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“Your comment is awaiting moderation” – How do you feel when you see this message after writing your views for an article you just read?
Many times I just feel so irritated (I would be frank here) when I write my views in a comment after spending around 5 minutes and have to wait to get my comment approved.
Why? I am no spammer. I loved your article and I am here to express what I felt about it.
But next day, I see a couple of comments on my blog, completely meaningless and useless and I would immediately move them to trash. Then I would think of moderating each and every comment on my blog.
Have you too been through such mixed emotions about comment moderation?
Well let’s start with listing down some pros and cons of moderating each and every comment on your blog.
Pros of Comment Moderation
- The first and biggest benefit is that it helps to keep spam away from your blog. There would be no low quality comments on your articles and this would improve quality of engagement on your blog.
- After recent Google algorithm changes like Panda and Google Penguin, it would be best to keep spam in any form, away from your blog in every possible way. Thus, moderating each and every comment ensures that you are always in the correct line of SEO.
- What if you don’t want negative comments on an article you have written for a product you are promoting. Obviously, there would be different opinions from different people and you can’t control them. But, you can always control which comments would be displayed and which will not. This can help you to create an engagement the way you want it to be.
Cons of Comment Moderation
- Not everyone is a spammer. Infact, almost 90% are not. Why take away their freedom? At least WordPress bloggers enjoy the courtesy of CommentLuv plugin (affiliate link) which handles this task extremely perfectly.
- Believe it or not, a blogger gets a setback and gets demotivated when he/she see his/her comment being sent into the approval queue. A visitor who has spent time on your article to read and understand it would want his views to be approved immediately for discussion by other visitors or the author.
- An immediately approved comment motivates a visitor to come back again and write his views freely. This also gives an unbiased view of the author. This shows that the author is ready to accept both the negative and the positive views about his creation.
Just like a coin, there are two aspects of this thing too and both are equally important and crucial for a blog to prosper. I am a bit confused and I would like your advice and views here. Do you moderate each and every comment on your blog?