Effect Of Comments On Blog Traffic: A Case Study

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As a blogger, there are a few questions that are always on your mind.

Things like:

  • How do I improve my blog’s search engine rankings?
  • How do I get my blog to be noticed?
  • What is the ideal length of a blog post?

Obviously, you have turned to the internet to research ways in which you can improve your blog- which is why you are reading posts from ShoutMeLoud!

In today’s post, I will discuss a topic which is not often talked about but holds a major role in the overall SEO and growth of a blog.

This post will change the way you look at your blog comments, as I share with you one case study that educated me about how blog comments play a major role in raising content ranking.

Can Blog Comments Help In Ranking Your Content Higher?

Let’s begin with one of the major aspects of on-page SEO– the length of a post.

According to a study done by SERPIQ, the greater the length of the content, the higher the post will rank in search engines.

ideal Content length for SEO
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Even here at ShoutMeLoud, the posts which have the most traffic are the ones which have more than 1200 words.

Here’s a good rule:

Before you decide that you will start writing lengthy content from now on, let me first give you some important information regarding blog comments:  

Your post’s comments are also calculated as a part of your post’s content!  

The number of high quality comments your post receives will also improve the overall ranking of your content.

If you read my previous article on LSI keywords and how to add LSI keywords, then you understand that it is important to have keyword variation in your posts.

Comments on your blog help to improve the overall keyword variation and quality of the content. At the same time, irrelevant comments on your blog posts do more damage than good.

This is one of the main reasons why I always ask ShoutMeloud readers to not use the CommentLuv plugin.

The CommentLuv plugin definitely helps you to get more blog comments, but at the same time, it adds a lot of unrelated links within the post’s page.

One major problem I faced after using the CommentLuv plugin was the issue of spam and broken links. Accepting all these random comments, you can inadvertently link to many spam sites or 404 pages after a domain from a commentator has been penalized or has expired.

So, I strongly suggest avoiding the CommentLuv plugin as it has the propensity to do more harm than good for your blog.

Case Study: How removing comments affected my blog traffic

Blog comment Traffic effect
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On one of the blogs in my network (relationship niche blog), I was receiving a great number of comments on a few posts, and those posts were ranking at the top of Google Search.

Later, I decided to shift from the WordPress comment system to the Google Plus comment system in an effort to obtain more social votes and traffic.

I was unsure how existing traffic would be affected if I were to remove the existing comments (which I did by disabling WordPress comments).

After replacing the WordPress comment system (November 22) with the Google Plus comment system, my traffic dropped by 40% in the next 2 days.

Note that the culprit here was not the Google Plus commenting system but my mistake of removing the existing comments from the blog post.

After 9 days, I reverted back to the original WordPress comment system (December 2) and my traffic started getting back to normal.

You can do a similar case-study on your blog and share your experience and results with me in the comments section of this post!!

One thing which this case-study made clear was the fact that comments definitely affect the ranking of your blog posts.

Having relevant comments on your posts will help you get more organic traffic, and these quality comments will attract more good comments.

Similarly, if you have an old blog with irrelevant and baseless comments, removing them can be helpful.

Note: Here at ShoutMeLoud, I have deleted over 4000+ comments from old posts which were pointless and not related to the post topics. Initially, I was a little unsure of my actions, but over time it turned out to be a great step. Manually removing old, useless comments is a tedious task, but it’s very important for good blog management in the long-run.

Also watch this video for better understanding:

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Conclusion:

blog-comments-case-study
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The comments on your blog have a significant impact on the ranking of your blog posts, and it is well worth your effort to encourage users to comment.

When you encourage comments from others, make sure your readers add value with their comments. Don’t be shy about deleting any comments which are not relevant to the post. Quick, short-phrased comments such as “good post” and “nice post” do nothing in terms of adding value.

Also, be sure to analyze your top ranking posts and try to learn whether there is any relationship between the number of comments and the traffic received on the post.

Feel free to share your observations with me in the comments section! (Relevant comments only!)

Also, if you find the information in this post to be useful, be sure to share this post with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

66 thoughts on “Effect Of Comments On Blog Traffic: A Case Study”

  1. Malcolm Scott

    I am getting mostly spam comments on my latest blog and have not approved any of them. They seem to be sent from the same source and after a while they stop. The most recent are offering finance and using Russian email addresses. I’m getting good at spotting them now and can normally delete the offending posts by just reading the title or email address. Currently looking for comments that have content which is related to my site.

  2. Maggie Lauh

    Hi Harsh,

    I had planned to install the Commentluv plugin for my site before before reading this article, but now I give it up because you said there is a serious issue of spam and broken links when using the Commentluv.

    Thanks for your sharing, let us don’t have to try the trial cost.

    Best regards
    Maggie

  3. Paykasa

    I did the same mistake and i was searching for reasons and found it a big reason, i removed fb comments from my blog post and for past 2 months my traffic went down to 60%. Going to add the WP default comment box again (As it would not delete existing comments). God bless you man!

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