The SEO Rockstars at SEORoundtable.com had a post today about how blog comment spam is handled. It’s well known that links to your website increase your ranking.  And blog comments are a quick and easy way to get links to your site.  The problem is that bots can upload these comments and even circumvent some standard captchas.

The search engines recognized this and have taken some measures in partnering with top blog platforms, such as WordPress and MovableType, to establish a standard.  In a nutshell:

Links in blog comments will not help your ranking. How? One simple tag: rel=nofollow, meaning there is no link juice passed into the engines.

So if this is a tactic that has been recommended to you, you need to take a step back and reevaluate your SEO consultant choice.  If it’s an internal team, they need a little education on what works and what doesn’t.

For more info, join the conversation in Google’s Webmaster Help.