The longer the better. Spend more time on the higher PR blogs to increase your approval rate.

Not all blog owners are so naive that they don't know your creating a backlink, but if you contribute to the post rather than spamming some garbage, they are often happy to grant you with a link back to your site in exchange for reading their post.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Dave