5,000 Comments, Comments Are Content Too!
Engagement Is Key
Want to know why?
Because it's a form of content creation as well.
You should use the SiteComments feature here, only approving quality comments that actually pertain to your niche, until you start getting organic traffic and organic comments.
Once you start getting daily comments on your posts from search traffic then you can stop using SiteComments. Google will absolutely love you and give you some ranking love if you reply to every single comment that you're given.
At the end of all of my posts I entice my visitors to comment like this:
People see that big, bold statement and so they reply more often to my content! ;)
On average I get about 3-10 comments per day. More so on the weekends. Here are my site's current stats as of today, I just hit over 5,000 comments over my entire site!
Every single day I make sure that I try to reply to at least some comments. Sometimes I'll let them build up over a few days worth of time and then I'll sit down and rack out 30+ comments.
EVERY SINGLE REPLY counts as content creation towards Google rankings. Google, today, wants consistent content creation. Fresh, new stuff.
Their crawling bots can see your engagement, your replies. They'll also be able to see if your comments are legitimately pertaining to your content. They'll see some comments as spam which will hurt your site...
SiteComments is a great way to gain a bunch of good, quality comments but you've also got to be careful using it. Only approve comments that ask questions and talk about what your content is actually about.
If you get comments that say "This is a great site, I love your content and I really like how you have your website designed! I'm sure your visitors love coming here!" then you need to disapprove them and let the user know through the feedback that their comment doesn't pertain to your content.
Comments are important and they'll help your site, you want to make sure that you're getting quality comments on your content!
Keep at the grind WAers, I believe in all of us. :)
Cheers,