Blog comments, as we well know, are important to keep users coming back to check up on conversation. Blog comments are also an important sign of popularity and activity on a blog, which can help increase a blog’s overall reputation to it’s visitors.
What about blog comments within search engine algorithms? Can having more blog comments on any given post increase your search engine rankings for that given page? We seem to think so, and over controlled tests, our posts with a larger amount of comments and the same amount of backlinks ranked much better for our keywords.
Here’s why search engines love posts with comments, and why you should too.
1.) Comments create more content for search engines
Every time someone leaves a helpful and thoughtful contribution to your website, it adds to the overall content value of your page. This could mean you could start to rank for keywords you never would bother to rank originally.
2.) Helps keep the page fresh
Having a regular flow of new comments to a page can keep the page “fresh”; we all know that Google is ramping up on the importance of “freshness” within their algorithm and search engine, so keeping your blog posts fresh and updated with new user activity will do wonders for your rankings.
3.) Strong indicator of value
If a large amount of people are commenting on your page, then to search engines, your page is interesting, valuable, and worth talking about; from a search engine perspective, this makes your page a perfect candidate for increased ranking. Google’s job is to deliver content that is relevant and high quality; if tons of people are commenting on your content, that’s a pretty solid indicator to Google that your content is valuable!
What are your thoughts on blog comments and SEO? Have you seen any significant increases as a result of stimulating discussion within your blog posts? We’d love to hear in the comments below!
SEO is now more about user engagement and worthwhile and genuine comments that engage the users are more valuable.
It would be good when user really want to engage in the post with their comments. But most of the users think of the value of their SEO point, so thats why they were being hit by google updates. Nice Post James, worth reading.
Blog comments are always good, of course as long as they are relevant!! More fresh content = gold in the eyes of the SERP’s.
Awesome work James was really informative specially got to know that Google checks on for the freshness of a page within their algorithm and that through commenting it can be accomplished was new to me and worth learning.. Thanks a bunch buddy..