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The last few months, many of Doodlekit ‘s websites (including our own) have fallen victims to SPAM attacks.   Unfortunately, SPAM is not easy to fight, and the amount of resources it takes to fight increases costs for everyone.  SPAM costs U.S. companies over $70 Billion each year.  Because of this, Doodlekit has had to spend most of our development time over the last few months developing SPAM protection instead of working on our new release.

Kinds Of SPAM Attacks

Websites are attacked in the following ways with SPAM:

1. SPAM Bots:  Automated (Robot) Spamming Software used by third parties. These bots submit hundreds (even thousands) of spam comments within minutes to websites.  An attack like this can bog down a web server – slow it down to a crawl or even shut it down completely.  Not to mention that whoever’s website got attacked will wake up the next morning with hundreds/thousands of spam entries/emails.

2. Manual SPAMMING:  Actual people manually go in and submit SPAM to your website. They get around automated SPAM bot protection by doing this.  However, they can only do a limited amount of SPAM since it is not automated. Most manual SPAMMERS won’t waste too much time on one website.

Below is a screenshot of some actual SPAM submitted by bots to one of our Doodlekit websites:

 Doodlekit Solutions To SPAM Attacks

1. Automated SPAM Bot Protection:  Last night we pushed out captchas for all Doodlekit forms. Captchas are the images of’ words’ that you verify before submitting a form.  These are common on many sites and you have probably run into them before.  Captchas are now available for Doodlekit users in three places: Blog comments, the Contact Us form, and the custom Form Builder. Check the Advanced Settings to turn these on for the first two, and the form builder itself has an option to turn this on for each custom form.

2. Manual SPAM Protection:  This was actually implemented a few months ago.  You may have noticed that all links (anchors) that you add to a Blog or Forum comment show up with the linked URL or words changed to ‘web link’ or ‘my website’.  One of the main reasons that websites get SPAMMED is to increase the SPAMMERS SEO ranking.  They do this by creating links on other peoples Blogs and Forums to their websites. The word phrases they use in those links are the word phrases they are trying to rank higher on search engine searches for.  By changing all link word phrases and URLs to the text ‘web link’, they lose the ability to do this.  When most manual SPAMMERS see that this happens on our websites, they will leave because they are wasting their time.

Another deterrent is that we add an extra property to every blog/forum comment link called ‘no follow’.  This tells search engines not to count this link for SEO purposes.  Most search engines respect this and void any SEO points to the link provided.

While we cannot block all SPAM, you can gain some satisfaction knowing that any SPAM that does get through will NOT help the SPAMMERS in any way (at least on Doodlekit websites).

Coming Soon: SPAM Management Tool

We are currently wrapping up a new tool that will allow Doodlekit users to manage their SPAM better.  The problem is that if a SPAM bot does get through our protection (which will probably happen every once in a while) your website gets stuck with hundreds/thousands of spam comments.  We don’t expect you to go in and manually delete these – that would take forever!  So this new tool will allow you to do searches on your comments for certain ‘keywords’ or timestamps and delete comments in bulk.

Conclusion

SPAM protection is an ongoing battle. SPAMMERS make smarter SPAM bots and we have to retaliate with smarter SPAM protection software. The key is to keep on top of it. If you notice any consistent SPAM attacks getting through to your website, contact us and let us know. Thank you for your understanding in this matter and your patience.

Featured Doodlekit Website: Vernon Chalmers - Online Marketing and HR Development Western Cape Website Owner's Name: Vernon Chalmers How Old Is Your Website: Two years

Description of company / website:

The purpose of the Vernon Chalmers website is to provide clients, students and visitors access to various categories of business, marketing and product information in order to meet their specific requirements.

In doing so, the website aims to:

• Frequently update business, course and subject information
• Maintain professional content and communication standards
• Continuously upgrade to meet new information specifications
• Provide an affordable range of premium branded IT products

How having a website has affected your business/objectives:

During the 2008 academic year, the website became an extension of my lecturing and classroom activities. As an independent lecturer on various campuses, students could now register and download their class notes immediately before or after a presentation. Not having an office on any campus also improved online interaction and communication between lecturer and student.

The website provided me a tremendous opportunity to learn and understand the web 2.0 platform offered by Doodlekit.  Very quickly during 2008 I started offering Internet Marketing courses and consultations mainly due to the knowledge and skills I mastered working with my Doodlekit website.

My online income from offering private courses, consultations and various IT products increased with 80% from the 2008 to the 2009 financial year. This was mainly due to an effective deployment of Doodlekit’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), quality onsite tools and generous online support from Doodlekit.

Lessons learned and advice to others about building and operating their own website:

The website became an extension of my business, persona and service delivery standards and therefore required mindfulness in all content, news and product updates. 

Know your target audience before attempting to communicate content and news to them. This will assist in information that is more relevant to increase return visitors and sales conversions.  

 Any website should be developed on traditional business and marketing principles. Set key targets and regularly track visitor behaviour to enable a good understanding of the pages they visit. This in turn will assist in tweaking content to be even more effective.    

 Very important is to register a website with your own domain name – I suggest that free plan users (on the Doodlekit platform as well) should at least take a Simple Plan to take advantage of the custom domain offer. Allow three to six months of active search engine indexing and SEO to gain substantial momentum with keywords, blog posts and general content searches.  

A successful website takes time to develop and your site’s Internet Marketing and SEO is forever a work in progress.

Regularly update your website with new content, news and relevant advertising is mandatory for SEO and keeping visitors interested in returning to your website.

Comments about Doodlekit:

From day one Doodlekit very quickly became an important stakeholder in not just offering a functional and professional website, but an exceptional hub of continuous online support. What a pleasure to work with Ben and Heath – always answering a query or offering effective advice on how to do various front or back-end tasks. I am indeed looking forward to another year with Doodekit.  Thank you.