1,000 Comments On My 1st Website!
I Just Surpassed 1,000 Comments on My 1st Website!
Yes!!!!! I remember other WA members discussing numbers like that and I thought it must take forever to get there. Now, 3 years into my membership with WA I have reached that level myself on my first website.
Why Are Comments Important?
Comments show that your site is active and you are engaging with your readers. Google rewards this with higher rankings. Comments also bring traffic to your site and of course traffic is a good thing all around (as long as it comes from real people now bots). Comments also increase the length of your posts so a post that may have been 1,000 words can end up being 2,000 or 3,000 words or more depending on how many comments you have. This is also rewarded by Google and the other search engines. Comments can bring to light other ideas you may not have considered for your site. You may get questions that require research and more detail can be added to your posts. You may get the opportunity to reply to a comment and add an internal link to another post on your site. Future readers could click on that link thereby increasing time on page and adding to internal links which are once again rewarded by the search engines. There are a ton of benefits to comments as long as they are high quality comments.
Can You Have Too Many Comments?
I have seen some skepticism recently about getting too many comments. I have to say first of all if it is good enough for Kyle it is good enough for me! He talks about having 1,000 comments on a single post and those posts are all ranked #1 in Google.
Second, I can tell you comments alway improve my post ranking. My post ranking can go up literally overnight with good comments. You have to use logic however. You don't want a ton of garbage comments dumped onto your site. I also would not get dozens of comments on the same post on the same day. Space them out over time. My site has been up for almost 3 years so those 1,000 comments are well spaced.
Focus on Quality not Quantity!
If you get tons of short, illogical comments on your site you WILL run the risk of your site looking spammy and you MAY be doing more damage than good for your ranking. You will certainly do more damage than good for the professional appearance of your site. Therefore, I would recommend not approving any comment that looks like junk. If the commenter is just confused that may be ok but if it looks like they didn't even read the post, you don't want it on your site. If it is a "spun" comment (created by a machine not a human) that makes no sense, you don't want it on your site. If it is a duplicate and clearly just copied and reworded as I have seen lately, I don't want it on my site.
Don't Get Comments For the Sake of Comments Without Some Substance
Basically, if the comment does not add value to my site I don't want it. That value may be through expressing genuine interest in my product, asking a legitimate question, or giving me the opportunity to respond with additional detail or an internal link (or at least a positive response). If it is just nonsense I will not approve it. Some people here say we should be understanding that new members are just starting out and don't understand the rules or English is not their first language. Yes, that is true and I don't disapprove a comment if someone offers some feedback mixed in or they have poor English. I have seen an increasing amount of spammy comments however and I think some members are just trying to leave as many as possible to get paid for them. If they don't even read the content of my post I cannot approve them. I CAN but I won't. I'm sorry but this is a business. I don't have the time, inclination or patience to edit baseless comments to meet my needs. If you don't even read my post I don't feel obligated to approve your comment. This may sound harsh but we are not here to be comment Shepards. Once again. If English is not your first language, that is fine. I won't disapprove a comment for that.
Go Get Some Comments!
There are lots of reasons to get comments and not many reasons not to so go get some comments! One more advantage I forgot to mention above is that adding comments to old posts helps revive them. If you have old posts that are languishing, it is always good to bring them up to date. You can add additional length, add images, make corrections, add headers if you didn't have them before and you can get more comments. Adding comments is a fast and easy way to get some traffic and get Google to notice your old posts.
Onward and Upward
Jessica
Recent Comments
72
Question if all the comments are from wa members by way of the site comment thread does Google notice or ding you for that,do you know?
They are not from WA I don't think. They are from each person's Gravatar which is separate. Good question though. I used to wonder the same thing.
Very good question, I would like to know that as well.
Does anybody have some expert knowledge about this?
Great blog post!
Thanks for the writing about the importance of comments, I was not aware that the words in the comments counted towards the size of the post.
You are right it can quickly increase the size of the post; just checked the comments from my last post and it doubled my post size with only 14 comments.
Good point you made on the substance of the comment; I have a hard time turning down a comment if the person is trying.
Their time is valuable and it takes time to read and comment on an article. But will have to think more about the quality in the future.
I agree and I still agonize over some. If they don't even read the post there isn't much to work with though.
Comments are an easy (as long as we have WA) way to improve our sites but many still don't know it. I didn't fully understand this until last year.
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Wow, what a feat! That is impressive to reach 1,000 comments. I am glad to have contributed to your success LOL.
Maybe most of the comments I have on my site are poor quality, I don't seem to get the same boost that you do. Although recently I have spent way more time on content that on comments.
I should take some time and see if adding comments helps my ranking and traffic. I understand why comments would have a beneficial effect but haven't seen it work in my favor yet.
Keep up the great work Jessica!
Thanks Steve! I don't know that it ALWAYS boosts my post rank but I it often does. It is not permanent though. It will go back down if there is no other activity/traffic on the post. I figure the comments are still there though and that is a good thing (makes our sites look more authoritative).
I think the difference between my site and yours might be just sheer competition. I think there is more competition (I am guessing here) on your topics than mine. If there isn't much competition it is easier to rank higher. With all the length, breadth and quality on your site it should be #1 for everything.