Being a blogger and a human we mistake and we learn from it. This is something which is very common in blogging, as with time we learn things, and we improve on it. In my blogging journey, I have learned many things the hard way. Some by self-realization and some by people suggesting me. By the end of the day, it’s easier to see what works out and what now.
Amit have already shared a handy Blog commenting guide for Bloggers to generate backlinks but how about those blog comments which we get on our blog. What can we do about it?
Have you ever thought all those nice and sugar coated comments that you are getting might not be so useful and may hurt your blog more. Here I will reason out some of the advantages and disadvantages of blog comments and probably you can learn from my mistakes and make appropriate changes in your comment accepting policies.
Recommended reading:
Benefits of Blog comments:
So, first understand why it is important for any blogger to get comments and how it’s going to help in SEO and branding
SEO Benefits:
Google indexes comments on any page and recently they have made their bots smart enough to index Fb comments if you have implemented. A useful comment on your post helps in increasing the keyword variation, and it makes your blog more reachable for long tail Keywords.
Example: if I write about SEO guide and some commentator comments with more useful information’s like LSI, Social media promotion, Google authorship which is modern day SEO technique, this add more useful information to my post and also helps in ranking for long tail keywords like “modern SEO +Social media promotion” and so on.
Trust & Popularity:
Social media share count helps in showing new visitor that readers trust this blog, and that’s why people share its content. Though the real popularity and Ego boost comes only when you are getting meaningful comments.
It usually takes 2-3 hours to come up with a well-researched post and to get a one line comment is more like hey I just acknowledged you, whereas meaningful blog comments will help in better engagement and bring conversation and discussion to your blog post.
Disadvantages of accepting Blog comments:
Let me clear out that I don’t mean you should not accept comments, but you should be strict about your comment policy. Let me help you out here with my views and later on you can add your opinion on the same.
Increases Spam:
Many webmasters buy blog commenting services to add comments on their blog. There is no second thought, adding blog comments on the different domain will help your blog in the long run and we have already seen how it helped me to get PR 3. So there is no doubt, commenting helps you to pass link-juice.
Now, when you accept comments like “Nice post” “Wow an awesome guide” “I landed on this blog for searching for “%Post title%” and I really liked it and I’m going to subscribe to your blog right away”, it doesn’t add value to your post and also your outbound link cycle will be disrupted. I have noticed it late but if you know of “Related Google operator”, you will realize what I meant. Here the is related report for ShoutMeLoud and most of the related links which Google has determined here comes using Blog commenting.
This is one of my biggest mistakes to accept all the comments in the past, which doesn’t add any value. I’m not saying they were spam, but they didn’t add any value to the post. My suggestion: If you are accepting such comments which doesn’t add any value, simply reject them. Also, have a policy to accept comments only with the real name and now like “SEO Brisbane” “SEO India” and so on. A genuine commentator knows the importance of using a name or brand name for the personal touch. Is, isn’t it?
You lose genuine commentator:
When I see a great post, and I think of adding comment there, I see 10-20 comments like “Great post” “Useful posts” and so on and I don’t find worth wasting my 5-10 minutes of time to add a kickass comment. I would rather jump to some other blog where real commentators are participating and engaging. What about you? Do you comment on such blogs?
Database Size:
How many of you complaints about increasing database size and site going down without much traffic. Believe it, it mostly happens due to enormously huge database size and keeping such useless blog comments away from your blog, you helping your blog. Though, just in case if you are not aware you need to keep cleaning your wp_comments table to remove all spam comments cached by Akismet.
Solution to such bogus comments:
One easy and quick solution is to implement 3rd party services like Facebook commenting system which requires user to comment using their Facebook comments and no one would like to spoil their social media presence and also you will get rid of those comments which come from Blog commenting services and software’s like Scrapebox.
Another solution is to implement comment by registration only, and this will help you to get genuine readers register your site and add value. You may offer various registration options like Facebook, Twitter and so on. Most of the popular sites, which get lots of comment are using the same method. This not only helps in eradicating spam comments but also your outbound link will be controlled.
Here are few things which I look before accepting comments:
- Name and link (Spam or real)
- Is the Comment meaningful?
- Is the link in comment adding value or not?
None the less, at times I also check spam comment tab to recover all those genuine comments which have been marked by Akismet as spam. Believe it, years back I used to love the fact that I’m getting 50+ comments on all blog post, but I realize it was not as good as I thought. Infect, it not only devalue my outbound links but also uselessly increasing my page load time. Many bloggers suggest disabling comments on old blog posts, but I would not advocate that in ever case, as Blogging is all about one to many interactions where readers also share their opinion and reaction via comments.
Read:
More over, if you are still thinking why you should not accept such blog comments, here is food of thought: There are always like,share and tweets button which a reader can always use to show their appreciations.
Open question to all Webmasters: What’s your comment accepting policy? Do you accept all the comments or you are also particular about what comments goes live on your blog?
Same question again Harsh. When I had started blogging. I use to get a lot of comments with hyperlinks into it. They are still residing into my blog. After I used Akismat, such comments were atopped. Should I know go and delete all such comments ? Will these comments in anyway affect my blog.
I get 20 to 30 comments for my blog on daily basis but I approve only few comments which looks meaningful for my blog readers.
Hi Harsh,
This Blog post is very useful for me today, I have my website and getting comments in my blog posts. I was having fear to approve that comments., thinking that it might decrease my page rank. I came to know about how to approve comments in your website.
I want to know one thing that, if someone giving their website name and it will appear in our website with their comments, is it good for our website?
Please help.
Thanks
Harsh..Earlier I too kept comments and I also received comments for various blogs in my website,but clients also used to write about their views on the stock market calls received to them.So I will spam and I will not approve such comments.Now I can use scrapbox which I known a new from this blog.
Accepting comments serve as a ‘page leak’ to the authority of your site. So, the logic here is to make sure that you only accept comment(s) that will make meaningful contribution to the read article.
Comments When Meaningful are good to be accepted even if they are a line or two. I wish some one invents a plugin which could differentiate between proper comments and the ones meant only for getting a link back, but only a human mind can differentiate at the moment i believe.
I love this post because it says the same thing which i am communicating at various blog posts and forums.
There is no shortcut to success, because shortcuts (or short comments here) usually land up in spam or deleted folder. 🙂
If the reader has spent few minutes in reading the article it becomes a duty of the reader to comment (good or bad) without discrimination to enrich author as well as the fellow readers with his view point. Blogging is all about giving and taking. So don’t expect to get if you are not giving. On a lighter note except your blog where else you will get free viewership(of course by commenting!)
Tele-Columnist!
Meaningful comments are very necessary because meaningful comments helps us to derive traffic even from nofollow blog.
Discuss commenting system also increases database size? I think comment stores in discuss database. What do you think harsh?
Hi harsh. I really get inspiration from your post. previously i was accepting all blogs comments which are like “wonderfull post” ,”nice” , “Thanks and all now i have learned right way to how to accept our previous blog comment and how to reject it. Right now i am a new blog collecting information about SEO and all internet marketing blogging informations so that i make my blog more impressive and useful.
Right Harsh, I always been thought that commenting on others blog will help me in SERP but now I realized that accepting comments are also a good blogging practice. As you said Facebook commenting system is also a best way to avoid spam and filthy comments as it directly linked to social digital life of commentators.
Everyone should need to understand that comments are NOT ONLY TO GET BACKLINKS but it is a part of any article which makes that article more valuable.
Yes Harsh,
I have a strong feeling that comments are miniature articles which should be relevant and informative. Even the criticism should be constructive, I feel.
Thanks for the article.
Regards…………..
Good tips Harsh, to be honest I didn’t know about the related Google operator either, but I will implement it to see what kind of results I get. I was meaning to write a comment conditions page for melting posts just never got round to it. Some things I have in mind will only approve comments that: Use real names, create value, engage in conversation and have adequate length. Even though I use Disqus which is a no-follow I still get plenty of “nice post” and “thanks for the info” comments. They may not be spam but as you say they dont add value or contribute to conversation and may even be bad for SEO.
Comments have to be meaningful and it should be an interaction with the author. Not just a simple “Thank you” or “Nice post” may not look nice if you keep it as the first comment.
Most of them think about free backlinks and put up useless comments. Those people should read this post and change themselves..
Harsh
I absolutely love having comments on my blog, I only accept relevant comments, and I have a great lovely group of readers so I always get great comments. I feel the the ultimate advantage of it is “trust and popularity”. I dont agree with the disadvantages because I deal with them well.
I do have a comment policy on my blog but I doubt people would read it. I don’t simply approve comments unless comments from regular commenters or fellow blogger friends. I have a question to ask you Harsh : You said your site was affected because you simply approved all meaningless comments in the past right? But why is that? Your comment links are NoFollow, that hurts too? Thanks.
ofcourse, I dont accept such “single word” comments, the policy is fairly to accept only useful comments which are real.
commenting bots problem is fairly handled by Akismet, although several other plugins are available but I’m a huge fan of it.
These days I am recieving around 10-20 comments every day but most of them are spam comments.
Also I dont approve comments like “Nice Post” because these comments shows that the person had commented just for getting a back link.
well now their strategy of spamming has little changed now they add some spintax or title of blog post to keep their comment unique.I still dont understand why panda is unable to penalyze those spammers
Well, I think it more a problem with the comment form of WordPress than a problem with the comments themself. I do have few sites in which I accept comments and it’s alright. In fact, I never use WordPress but I know that hackers can create automated bots to feel them up and even pass the Catcha. But my comment forms are homemade and before I had the same problem so I created my own catcha (really simple, a picture about an answer to give so bots can’t pass it) and it works since then. But I realized a while back that I had nearly no comments anymore, just because I haven’t a field for the website of the commentator (let me guess that 99% of people leave a comment just to get some juice). 2 weeks ago, I created a new form with a nice comment display and yesterday, I had 2 comments, one meaningless and the other one useful.
Anyway, still have to valid manually for sure, only human can know what is good or not 😉
I do get comments that only say words of praise, and most of them get deleted because they don’t sound sincere at all. A majority of them are bots that seek to target the site and obtain free backlinks.
Sometimes, I give the commenters the benefit of the doubt, eespecially when there’s a URL or twitter handle left behind and I can check if they’re serious when they’re expressing themselves.
I also experience the other extreme in blog comments – the comments by knowledgeable visitors are so useful that they end up adding more value to the post than the content I’ve written myself! This is what I love about blogging – participation by the community in the same spirit as that of Wikipedia.