Do Other people's Comments help??

[playa4thee]

Hey Everybody..

I just wanted to see if anyone can shed some light on this question... I have a new Wordpress blog site (Status is Baddest - Yours - Mine - My - Ours Status is Baddest) and I have noticed lately more people leaving comments which of course they have the URLS pointing to their sites. Does this hurt or help your site rank better in Google's eyes? I know the people leaving the comments are just looking for a backlink, but does that do anything for my rankings? Hurt... help?
Just want to know what to do with most of these comments I am getting.. Thanks to all & hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

[milapetersburg]

It's a good thing to have comments coming to each of your posts. Since search engines do love fresh contents (updates), like Google, having your posts constantly appended with extra words through user generated comments, bots will have another reason of coming back to see any changes. Also, comments can mean popularity, importance, interest.

However, comments can possibly hurt your site as well, especially when it's mishandled and a lot of those comments were from spammers or, shall I say, those that can't post a comment without a link back inserted. Though allowing a link back can serve as the visitors' token for paying a contribution to your content through comment box, you as the site owner should check if the links were not broken, not a bad neighbor and are relevant, because a web page referencing broken, non-relevant and bad links devalues user experience which search engines like google are concern about.

[dtang4]

It's good to have comments and similar activity on your blog posts if the comments are of quality (e.g. no spam links, not 1-5 words, etc.). This is especially true post-Panda, because comments represent social proof. It is evidence that visitors value your content enough to respond to it, similar to people FB liking your page or giving you G+ votes.

If you're worried about comment links eroding your link juice, you can get a plugin to add nofollow tags to those links.

[UMS]

I personally only allow real comments. I notice all the comments on your site are spam/bots, so they don't add any value to your site, your readers and probably not Google.

[playa4thee]

Thanks for your responses and feedback guys. Much appreciated. I have been deleting those I deem spamish or irrelevant. I also began editing them and removing the links on most of them and just leaving the comments without the urls.
Thanks again.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Depends on the quality of the content they create for you.

Here is one tip that most people will not do but is very helpful and can make you money.

BTW: The comments are nofollowed unless you change that in WordPress.

Back to the tip: Use a plugin or shortner that allows you to tie your affilaite programs to comments keywords Then when the keywords tied to the programs are used in commments your visitors are automatically creating keyword rich affiliate links for you. When your content is lifted/scraped those keywords are embedded within.

Comments can be good or bad and we all hate crap comments, but at the same time there are many who like to leave them so it's part of the playing field.

[transcriptionservices]

hi,
i agree with @milapetersburg because the more comments you will get there is more possibility of catching the attention of google.

[jalicia18]

You can only approve comments that are with sense and thought that are relevant to the topic. Irrelevant comments will not look good.

[David Ogden]

I have removed the ability for people to add comments to my blogs, as the comments left were mostly junk from people try to ride on the back of my results and to be frank a love helping people but I also run a business if you want my help you need to be prepared to pay.

Comments and even posts off the subject of your blog dilute the content and as quality falls so to will your ranking in search results. I would suggest an alternative strategy that of having guest authors to add differing viewpoints, whilst maintaining the direction and focus of the blog. If you decide to do this you need to provide some guide lines for them to follow but it can work quite well.

[KELVIN WILLIAMS]

This is awesome.

This really shows that the content you have is beneficial to them that makes them drop comment which is very good for a site.

So many people have been looking for an opportunity like this, but my opinion is that you should not approve any spam comment because there exposes your site to danger. All you do is once you gets comments that are not relevant you quickly send them to trash.

Cheers

KELVIN WILLIAMS.

[C Rebecca]

Yaa... Comments on your blog post signifies that people are actually taking interest in your content and they want to link to it.

The other facet of blog commenting, some people do it just for getting backlinks.... they usually post crappy comments with a backlink to their own website.
If you are facing the same situation, either make your backlinks nofollow or approve only valuable comments.

[playa4thee]

Originally Posted by C Rebecca

Yaa... Comments on your blog post signifies that people are actually taking interest in your content and they want to link to it.

The other facet of blog commenting, some people do it just for getting backlinks.... they usually post crappy comments with a backlink to their own website.
If you are facing the same situation, either make your backlinks nofollow or approve only valuable comments.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and help.
Rebecca, how do I make the comments nofollow? I have been manually editing them one by one and simply deleting the URL where it says website... Is there a simpler way? Thanks again!

[Targeted Traffic]

I do think the value they bring to the table is massive - from both a community-building and a self-improvement perspective.

Some blog comments are useless junk. But, guess what - that's how the Internet works! Many times, whether it's search results or Wikipedia entries or forums or yes, even blog comments, you'll have to wade through the noise to find the signal.

[Matt Baker]

I use Wordpress plugin to detect spam comments. I only receive natural comments on my blog.

[playa4thee]

Originally Posted by Matt Baker

I use Wordpress plugin to detect spam comments. I only receive natural comments on my blog.

Hey Matt what's the name of that plugin you use if you can share.. thanks

[MikeFriedman]

Lot of BS being flung about on this thread.

The ONLY SEO and rankings benefit that comments could possibly have on a website is if there are a bunch of comments and people actually take the time to read them all. In theory, that could lower your bounce rate.

If you keep the outgoing link on the comments, you are bleeding out pagerank.

The belief that you need to constantly update and add new content in order to appease the search engines, is complete garbage. There are plenty of webpages ranking at the top of very competitive SERPs that have not been updated in years.

[rakesh1600193]

comments don't have negative effects but try to avoid giving backlinks to other sites from your page.

It will surely effect your site.

[paulgl]

Google has all but called all comments spam. And they are.
No matter how cute, visually appealing, or think they add
something, they don't. They are spam. Even comments without
links are spam. There is no reason to allow comments. You
can't tell what's real and what's not. After all, they are all
real spam, that's for sure.

But people don't seem to care about any of that.

Anything people add to your content is just BS. If you value
a post or article, why allow people to much up your content,
not to mention the dynamics of a page?

Since you cannot tell the difference between spam and non-
spam comments, it is better to leave any adsense off of those
pages. Google has told us that. And if you make money via
adsense, then why would you allow comments?

Yes, in political blogs, etc. and big celebrity blogs, comments
are necessary. But I propose those sites don't give a hoot
about anybody mucking up "content" or the dynamics of a page.
And certainly most strip out any html. Plus, they are partners
of big ad programs.

But it is very hard to convince people to not have comments.

If I have comments, I use intensedebate or some other script.
That way, no comments or links are shown to google.

Paul