What is site comment? Good or Bad for SEO

byOnlineBzDog

2.3K followers

Updated 6 years ago

A few events occurred this week gave the idea for this post.

The first wonderful thing happen was Josh, the intern, finally got us banned from site comment. I did not know how long this had happened, he told me on Friday. After he explained to me about the site comment at Wealthy Affiliate, I told him: “You did great. I do not want you to put our new website on it, ever again.” I have nothing against the site comment, however, I do have some concerns as to how the system setup. Let see if you can spot my concerns after reading this post.

I also received PM questions related to site comments and SEO. The majority wanted to know how to handle site comments to improve on-page SEO? Today, I am sharing with you my personal experiences with site comments.

So, what is site comment?

Site comment is a method of leaving comments on websites. Very simple to do, but when you add the SEO element into the mix, everything changes.

Are site comments good or bad for SEO?

The answer depends on how you use them. Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way.

Site comment has two distinct components: Giving comment and Receiving comment. Each has a different effect on SEO.

Giving comment

Before Penguin, giving comment was the most popular method to build backlink to boost SEO. The practice became so invasive that it forced Google to act. The solution, Penguin update April 2012, penalized websites employed low quality backlinks. It effected heavily on websites with backlinks generated from low quality blog comments, which we know as spam, with the sole purpose of manipulating site rank.

Here are a few types of backlinks that violate Google’s guideline: Link exchange, Participating in blog networks, widget backlinks, paid links, Article directories, footer backlinks, automatically generated backlinks, and more. Basically, Penguin will penalize websites with backlinks that do not provide any value to users. My advice, stay away from these types of backlinks and befriend with the Penguin. In my opinion, site comment belongs to these types.

This does not mean all backlinks from site comments are bad. Remember Penguin only penalizes backlinks from low quality comments that give no value to the end user. Therefore, any relevant and high-quality comments will give you some link SEO credit, but not as much as before Penguin update.

Receiving Comment

The reason websites encourage viewers to leave comments was to add content to the page. Before Panda, this was a good method to generate content because more page content got higher rank. Everybody wanted content, no one cared about relevant. Google acted, Panda update 2011, penalizing websites with low-quality content and rewarding sites with fresh, high-quality content. So, Web sites with junk comments disappeared from top rank overnight. This update caused many websites to shut down site comments and moved on to social media networks to avoid Panda.

Panda update gives us a very important SEO instruction, focus on relevant and fresh high-quality content, not quantity.

Today with Panda, Site comments still add great value to on-site SEO. However, we must be careful with these comments. We should only accept comments that are relevant to the topic discussed. Do not be afraid to edit or delete irrelevant comments. You want to be on the Panda side, it is better this way.

When I received an irrelevant or spam comments, I always offered the writer an opportunity to edit the comments before I deleted it.

A relevant, high-quality comment adds great value to your SEO efforts. Do not throw away irrelevant comments, worked with the commenters to improve it.

This is my interpretation of what is site comment? Good or bad for SEO is all depended on your implementation.

Please share your experiences with site comments.

Love to hear from WA members.

By: TQ @ Onlinebzdog