How to Keep Your WordPress Blog Spam Free

Whether you’re a professional blogger or a part-time blogger, simply continue reading to discover how to prevent your WordPress blog from becoming inundated with spam!

How to keep your WordPress blog spam free:

Utilize honeypot technology to block spam bots from leaving comments on your blog

If visitors to your blog find that blog has been spammed by fake bots who post comments which advertise a product or service, they’ll think twice before revisiting your blog. As it’s not professional to run a blog has more comments from bloggers than actual readers.

To prevent spammers from leaving comments on your post it’s well worth downloading honeypot software such as WP Spam Fighter, which will create a hidden form on your comments page which is only viewable to bots. As spam bots are programmed to automatically fill out every field in a form, their comment will automatically be flagged as spam and won’t appear in your blog post.

Force readers to enter a captcha verification code

Another way to stop spam bots from flooding your blog is to force all of your readers to successfully enter a captcha verification code before their comment is posted to your blog. Just be mindful that human spammers will still be able to enter captcha verification codes and spam your blog. While the most popular type of captcha verification tests involves typing out a blurry code, some tests involve having your readers click on certain items in an image, such as cars or trees.

Choose to have a moderator approve all comments before they are posted on your blog

If you’re at your wit’s end, you can change your WordPress settings so that each comment which has been submitted, has to be manually approved by a moderator, before it’s posted to your blog site.

Better yet, if you choose to moderate each individual comment posted, you’ll have the option of permanently blacklisting any user which tries to spam your blog site. You can also check a handy box which is titled “comment author must have a previously approved comment”, to automatically approve comments from users who you trust will leave a proper comment. This is a handy feature to take advantage of if your blog attracts a sizeable following and you’re keen to avoid spending countless hours moderating the comments which are left on your blog.

Carefully moderate each comment, which contains more than 1 link

You may not be aware that any comment which is left on a WordPress blog which contains more than one link will be automatically flagged for moderation. As the bulk of spammers will include at least one link to a third party website in their blog comments.

Before approving any blog comment which features a hyperlink, it’s highly advisable to check out the link which has been posted. To see whether or not it’s a link to a product or service, which a bot or a human spammer is trying to push, in order to earn a small commission.

So if one of your primary goals is to restrict your blog’s comment section to genuine readers, it’s well worth following the 4 handy tips listed above!