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!
Awesome article.
Thanks for the valuable insights.
I started blogging last year and I’m loving it but just trying to get some traction with organic traffic.
Keep those tips coming…..they are greatly appreciated!
Thanks so much for this article Harsh. I have a fairly new blog and recently wrote a blog post that was about 1,400 words and was wondering if I should make it longer. Then I started wondering whether or not a lot of comments will help my posts get more traffic in terms of rank on Google, and you answered that exact question in this post. Perfect! Thanks so much for this information. I have learned quite a bit about blogging from you and am greatly appreciative!
Hi Harsh, good post. The fact of the matter, as you said, is that Google loves long content so since comments increase the length of your post, it is bound to be loved by Google.
The other thing is that Google wants to promote content that is alive and kicking, so having comments means there is life on your site.
Hi Harsh,
This is a great post. Thank you for explaining the reason why meaningfull comments are so important. To be honest, we have a blog where we don’t allow comments to be added as we were afraid that it may result in people spamming. As it seems, we are going to reconsider our strategy and make sure that we allow comments very soon :).
Thanks again
Thanks, Harsh
For Writing such a helpful article for the beginners
Really a nice share. I totally agree with you that blog comments can help in ranking your website.
As we all know that the number of high-quality comments, your post receives will automatically improve the overall ranking of your content.
This will also help you get more organic traffic, and these quality comments will attract more people to a particular site.
Thanks for sharing this useful information with us.
Really like all the info and tips you share
Cheers From Bangladesh
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!
You are a great blogger Harsh!
Really like all the info and tips you share.
Cheers from The Netherlands
Well, while searching on the Google about the commentluv. The first option I saw always is the commentluv plugin, but I really don’t know that it has the bad side too. Thanks, for giving me such useful information. I’ll definitely take care of it in the future.
Very good article. I have been waiting for a good article about blog commenting but I couldn’t get yet any way thanks for giving such valuable and informative articles. most of us all are not bothered about blog commenting.
Dear harsh,
Thanks.it help me to understand benefits of comments in blog and moderating it.what is your openion about using comment plugins like Facebook comments, discus compare to default WordPress comments
Thank you so much for this post, I had been using the technique of comment on other blogs for backlinks but I did not know that commenting on random blogs that were not in my niche could actually hurt my seo. Thanks for the heads up! I also thought about adding the commentluv plugin to my site to generate more comments on my blog post so that I could rank higher but you’ve made that clear why I shouldn’t. I have been reading your blog since before I started mine and honestly, you have inspired me to be better. Thank you.
Last but not least, I have been facing a lot of obstacles when it comes to monetizing my blog because I live in a PayPal unsupported country, this is how I initially found your site.
This has led me to stick with payoneer which I signed up for through your referal about 9 months ago and I must say that they are amazing by the way.
My point is, are there other ways to monetize a blog when the only option of receiving payments is through payoneer?
Thanks for all of your great post. Wish you all the best in all of your endeavours.
Back in days blog comment was one of the best strategy to improve ranking of a website but it does not work anymore, I mean doing blog commenting is easy but get you content placed on high authority website is very difficult so obviously search engine rewards hard to get links.
Hey, buddy!!
Really a nice share. I am totally agree with you that blog comments can help in ranking your website.
As we all know that the number of high quality comments, your post receives will automatically improve the overall ranking of your content.
This will also help you get more organic traffic, and these quality comments will attract more people on particular site.
Thanks for sharing this useful information with us.
Does Disqus comments effect your link juice?
I always keep on looking for tips which help me to improve my blog.
The thing which I like in this article is “Lengthy and detailed posts”, yes! it does…the more
information you share, more people will reach to you.
Thanks for sharing such wonderful tips 🙂
Hello Harsh, Good morning.. Great points. I also think about blog commenting is very important. To internet marketers everywhere, blog commenting is about as natural as eating when you’re hungry. Blog comments have always been an incredible resource for SEO for several reasons. Since blog comments are automatically attached to whatever website posted the page commented on in the first place, these comments gain authority from the main website. This means a blog comment on a website with more authority is worth a lot more than a blog comment on a website created yesterday.
Thank you for this post. My blog is fairly new and I’m on a daily quest to learn all things related to SEO. I’ve noticed a lot of sites using comment plug-ins and I needed to know if they would give me better rankings then using the WordPress comment system. Your post helped answer this question for me. I’m also going to implement some of your tips for getting more comments. Thanks again!
Good day Harsh! Definitely agreeing with you on this one 100%. Commentluv can definitely improve a certain page’s ranking but it depends on the site that you commented on and even though the links placed there are “no-follow” they can still be helpful in the ranking. Thanks for sharing this with! Keep up the great work!
Yes, you are absolutely right harsha. There is a website I have recently come across is ranking pretty well (around 256k traffic). 95% of the links he gained are from blog commenting. But the thing is, most of his links are spammy (links he got are from websites with 3000+ obls).
I really want to know why this guy is ranking on google?
I can send you his website link to your email ID if you think you can find the factor for his rankings.
Thanks a lot sir.Your article was very helpful for me to understand the importance of good comments on the blog and also the importance of removing the comments which are not relevant.Th presentation of the case study is very simple and easy to understand.Good luck