Blog Comments Should They Stay or Go?

When running a blog the difficult part is writing the content and finding stories to publish that would interest in your readers, You hope to share your knowledge where possible and if not then share content that you find interesting and that is what I try to do but an article I read in from the BuyDomains.com blog has this heading for one of their articles Eliminate the Comment Function for the Betterment of Your Blog.

What are your thoughts Blog Comments Should They Stay or Go?

There are some domainers that deal very well with comments left on their Blog – For example Mike Berkens over at TheDomains.com and Elliot Silver from ElliotsBlog.com there blogs normally receive some great comments from their readers and both Mike and Elliot spend I am sure several hours per day dealing with the comments on their blogs – This is great and it certainly is one the things I look for when reading a post over on their blogs is how many people have commented?

My blog RobbiesBlog.com doesn’t seem to have the same success with comments being left but I am OK with that… I have only been blogging for a few months and while I appreciate everyone the leaves a comment I don’t expect all my readers to do so.

One of the things I think I need to next is set up a Facebook page some other bloggers already have this in place and the article below covers that in more detail.

What are your thoughts?

Here is the full article from BuyDomains.com

Increase blog traffic through social media engagement.

If you have published a blog post before you’ve probably experienced both positive and negative feedback through viewers’ comments. While a “thank you for this article” is always welcomed and even constructive criticism is helpful, sometimes you just can’t make everyone happy and it is difficult to keep up.

As a small business owner, you may be thinking that the popularity of your blog is associated with the number of comments you receive, regardless of the nature of the comments.  It is understandable to assume that activity of your blog and engagement is reflective of your blog traffic, but this is not a measure that you should rely on.

There is no relationship between comments and the popularity of any blog, making the success of your blog completely unrelated to any comment activity. When it comes to blog popularity, the amount of blogging that you do is more important. You can never over blog, so the more you blog, the more unique views you will attract.

You might be saying to yourself: “But what about the SEO benefit gained from the comments?” Truth is, the SEO boost gained by engaging with your customers on your social media platforms is much more important than the comment strings on your blog. That’s not to say they aren’t beneficial, but if you find yourself constantly deleting spam and dealing with negative comments, your time might be better spent on your social media pages.

Rather than encouraging engagement on your website, through the comment function, try asking people to re-tweet or comment on other social media sites in reference to your blog. Since you are monitoring the activity and engagement more closely on these sites, you can better manage and respond to feedback in a timely manner.

This will also work to increase your blogs visibility. Having followers or fans comment on your blog content through social media sources, shares their interest with their network as well. When it comes to comments on your blog, the only individuals that see them are the ones that visit it. So by encouraging engagement on social networks, rather than your website, you have the potential to grow site traffic.