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.
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:
- Lengthy and detailed posts attract natural backlinks and shares.
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
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:
Conclusion:
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.
- Here are a few strategies which will help you to get more comments.
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!
There’s nothing better than a comment that carries the same value as the author. It seems most of my comments come from avid questions or people simply wanting to state that they are familiar with it and agree. A blog comment definitely will affect search engine ranking from a word usage perspective.
Thanks for building this post!
Nice share Harsh, comments with keywords works best!
Thanks for the sharing…Nice article. One thing which this case-study made clear is the fact that comments definitely affect the ranking of your blog posts.
Good post Harsh!
I’ve build my website/blog myself, so I don’t have the native comment script that WordPress has.
Which 3rd party comments script would you recommend?
What do you think about Disqus?
Regards,
Mickel
Hey Mickel,
Thanks, Dude. Disqus is great for commenting. You can also checkout Livefyre.
One of the best blog i have read…. Some nice post are part of this post. Thanks for sharing such nice blog.
I wonder if having a lot of comments can harm rankings even if they are on-topic? I mean, what exactly does on-topic mean? My rankings have sunk and I have many comments that are all very on-topic, in my opinion. They don’t contain the targeted keywords, though. The comments are thousands of words and so is the post, each are about equal length so basically the comments may be overwhelming the post. I moderate them, there is no spam there. Should I delete some?
Hi Harsh,
Thanks for the the great information. I was curious if comments was imortant for SEO. Thank you for answering my question. I will consider much more important now that I know.
You are so smart Harsh 🙂
Thanks.
Thanks Gerado.
Yes, nice over all content. Am slowly opening my eyes to the concept of lengthy articles, not for spammy reasons, but for better ranking. This will surely take my time and needs more research on each keywords, but if this is what i need to rank, i’ll do it.
Thanks for this wonderful information and tips, am now open to writing more lengthy guidelines and tips on my technology blog.
Hi Harsh Sir
Please Help me with this question for Blog commenting if I comment on someone’s blog post in their facebook comment plugin or Disqus comment plugin is helpful does it pass link juice to my blog?? Thanks in advance and expecting answer from you.
Hey Vijal,
If it is a do follow link then the link juice will be passed to your blog. Otherwise no.
I did not really know there is so much to know about blog commenting and it really matters. I am quite pleased with the article and will love to know more.
Hi Harsh,
Commenting is one of the best trick to rank webpages higher and i recently started this. Your strategy blog is very good about commenting.
Great article! I actually found it by going to google and typing “Does commenting on other bloggers posts help your sites SEO?” and this article popped up. I definitely learned that I need to create more CTA’s to encourage comments, But since we’re on the topic, will commenting on posts made by others that asks for my website address help my sites SEO as well as theirs?
Hi Harsh,
What are your thoughts on the issue with wordpress integrated comments adding to the page text when it comes to over-optimization?
If 10 comments all mention your target keyword you can easily reach an inflated keyword density.
I tend to use disqus because it does not add to the overall content.
Based on what you outlined here, I checked to see which posts on my blog are getting the most traffic and you are right. The posts that I have the most comments on are ranked higher in the search engines.
When I use Alexa’s audit tools, I am seeing that some of the traffic is coming from keywords that I didn’t even try to target which is amazing. Now I’m going to spend some time going through my site and building posts for some of those pages that are getting traffic from other long-tail keywords that I didn’t think about before.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Yes, You are Right Harsh, Blog comments can be a good way of enhancing reputation of blog in your niche and hence it effects the keywords ranking too.
Hi Harsh, thanks for these insights. Do you know if Facebook comment box affects ranking or I should stick to the default blog comment system?
Amazing share!!
We know the importance of backlinks, the more backlinks your site have, the more chances are there to rank higher on the search engine and blog commenting is the easiest way to create backlinks.
If you are in Search Engine Optimization, it is probable that you must have heard about them. They are the building blocks of SEO.
thank your for sharing your ideas about blog commenting, I also received a lot of spam comments that isn’t relevant to the topic, I just manually delete it all, I didn’t know about the commentluv plug in, but I am glad I found your posts to give me an idea on what should and shouldn’t. thank you
Hi Harsh, thanks for this new exposure. I’ll have to work on the conclusion of my most popular posts in order to attract more comments. Keep up the good work bro.
Anything that is keyword-rich, relevant to the subject and informative to the audience should be kept as it is and it will yield results.