SEOs have realized and accepted that commenting on blogs does not build links back to their websites.
In this sense, comments do not contribute to search engine optimization (SEO), apart from participating in a conversation with like-minded people.
What about the website where the comments are posted? Do they get a boost for the search engines when they have all this extra content on their sites?
The answer to this question depends on a few factors. As long as your blog comments section is credible, respectful and polite, your posts will be found in search results.
How to make blog comments contribute to SEO
Your blog comments are considered additional content by Google and other search engines. So if you’ve 1200 words in your blog post and 400 words in the comments below it, your blog post will be ranked at 1600 words.
For your website, this means free content! Comments on a website not only stimulate discussion, but also make the website better.
However, there are some limitations to this.
Comments on a blog post must also contribute content. At the very least, they shouldn’t be spam.
Still, it’s important to treat blog comments as if they were content you created on your site to help your search engine optimization. Be sure to delete broken links and weed out spam comments.
The benefits of blog comments to SEO
To improve your search engine ranking, blog comments have some inherent advantages.
The first is that they represent a great opportunity for latent semantic indexing (LSI). When you use these keywords, your blog post will appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for the most important keywords it targets.
In other words: If you write a blog post titled “Why SEO is Great,” someone might comment, “I agree, SEO is great!” If you respond to that comment, you have the opportunity to rank for a keyword you would not have otherwise.
Comments on great blogs, especially Moz, are very useful. Their posts regularly receive hundreds of comments from a qualified, relevant audience that can contribute to their content.
The community on Moz contributes to the SERP ranking of a particular blog post when they participate in a discussion about that post.
One sign of quality is that Google ranks a blog post as relatively long. Also, Google recognises that there is a lot of text underneath – perhaps even more than in the post itself.
This text contains a lot of information that might be helpful to readers, even if their original keyword was not discussed much.
As with all SEO factors, this ranking factor can change at any time. In the meantime, the comments section of your blog is a treasure trove of potential LSI keywords and free content that can improve your pages’ rankings.
How to get SEO-friendly comments
If you have not enabled comments on your blog yet, now is the time! To get SEO-friendly comments on your blog posts, you have many options available.
First and foremost, you can enable comments through your blog’s content management system (CMS). Most blog providers like WordPress, Wix, and Blogger offer commenting systems through which your readers can interact with your posts.
You can manage these comment systems in the same place you update your actual blog, which is usually the best comment system. You simply click a button to enable comments, and then enjoy the results. No plugins or add-ons are required.
You can include your blog in your website even if it is not built on one of these systems. Blogs can usually be integrated directly into websites through most blogging platforms. This streamlines the structure of your blog and makes it easier to add new posts.
Another way to comment on your blog is to use another commenting client. Blogs based on DIY platforms also use systems like Disqus to manage comments.
Some of these comment systems are prone to spam, and their requirements for removing unwanted comments can vary. Since every blog post has a comment section, the last thing you want is unrelated spam that will hurt rather than help your site’s search engine optimization.