Comments w' Links on Your Website. What Do You Allow?

[LilBlackDress]

What do you allow as far as commenting on your website?

I am getting decent comments from people that linkback to their own site and they are in the same niche I am.
I am also getting ones from people in related niches linking to their own site.

If I allow these comments...

Do they lower the rank/value of my site by Google since they are linking out?

Should the comments be accepted but links disabled?

The links are also a leak out of my site is it better just to not approve them at all?


Thanks!

[SeanSupplee]

Honestly up to you but, a well writen comment from someone that ads value to your post actually can rank your page better then it was originally. I allow them on my blog the chance of someone clicking on it to visit my competitors is so low that I do not mind it.

[LilBlackDress]

Well they are not exactly thoughtful and well written but they are not bad. I mean they may just add a sentence like...

I really like (x) also but I have found that (y) is not so great.

But at least they are not like this...

So musch informascion i will comebak moree.

BTW how does it make my page rank higher?

[getsmartt]

If they do not add any thing to the site I delete them. IMHO I like (x) but (y) is better does not add anything to my site, it looks like a mini-review to drive traffic to their site. I might leave the comments, but I would definately remove the links

[Alexa Smith]

I have comments permanently disabled on all my sites. It seems terribly unlikely that I'm really going to gain anything from them at all, and it's one thing less to worry about.

[LilBlackDress]

Interesting Alexa,

But are you commenting on other peoples sites?

[wordwizard]

I allow comments and have gotten some great ones. I even connected with some very cool people through the comments section.

I do need to figure out a faster way to monitor the comments since they go to an email that I don't check all that often at the moment. But I'll remedy that.

Sometimes I get comments where people are trying to link back to their sales page, and if they say nice enough things I usually let them.

If the site is questionable though, I won't approve them. And the auto spam thing on wordpress takes care fot he really spammy ones.

Recently I had a promotional article as a comment. So far not approved. Probably won't.

But I invite comments. Please y'all come by and visit and leave comments ;-)

Elisabeth

[donnyg18]

When people comment on my blog, i usually accept most of the comments if they add some sort of value. I put a lot of time into writing my post, so I except at least a couple minutes for them to write a comment that will add value to the post

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by LilBlackDress

Interesting Alexa,

But are you commenting on other peoples sites?

Sometimes, yes. Generally with long comments, to try to add value to their site, in the hope that I'll survive "comment moderation". (Not competitors' sites, though).

[SantiSantana]

I personally think you would gain a lot out of saying publicly and straight away that you will allow links on thoughtful comments thaqt add value and have a zero tolerance policy for blatant self servicing. The people that add value will do it even more so ( this forum is a good example) and those who don't and realise you are out to get them will either improve the quality of their input or go away.

This has been discussed before on this forum but from the other side, the commenter that leaves a link. If memory serves me well it was generally agreed that it is good practice to actually make an effort to add something of value in exchange for that link they get. You might even be able to use this to your advantage. I'm a bit blurry for ideas at the moment but if you can setup a way to rate the comments and reward the top ones you will actually be encouraging great comments. Heck, I like the idea for my own website project, off to find a rating plugin for WP!

[kindsvater]

Here's a tip:

Within the Wordpress editor just delete the line where people can leave their url when making comments.

Simple solution that works for me. Still get good comments and you automatically weed out the spammers just looking to get a link back to their site.

[Tinkerbell]

I allow comments on my blog, and if I get well-written ones that aren't strictly promotional I post them - with links. Or...I would if some comments with links besides the porn spam and constant pharma garbage came through.