Is accepting blog comments a good idea?

by phanirocks

Posted: 13 years ago 13 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I am a bit new to the SEO world. I have started an education blog recently. I have been constantly getting many comments from unknown people. I guess they are just posting comments for backlinks. If I accept them, the number of outbound links would increase from my site and I think thats a bad idea. I just want to know if there is an SEO or any other benefit if I accept blog comments with links:confused:

#accepting #blog #comments #good #idea

BloggingPro 13 years ago

I wouldn't accept a blog comment unless the the comment is about the article. I've noticed that many of the entertainment blogs I read have plenty of comments, but very few (if any) of the names link out to a website. Most people, if really wanting to have a discussion about your post are not going to leave a link, at least in my opinion and from what I've seen.
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phanirocks 13 years ago

What I observe is, they are trying to get a glimpse of the topic, write a comment with vague info related to the article and posting it with the link to their site. I am guessing they are not natural and I am in a dilemma
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John Alves 13 years ago

Just accept the comments from people that use their name if you feel that they are only doing it for backlinks. If you are using wordpress, the blog comment links are no follow anyway. They won't hurt your rankings because you are not giving a "vote" to the site.
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- Giani 13 years ago
  
  Use Akismet plugin. You will not get junk posts.
  
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  TBInternetMarketing 13 years ago
  
  My interpretation of blog comments are that they are fresh content on your page. So in other words if it's a valid comment that provides value to the blog I accept it. Also, it makes your blog seem more appealing to new readers. No one likes reading a post with zero comments. It looks way better if there are 50 comments below. It's all about social persuasion.
  
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phanirocks 13 years ago

I dint knew that wordpress comment links are no follow. I am just wondering how blog commenting can be an effective SEO strategy if this is the case
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kindsvater 13 years ago

Blog comments are a good way to get new content for your web pages. That can help your SEO efforts.

But if you're only receiving vague comments with links those are spammers. Allowing links from your website to "bad neighborhoods", which many of those links probably are, could seriously damage your rankings in Google.

As one Google tech employee has succinctly stated: good sites do not link to bad sites. Only bad sites link to bad sites.

Here is a link to some WordPress plugins I have found extremely useful in eliminating the spammers:

WordPress Plugins to Stop Spam
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bgmacaw 13 years ago

In most cases, about 95% of the comments you get will be for links. Some of these people do take the time to write an informed comment but others just use a program to auto-post vague "Great post! I'm subscribing to your feed." type comments.

So, to combat this you'll want to use Akismet and/or other anti-comment-spam plugins if you want to accept comments on your site. This will weed out a lot of them. For example, on one of my WordPress sites I just looked at I had 63 new comments, all of them already flagged as spam by Akismet so I didn't even have to look at the nonsense.

As for the SEO value, comments can add keyword combos to a page that you hadn't thought of and are evidence of ongoing activity for the site. Actively updated sites get a lot more search engine 'bot activity than more static ones.

Overall, I think having open comments is helpful as long as you run fairly strict moderation and use other techniques to prevent spamming tools and drive-by spammers. You have to decide if doing this level of moderation is worth your time investment or not.
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Sphinx 13 years ago

Accept the comment, but change the code to remove the website field. This way, rest assured that most comment you receive will be genuine.
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- BloggingPro 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Sphinx
  
  Accept the comment, but change the code to remove the website field. This way, rest assured that most comment you receive will be genuine.
  
  This is a damn good idea and can really help cut down on spam without using Akismet. Most spammers will quickly turn the other way if you cut them off at the pass like this.
  
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- Michael Shook 13 years ago
  
  Comments that contribute to the conversation on your blog are good for your site as far as being a status thing in the eyes of the search engines.
  
  Allowing links to sites that are good, but might not be in the same topic as your blog is not a bad thing at all. The idea of the web has always been to be connected.
  
  Comments, trackback and pingbacks can all be good for your site, providing that they don't contain links to bad sites.
  
  On my blogs, I actively encourage commenting and linking. It takes me a while to sort out the spam, but many of the comments I get are really well done, thoughtful and well written.
  
  If I get a good comment on one of my posts in a pet market, even if the comment goes to a site in a differet market like kid's toys or Halloween or something, I will usually approve it becasue it goes along with the content of my site.
  
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  phanirocks 13 years ago
  
  Thanks guys for your help...i feel removing the link and accepting the comment is the best idea.......but genuine commenters may again lose interest...blog commenting is something that confuses me every time
  
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  bgmacaw 13 years ago
  
  One thing you can do is to modify your template where the link field in the comments is removed entirely. You'll need to know a little bit about PHP and HTML to do this. Basically, you need to change the URL field from a text input to a hidden field.
  
  I use this technique on one of my sites in a health niche where I found a lot of people wanted to relate their experiences but I also get spammers wanted to insert their links. Turning off the ability to leave a link helped encourage more legit comments while blocking auto-spammers entirely and discouraging manual link hunters. This might not work for all sites, but, in that case, it did.
  
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