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Hey everyone, Kyle here from Wealthy Affiliate. Today we are going to be discussing comments and comment spam and I'm going to be walking you through the process of optimizing your comments and your pages to obtain the highest amount of comments

(00:22) So here I am in the Wordpress admin area and the first thing we are going to do today is install the Akismet plugin. Some of you have probably already installed this but I'm going to walk you through the process to set this up. Basically what Akismet is; is it's a spam protection plug in. It's similar to a spam filter in your email except it does the same thing within your comments field here within Wordpress. So first thing I'm going to do is activate Akismet.

(00:55) So its activated and you're going to see a message up here saying you must enter your Akismet key, your api key (01:02) and this takes you to the page where you're going to have to enter your key but what we are going to have to do here is we are going to have to go over to akismet.com (01:12) and this is where we are going to create an account and get our free key which we are going to use to connect at Wordpress so if I click get started here.

(01:25) So we are just going to want to select the personal account the $0-$120/yr. Don't be thrown off by the prices you can get it for zero dollars so simply click here to sign up. (01:38) Sign up...so wait here, I'm going to have to sign it with a wordpess.com account and then I'm going to have to enter email, username and password. So I'm going to enter my email there Kyle 72 that's fine (02:01). Enter password. And sign up.

(02:18) Authorize. And then here we are. So I'll just enter first name, last name and then over here on the bar (02:33) you're going to want to select $0.00/yr just cause you don't want to have to pay for it. Basically, it's by donation so you could donate money if you wanted but you don't need to. It's zero dollars a year and then I don't want email spam. So I'm just going to click continue here (02:55).

(03:05) And there we go. So after you complete this you're going to get an email and it's going to provide you with your api key that you're going to go and insert into this field here(03:18). So I'm going to take off for a few seconds here and I'm going to go get the api key and then come back.

(03:27) So here I am, I'm back. I've gone to my email account and I've gotten my key. I've copied it so now I'm just going to paste it here (03:36). You're key is going to look something like this, random numbers and characters. And I'm going to select the "auto-delete spam submitted on posts more than a month old" so anything that has been marked as spam and over a month is going to delete for me. And I'm not going to select that (03:56) and that doesn't matter so I'm simply going to click update options. Options saved.

(04:07) And it says your key has been verified, happy blogging. So I'm set up. If I go over to plugins here (04:15) not only do I have a captcha which prevents 90% of spam I have a back up so if a spam comment does get through Akismet is more than likely to catch the remainder of the spam. So our site is now very well protected from spam. There is nothing more irritating than getting a load of spam comments so we are good to go in that respect and now I'm going to be getting into comments and how to manage your comments and what you want to do to get more comments running through your site.

(04:51 displayed title) Managing Your Comments

(04:57) The next thing we are going to do is we are going to clear out all junk comments. By now you may have a few spam comments already so what we are going to do is head over to the comments sections here (05:08) and as you can I've actually gotten some comments here and I've also taken the time to reply to each and every person independently.

(05:19) Just a quick overview: to respond to comments you simply want to, like these are all real comments, so what you want to do is you want to click the reply button and then you would just type in your reply here.

(05:35) I'm not going to do it now because I've already replied but if I want to look at what this looks like if I scroll down (05:42) to the bottom of the page here you're going to see the comments followed by my replies. When you do get real comments, it's best that you try to get back to the people as soon as possible.

(05:58) When you get comments you will know because there will be usually a number right besides your comments here (06:01) and that indicates that you have a new comment. So just try to be timely with your responses to comments because a lot of people will react and trust you a lot more if you are quite responsive.

(06:20) The next thing we are going to do since we don't have any spam or junk here I'm just going to show you how you can manage your comments here. Say you had a bunch of spam here (06:34) and you wanted to delete them all, you could highlight them all and then you could mark as spam or move to trash. So that allows you to manage comments in a bulk sort of fashion.

(06:48) At the top here is the tabs. You can see all your pending comments - ones that you haven't gotten back to or approved yet. You can see all your approved comments, you'll see all these ones here, and you'll see spam. And the setting that we set up earlier said that if there are spam comments in here over a month they were be deleted.

(07:08) I would suggest that you check your spam once in a while. Akismet is going to filter your comments coming through and it's going to put the ones that it thinks are spam into your spam box but sometimes they're not always spam. So if you are getting any amount of comments in your spam box I would just have a quick glance because some of them might be real comments and comments that you want on your site.

(07:38) And then the trash is exactly, so if you accidently delete a comment it will show up in the trash. You can also empty your trash just to keep things clean. So that's a basic overview of your comments section. My only suggestion here is to keep on top of your comments and to aim to reply in a timely manner to the comments that you get on your site.

(07:59 displayed title) The Importance of Comments & How to Ask For Them

(08:05) The last thing I want to discuss is the importance of comments and the benefit that comments have on your site and how you can actually encourage people to comment on your pages. So I'm just going to head over to my website here (08:20) and I'm just going to go to an example page.

(08:26) So here's a sample page, it's my Getting Started page: it walks people through the process. And I usually end every page by asking or offering my help. Either asking people to comment on the post or offering my help and that typically results in a lot more people giving feedback or asking questions. And that's what we want.

(08:52) Ideally you're going to get questions regularly because say someone comes to your page here and they read your page, they're like "oh this is very interesting" and they see this at the bottom (09:02) that instantly is going to connect with them and say yeah I should probably trust this person, they are offering their help to me. And then if they come down a bit further they are going to see comments and timely responses and thorough responses.

(09:20) So this can actually improve your conversions drastically; not only that, Google looks for fresh content on your website and it looks for updated content as well. So if you have this page and it just sits stagnant for months and months and months, Google is going to say why is this page so static and why is not being updated.

(09:49) And it's likely going to devalue your rankings as a result of that. And comments can really give you a boost and it's always going to make your page appear fresh because your comments are actually part of your page content. Google doesn't discriminate between comments and your actual content if the comments are relevant, they're quality, and they're thorough.

(10:15) So this is actually going to help the ranking of this page here. So one thing I'm going to suggest that you do is when you do end your posts and pages that you offer your help or you ask people to leave a comment if it's something that's opinionated or interesting. You can say you know "what are your thoughts on this subject" or "do you need help with this, I'd be happy to help you out" or "do you have any comments leave them below." Just anything that is relevant to the actual topic and the context of the topic.

(10:55) So that's one recommendation that I want to make to you before I leave you today. Just the benefits of comments are vast and they are very critical in terms of getting your website ranked and indexed. And they will lead to a lot more conversions. I hope you enjoyed this quick walkthrough of comments and if you have any questions just leave them below this video and I'll be more than happy to help you out.