Blog Comments and SEO – Is There a Link?
Something made me think the other day – Do blog comments help or hurt us on SEO? After all they are PART of our blogs, right? I’ve had a few recently without faces and just images that made me consider them spam. I had not heard of their websites and when I visit them they are merely a sales pitch landing page. This topic is like the themes we discussed a while back and the impact on SEO. I also remember reading Barry Wells piece on comments a while back and how blog comments may bite you. I decided to ask Andy Bailey – the man behind CommentLuv about this topic.
Here is what Andy Bailey of CommentLuv had to say about blog comments and SEO:
“I don’t practice SEO on any of my sites beyond basic common sense practices like proper anchor text etc. CommentLuv was never about SEO, it was about giving your readers a chance to showcase what they write about by leaving a titled link to their recent post in the comments they leave on your site.
There are beneficial side effects of CommentLuv that help your sites SEO like having titled links to your site on sites that you comment on that will be indexed by search engines and the increased engagement on your posts on your own site that has CommentLuv, which is just recently being reported to be beneficial for SEO.
But, those are side effects of having CommentLuv, it was never for the search engines, it was for your readers.
Comments in general, disregarding the conversation you have with the blogger and social proof, well they are just like business cards in that if you leave them in places where your customers are likely to be then they can be very useful to get you found by those customers. But if you leave them in questionable places, like in the windows of dodgy shops or give them to dodgy people, then they are likely to do you more harm than good.
So, if you leave comments on related or relevant sites they can be a very useful way for people (and search engines) to find you and the more you leave (provided that the content of the comment is not spammy) then the more likely that your site will be found.
But, if you use tools or services to blast comments all over the place then it’s highly likely that they’ll do you more harm than good, especially so because sites or services that will blast comments on your behalf won’t care where they put them. Comments can be good or bad for SEO, it just depends on where you’re leaving them and what they’re saying.”
What Google Thinks About Blog Comments
Check out what Google says in their webmaster tools recently: They refer to certain comments (spammy) to be against their rules. SO do be careful of what type of comments you do leave. And of course be careful of what comments you do approve on your blog.
And here is my favorite Google person – Matt Cutts of Google:
Now over to you, do comments on your blog help your blog’s SEO?
Are you more careful approving comments than you were when you first started blogging?