Are Your Comments Leading to Poor Rankings?
As we all know, or should by now, that quality comments on our websites can help to boost our website rankings, I know it has done wonders for me. I just received a 588 word comment on one of my scam reviews that is like a short blog’s worth of content. I can’t wait to reply to that!
But when it comes to the details of the person leaving the comment, could it be harmful to your rankings for that post? Are your comments leading to poor rankings or at least a slowing of your ranking progression within the search engines?
What could I possibly be talking about? I am talking about the leaving of a website URL when a person places a comment on your website. You know how when you go to leave a comment you would leave your name, your email address, and then your website address? Well that is the URL that is REALLY BAD for your website rankings.
SO WHAT TO DO?
Simple solution. When leaving a comment just leave your name and email address, do not include your website URL. Now if you are the recipient of a comment that has a website URL, just delete it. To do so is very simple. When in the comments area of your WordPress dashboard you will notice an X just after the domain name. Click that X to delete the URL before you approve the comment. (See image below).
Now you may be saying, hold on Robert. Why should I do that? I certainly do not want people deleting my URL because I want that backlink. Well first off you should know that backlinks like that are of NO benefit to your websites anymore. Only natural organic backlinks from content sharing are important now.
But the following reasons I only just learned about a week ago. Website URLs will lead to “poor rankings” and “traffic leak” those are Kyle’s words exactly. He says that as website owners “you should never allow comments on your site with the URL still included with the user details, this should be deleted.” (See below image of his comment).
So what I recommend, and what I am personally doing mainly because I have way too many comments on my website, is to delete those comment URLs from now on. I am not going to go back through all of my comments and delete them, I will for some but not all.
I have 17 posts on my website on Google Page 1 with several in the #1 spot, I see no need to alter comments on those posts. I will delete them on the comments of posts that are not on Google Page 1. But from now on, delete those URLs that come to you within the details section of a comment.
Recent Comments
311
thanks for the sharing..btw, someone told me that we can edit those comments from something negative to positive before allowing it to be posted in our website. Is that true and would we be penalised for doing so? please advise as am very new to this online business.
I am not talking about spam comments for deleting the URLs. I am talking about legitimate comments that you get from people here and elsewhere. Kyle says to delete the website links in the commenter's details before approving the comment.
As for editing the spam comment, there are some that do it but I follow Google's advice which is to delete all spam comments for it can hurt your rankings should they index it and they deem it to be spam. I would rather have legitimate comments than to take a chance with a fake editted comments.
thank you for the explanation, I did not realize this was considered a leak.
there are few enough comments on my site that I can go back and delete the url and do so going forward
all the best,
If we exchange the comment can be an easy way to show where I would like a comment from you, for example. and then delete it. If I did not know people so it becomes consequence erased and it also if I know people like you show it is just touching the intersection before you approve
You should still be able to know someone from their name and email address. The website link is not needed for that.
I sent never my link in a comment. That's the context I read as appropriate.
What I think is just if we exchange kommetare so it's an easy way to let know what I want your opinion on
That is good and you should never send your link in your commenting details either, only your name and email address.
As for the SiteComments feature making it easier to let people know what you want an opinion on, I cannot give you a reply on because I personally have yet to run into that problem.
It is a great tool that we're going to get a lot of joy. Although I am not completely satisfied with them, I've got so far so it should probably come to work really well in the long term
Thanks for sharing this!
I will go back and delete all of those urls.
I "only" have about 200 comments on my site so it is still managable to edit them all.
Cheers
Moritz
You are welcome. I have way too many comments to even entertain the thought of removing many.
Oh man, wish I'd known this sooner. Can the URLs be deleted even after the comment has been approved?
Yes they can. I too wish I had known this a while ago too! I currently have 1,267 comments on my website, which is why I said I am not going to remove them all.
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Thanks for sharing this information boomergp08 .
You are welcome Paul.