Engaging Your Website Visitors - Why It Is So Important
Content Is King - Comments Are Content
A key theme of the excellent training at Wealthy Affiliate is that 'Content Is King'.
It is the single most important factor in getting our websites to rank in the search engines and earn us commissions on sales.
We are taught to walk before we try to run - to simply create the content first and then to 'beautify' it with images, proper use of headers and spacing, and appropriate insertion of affiliate links, etc.
Why Are Comments So Important?
One of the key points I have picked up in Month 2 of the Super Affiliate Challenge is that comments are not merely 'other people's voices', as Kyle points out in the introduction to the training.
Every comment you get on your site is new content - the kind of new activity that Google looks for when assessing your site for trustworthiness and authority, which will determine your rankings and, as a direct result, your sales.
Engagement Is A Two Way Process
At the very least, it is a matter or common courtesy to respond to a comment that someone has made on one of your blog posts. Even if it is just to acknowledge and thank your Visitor for taking the time to read your article and give you a comment.
But it is also in your interest too - because your response to your visitors' comments is additional content too!
Visitors to your website are far more likely to contribute to an open discussion rather than a 'dead thread' as Kyle calls it, especially if they see the website owner - YOU - responding and engaging.
On this point - get your Gravatar set up if you haven't already. Who would you rather engage with - an 'Admin' with a blank face, or a face with a name?
Trust - Don't Be A Secret Agent
Being able to put a face and a name to the Website Owner builds trust with your website visitors, but engaging with those visitors is what builds up your trust with the Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
The Search Engines want to see active content. A 1000 word article can easily become an article of several thousand words if it has lots of comments and responses from you. If every comment and response from you is, say, 200 words on average, you can see how this can happen in a relatively short space of time.
The Wealthy Affiliate Site Content Tool - A Great Head Start
We're very fortunate here at Wealthy Affiliate to have a tool that gives us a real advantage over the 'competition' - the Site Content feature.
A Newbie to the online world faces the conundrum of how to get their sites to rank without any comments and how to get comments when their sites aren't yet ranking.
Site Content allows us to get comments on our posts immediately, and as those comments will be from people who already have varying degrees of experience and knowledge of the online marketing world, they are going to be of a higher quality than comments made by your every day 'Joe Bloggs' conducting an online search.
Conclusion
- Get your Gravatar set up so that people can see you as a real person.
- Start offering some comments to build up your credits and get some comments of your own.
- Respond to your visitors' comments, it's not only polite, it helps you to rank.
- Make sure you apply for the SAC next year!
This post has been quite short compared to most of my other ones - hopefully it's been just as relevant.
All comments appreciated and answered!
Have a great WA day, folks!
Cheers
Rich :-)
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Recent Comments
57
Not replying to a comment is more than a missed opportunity; it's a very bad look. While some comments are easier to reply to such as when they ask for an opinion or question, they all need some kind of response.
I totally agree with what you say about it being a bad look. It says lots about the person behind the website.
If I looked at two websites and the owner of one was engaging his / her visitors and the other wasn't, I know who's site I'd buy from.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Hi, Rich.
Everything you write about on this post is 'bang on' and often looked over by many.
When I give comments I try to leave them open-ended for a response (or continued response) but many times never hear back.
Thank you for bringing your thoughts on the subject to light.
Very much appreciated.
Kindest regards from Canada.
Paul.
Thanks, Paul. It's great that you do that as it gives the people you've taken the time to offer comments to further opportunity to improve their rankings by engaging more with you. That shows real 'Pay It Forward' spirit and it's a shame if people don't reach out and grasp it.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Before SAC 2 I saw comments as just other people's voices. I didn't know it contributes to your content's word count at all.
Thank you for sharing this update about it.
Likewise. I've always responded to comments on my posts out of courtesy, but until I got onto SAC 2 I didn't realize the actual value in terms of search engine rankings either.
The training we get here at Wealthy Affiliate is second to none.
Cheers
Rich :-)
So true. It's wonderful that the Comments are essentially a continuation of our Content, helping Google to recognize our sites.
Good afternoon Rich,
I think it is great that Google considers comments and replies to these comments as content. That is why I rotate my posts, after a control, perhaps a change/add on I give them up for Site Comments. I have been doing that on a regular basis and my 2 websites have "grown".
This WA post was a little joke and meant to entertain my WA readers. Land of giants Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Amending your posts and adding in little bits that you didn't think of when you originally wrote it is also seen as new content by Google.
That's why it's so important not fixate on having everything 'perfect' before we publish anything.
As Kyle teaches us, just focus on getting the content out and you can go back and do the tidying up later, and the training here shows us how to do that.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Thanks, Dave. I see a lot of comments on blog posts that the originators don't respond to. I feel they're missing a trick.
Cheers
Rich :-)
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Great post my friend.That's what I;m working on for my blog post.I need comments from our Wealthy Affiliate community..
You can offer comments to build up credits to get comments on your website posts.
It is a great tool that gives us a head start on the competition outside Wealthy Affiliate.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Thank you my friend.