While there are many articles on how to get backlinks and traffic by posting a comment on a blog, there are not many on the seo benefits of your own blog’s comments section.
In this article I will give to you my opinion on the benefits of your blog commenting section, and how you can make your comment section seo friendly.
1. Your blogs commenting section allows your readership and subscribers to have a point of contact with the blog owner as well as with each other.
This benefit alone is huge. Here are a few key points to help you grow your online business.
If your online business is transactional based and you just want to sell a ‘one-time’ product to a customer, or all you want is adsense clicks on your site, then ‘Content Is King.” But…
If you want to build a “internet marketing” business with a loyal subscriber and customer list, then content is not king – ‘Relationship Is King!’
Your blogs commenting section helps you bring a community feel to your business, and allows others to feel and see that they are not alone in seeking your advice.
2. The search engines love dynamic sites that are frequently updated. With comments being added to your blog, your site is constantly being updated by others 
.
Here is proof that your comments are in the search engines….
Check out the image above and you will see that Google does in fact index your blog comments. This blog comment is made on my blog post, “How To Protect Your Affiliate Commissions,” and the comment was made by Corin Zander.
3. Using and hosting your comments on Disqus or Intense Debate means you are losing free SEO value.
Many bloggers use the Disqus or Intense Debate comment plugins for the bells and whistles, but they do not realize that they are losing seo content that is free.
4. Make your blog comment section into ‘dofollow.”
By default, the wordpress comment section is ‘nofollow,’ meaning that when someone places their link in your blogs comments section, it passes no pagerank.
This really is a debatable point, and what you do will depend on your business model. By turning your blogs comment section into a ‘dofollow’ you will attract a lot more comments, while giving away pagerank at the same time.
For my business model, this is a “dofollow’ blog for my comments because I am more concerned about relationships than about pagerank. I feel that the benefits far exceed the negatives.
5. My plugins commenting list – These are the commenting plugins that I use on this blog and on others:
- CommentLuv
- KeywordLuv
- WP Comment Warning
- WP Remove DoFollow
- Subscribe To Comments
- WP Incentive
- MaxBlog Subscriber Magnate
These plugins work for me and do all that I want in my ability to add value to my readership, while at the same time bringing more value to my blog and business.
{ 90 comments… read them below or add one }
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Do pingbacks leak any page rank or are they considered just a ping. How do you determine whether allowing a comment with a link on your site is not going to leak page rank to the lower page rank site? This is a constant question that needs to be determined. Do you check the site first before allowing the comment and their rank, or is this necessary?
Do pingbacks carry the same weight? Thanks
@ George – Accepting pingbacks should always be done with caution. First, if is a reciprocal link, which devalues your site’s seo greatly. You want one way links, not reciprocal.
I don’t get caught up on the passing of pagerank and what percentages, etc….. My criteria of accepting a pingback is “Are they adding value to the conversation?” If it is simply a link to my site, then it is not adding value. But, if the pingback is adding to the conversation, then I may approve it. It all depends.
Mark – thanks for a great post. I hadn’t thought of the “do follow” setting being off by default on my WP blog – I’m going to change it to being “on.”
I was just wondering, though, if having the “do follow” on would encourage spam posts?
@ Maury, The Warning plugin put a lot of stops to it. You do get some spam as usual, but it is all moderated.
Mark do you really think that the dofollow tag makes a real difference? I have read a ton of info that says the dofollow tag is bogus?
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@ Nick – Just a few months ago, Google’s Matt Cutts says that nofollow does NOT pass pageranks, and dofollow DOES pass page rank. But there is more to traffic than just search engine traffic, meaning, a nofollow link still gives you traffic when someone clicks on it and it sends them to your site. It just gives you no ‘backlink votes’ for the SERP’s. See video here: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g37bwBlifnk
You make some very good points about the dofollow fact. Which is more important, people or google. I have never thought of it that way and will be changing some of my sites to reflect this new thought process you gave me. Thanks for opening my mind a bit with this good article.
Steve
Steve@Albuquerque Marketing´s last [type] ..New Customer Acquisition Through SEO
Hi Mark,
I love what you said about building relationships rather then worrying about PR. Do you think worrying about PR over relationships is a scarcity mentality compared to an abundance mentality… and you really get more in the end because of it?
Jeff Gordon Parker´s last [type] ..Keep getting stronger without getting weaker during the 5th week
@ Jeff Parker – Hi Jeff, not sure about the scarcity/abundance mentality, perhaps a tunnel vision on seo and not focusing on people. We need to realize that Google loves a site that is visited often, and also where visitors stay on your site for an extended period of time.
Wow, I’m impressed. Finally, someone who’s more concerned about relationship than SEO.
Tony Darrick Baker´s last [type] ..The Art of Social Media- A Parody of Mashablecom
Hi Mark,
This is an interesting post. I have been using the CommentLuv Plug-in for some time and really like it.
I also am not really worried about leaking page rank as I just don’t have any except on one site. And it is 1/10.
I had trouble from comment spam for awhile until I started to add the filters in to the wordpress admin. I have some IP’s blocked but they were from known spam sites. Now It works very well.
I still get some drive by comments like, nice post or great post but those I just trash.
Thanks,
Michael
Michael´s last [type] ..Get Targeted Traffic vs Non-Targeted Traffic 4
another great tip thanks for sharing the plugin list
Mark I think you are right about everything depending on the model you are working on a site. For a branding site I think you are correct about caring more about relationships than page rank.
I’m liking your posts and will implement specially this dofollow strategy on my personal blog comments, I too think the benefits out-weight the link juice you pass on.
Jay´s last [type] ..New Twitter Bots and PPC Marketing Methods
It’s a refreshing to hear that relationship building is king when your business model is about building customer list.
Another interesting thing is about your comments about ‘dofollow’. Maybe I should rethink about making my blog to be ‘dofollow’ again.
Thank you for sharing.
That makes a lot of sense. I am hoping that the search engines find a way of penalising comment spam without hitting legitimate blog comments. It’s more than 5 years since Matt Cutts’ post on the subject (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html) where he talked about nofollow, yet Google is being spammed to death on some searches. This morning I was doing serious research at Google.fr and these were the search terms: dérive gènes allèle +drifted population. I was being served SERPs with more spam than legitimate results with some related combinations of keywords. I hope Google’s engineers soon find a way of clobbering the comment spam while sparing us, the honest commenters
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@ Jonathan – Spam marketing really irks me too.
that’s great mark
john M´s last [type] ..Your Love Guru
Hey Guys
I`m the same I getting hundreds of spam every day, in fact I was shocked when I opened my gmail after not be in there for a few weeks,page after page of the stuff. Took me half a day to delete all the muck. But one thing I wanted to ask MARK! does all that spam count as visitors to my sites in googles eyes ?
Best Mike
ps Can`t beleive I am on another blog which I said I was going to quit, to get on with building more sites, but hey I like this one, keep up the good work.
pps, don`t even know how I even got here in the first place.
mike @ commission ritual´s last [type] ..Comment Luv- Dofollow- Top Commenters
Yeah, I gotta agree with Mark on this one. All my blogs are “do follow” (really the removal of the “nofollow” attribute). I use the appropriately-titled “Do Follow” WP plugin. It works.
Bill Davis´s last [type] ..Practical Profits Seminar Day 1
Great post Mark,
Thanks for all the great tips. You are really providing great content recently and I want to thank you for that.
IM Newbie´s last [type] ..Setting Up WordPress
Great tip, have to try dofollow on comments for some of my more social sites. Thanks for sharing the plug-in list.
Useful content. On your advice, I just went and changed to dofollow on my comments. I use Akismet for the spam and it does a good job of categorizing so that I can just glance over the comments and delete what I don’t want before approving them.
I noticed that you use WPIncentive. Do you think it improves your comment percentage? I installed it on a different blog from the one listed above and didn’t get much out of it. And it seems not to work with Akismet. Or maybe I just couldn’t figure it out.
@ Jan – I’ve never had an issue with Askimet. Try adding “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin and invite everyone who visits your blog to write a comment for a bonus. Give a nice bonus with a image of the bonus given. This will increase comments.
I think most blogs do not incorporate the donotfollow tag.
Excellent Post,
So many people fail to see the importance of commenting and a lot of them who do see the importance, fail to see the importance of building a brand and not spamming. Awesome tips man, every new blogger should check this out. It would take care of a lot of the crap out there
Thanks for writing this post, although it confirms some pretty common ideas about blog posting and comments it, for me at least, mentions something I have not considered before. I’ve not actually thought that the comments themselves, containing related key phrases, would also be beneficial to the key phrase density of the page and in turn help that pages ranking.
We generally tell all our customers to think of commenting on other relevent blogs as a way of showing another blog’s audience how much they know/ how interesting they are. So this new audience will click on the link back to their blog. This is another method of driving traffic to your site and entices people to write really well thought out comments, instead of junk to get ranked higher on search engines.
Blog comments offer many advantages both to your site as well as to other online marketers. Unfortunately, there are undisciplined individuals who also make use of this opportunity to spam other people’s page.
I definitely agree that comments contribute to the actual content and the keywords in the comment count. I have been writing articles for Bukisa and one thing I do to increase the rankings in Google is encouraging comments. This also makes an article longer, and I have seen better results with long articles.
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I am a big fan of dofollow, CommentLuv, KeywordLuv and anything else that gives more value to your blog’s audience and your own blog. After I installed those features on my blog, my comments from readers increased by far (good ones, too!), and my PR went up, too. I’m a believer!
I don`t see any point to commentluv dofollow etc I get nothing but spam
with these, hardly worth searching through it all to find a decent comment. Have stoped using the plugins on latest sites.
Mike.
mike@ bear mascot costume´s last [type] ..Privacy Policy
@ Mike
I get little spam. So, not sure what your issue is.
Make sure you have the askimet plugin activated.
Still, visit blogs and leave comments with links to your site, not for the benefits of SEO, but for encouraging other blog visitors to visit your site. That generates traffic/customers and if you have excellent content, could lead to natural links for your site.
seoplanner´s last [type] ..SEO Search
Thanks for the great tips. You are providing great information and I am reviewing the nofollow on my blogs.
don`t see any point to commentluv dofollow etc I get nothing but spam
with these, hardly worth searching through it all to find a decent comment. Have stoped using the plugins on latest sites.
@ Umer
I don’t have a lot of spam. Perhaps you are not using askimet?
Thanks for the advice mark , i’ll have to start allowing comments if it helps with SEO.
Vang Vieng´s last [type] ..Laos-China Railroad Set for Launch
I am glad that you blogged about what I was thinking. I also feel that blog comments or article comments are great for my SEO. I have found that even blog comments on .edu or .gov sites do still carry some weight. I like to use blog comments, not for page rank, but to hopefully drive a user or two to my site.
Which Plugin are you using for the Subscribe to My Newsletter checkbox just above this comment field?
@ Warner
This plugin here, it’s great: http://www.markdulisse.com/likes/maxsubscribersmagnate (my aff. link)
It’s all about contributing to the conversation, blog commenting is one of the most effective ways to get traffic. In fact at some times i get to meet great new friends who are also in the same niche as I am.
And these are great plugins, thanks for sharing them.
Cheers
@Mark … Ha, I am surprised that by adding this post on comments for SEO that your spam didn’t increase by 10 fold.
Good post. I agree that comments good for linking building and better yet it can be excellent for gathering targeted and quality traffic. The guys that get it want to both give and get comments.
Thos003´s last [type] ..Being an Authority
Of course, one thing you will always look while blog commenting is that the comment is related to the article at hand. You do not want to raise red flags for spamming another article just to improve the optimization of your Internet search engine. You have to actual practice. If the comment is not related to the topic, you will not only get flagged but you will also confuse those who may have a propensity to visit your site. What spam does irritate visitors to view your site and make sure you become something of a pariah in the community of bloggers.
thanks for sharing the information. still blog commenting is the sure and free way to get linked in your sites.
It’s important to know that Yahoo answers is a no-follow site. However posting there can get you visitors, but no SEO value
Smuze´s last [type] ..Mutual Fund Research- What You Should Know About Standard Deviation
Great info..It’s actually important to check if it’s a “do follow site” to make sure that you’re getting the benefit of your post, however, most authority sites are “no follow” but you can still get more exposure:)
Great, tips. I been doing a lot of SEO/SEM in the past and I was pretty sure I know everything about this field but with your article I realized you can still teach new tricks to old dogs. I’ll be reading your other posts.
hi..
your information about blog commenting for SEOis play a very important role in our business.
thanking you…
Awesome stuff. I found your blog through Keith Baxter. You two give great info about SEO and I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of your stuff. I’ve got a static site and I just installed a PHP comment script on it the other day. Looking forward to being able to engage with my readers now.
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Hey Mark!
Thank you for the great tips, especially for this one.
You just made me realize that the comment links on my blog are nofollow.
My blog is hosted on http://www.wordpress.com, so I don’t have full control of the settings. Do you know how I could make my comment links dofollow? I’d also like to use commentLuv, but I don’t know how.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
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Well you learn something new everyday. I’ll be more thoughtful of how I reply to commenters from now on to add a couple keywords in the text.
I also added the various plugins like CommentLuv and KeywordLuv as I like the idea that community is King and I thinks it’s a nice way to thank commenters.
Karen @ Pledging for Change´s last [type] ..Dofollow comments and your sites reputation
thanks u sir for such nice information i like your point that social relationship is more important than PR ie once u get good relation with other, customer will automatically come to the site,pr is just for search engine not for a layman to visit the site
thanks u sir for such nice information i like your point that social relationship is more important than PR ie once u get good relation with other
We generally tell all our customers to think of commenting on other relevent blogs as a way of showing another blog’s audience how much they know/ how interesting they are. So this new audience will click on the link back to their blog. This is another method of driving traffic to your site and entices people to write really well thought out comments, instead of junk to get ranked higher on search engines…
I’m working with site that has a lot of video content (flv & mp4).
Some of the files are local, but some of them are from partner’s projects.
Is there any link checker for such kind of stuff, for remote media files? It’s not enough to check that link to the file return 200.
Very often partners are removing files but instead of 404 page their site still sends 200 code and some kind of sorry page. But it kills flash player on my page of course, and as result I have page with dead content.
So it’s important to know that for example ******/movie.mp4 is real movie file, but not just live sites page.
Thanks for any help.
“Your blogs commenting section helps you bring a community feel to your business, and allows others to feel and see that they are not alone in seeking your advice”. I strongly agree on this, through blog commenting, discussions and queries are open..Our misconceptions on one’s idea will be corrected and answered..It can build relationships towards the author and the readers and the commenter.
Indeed “relationship is king” for successful businesses out there. Having a good relationship with people around them is the best investment you can make. And blog commenting gives you 1 step further to connect with your subscribers and patrons.
As a blogger about social media, I feel that you are very right that comments will be a growing area to watch this year. Like you say, comments keep the conversation going. They also provide additional insight to the readers and the bloggers. Comments offer a different perspective and put a “face” to the readership.
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I just love KeywordLuv – it makes the life much more easier and I always prefer blogs with it when I work with seo. Of course commenting gives advantages to both sides. The commented site gets the dynamic and richer content and the commenting site gets the keyword popularity and sometimes link juice. Google has recently (last year) changed the nofollow rule. Now you lose link juice even if using nofollow. The only difference is that the target site doesn’t get it. It just dissapear (at least google says it).
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