Is It Good Practice To Allow Comments On My Site?

06 Nov 14 2:30 am

You might aware that blog commenting and replies with affiliate links is one way of spamming. Of course, if your comments are related to the blog and provide useful ideas, tips, feedback, etc, they could drive traffic to your links provided that your links are not dead or problematic. I had removed comments that only want to promote their link and any comments that have some grammatical errors, incomplete sentence structures, etc.

06 Nov 14 6:14 pm

howieee wrote:Thanks for the reply Grant. So are you suggesting that it is ok to allow or even promote comments (such as through a Q&A category) so long as you:

- moderate for spamming and backlink promotion that offer no value to your blog?

Generally, your comments are at the mercy of the blog/website owners. It depends on bloggers/webmasters. Some would strictly consider that you are spamming regardless whether or not you provide useful comments.

I mentioned that if you only want to drop an affiliate link without providing any comments, you won't see your comments stay for too long. Also, if your sentences have significant errors in grammar and structures, your credibility is being questioned. Not everyone writes and speak perfect English, not even native speakers. Minors errors would be ok in my book.

If you are hoping that people would check out your link, then you need to provide comments that have substances like tips, reasons, ideas, etc. Comments in short phrases and sentences like 'good article', 'your post is helpful', or 'thanks for your tips' are not helpful. It doesn't mean that you spam. Your links could be part of your signature in this situation. Other than that, you need to put on an effort to impress.

To be honest with you, I haven't done much of this. But, I had removed few comments as mentioned above. I forgot to mention that some comments may come from automation, which is probably not going to see much light of day considering that Google has been utilizing Panda and Penguin. Take this forum, I haven't seen any ability to attach a signature.

06 Nov 14 6:53 pm

To add an example to what I'm asking: I notice on the enlightenment gateway site that the blog articles are posted and published, but there is no commentary by readers going on anywhere (unless I'm missing something). Is this by deliberate due to it not being a good practice for an affiliate site? Or...?

05 Dec 14 6:54 pm

Thank you Zoe! It seemed like such a fundamental question, but I could not find any validation until now. Have a great weekend.

29 Dec 14 11:57 am

I am going to enable comments on my website in the hope of interacting with my readers and finding a direction for my site.

By letting people comment, it can also give me an insight into the way people interpret the information I am providing.
As I am still learning about my niche, I am pretty sure some opinions will be negative, but that is all part of the learning curve.

I have also installed the comment redirect plugin by yoast and I will be sending first time commenters to a squeeze page and hopefully get them to sign up to my newsletter.

25 Aug 15 12:15 pm

When I first started online, I had a blog that allowed comments. I eventually took off the commenting ability because of what Cecille mentions, mainly a lot of spamming.

Since then I've had several sites, none with comments allowed. It hasn't affected the ability of visitors to contact me if they want to with their comments, and for us to interact from there.

I know that the "user" experience relies heavily on social signals, of which comments is but one example. But at the end of the day, not everyone feels compelled to comment on everything they read online, no matter how wonderful.