I respect Michael Gray, but I cannot agree with his post Why Everyone Should Turn Off Blog Comments. Now, I do keep my post dates and it is a choice. I do not put it in my permalinks. Google will still index your site and tell when your post has been last updated.
Yes, you should create content that is relevant for months and maybe even years to come. Putting the date in your post’s layout is a personal preference. Also putting it in your permalink is, but for SEO, you probably should not unless your site is literally a personal journal. It will do nothing to effect your site’s SEO. Your content will… remember – Content Is King!
If you are not certain about great SEO practices, I recommend reading up on WordPress SEO by Joost de Valk.
Comments are still important. What good will it do if you turn your comments off and your post does not present the best case, especially if you are a competitive blog in your niche. How will you learn and develop more as a site owner, a blogger, and in some cases, a professional?
Your readers might not always have something to say and that is fine. However, when they do, you might like to listen. Of course, they can send you an email through your contact form any time, connect with you on your social network streams, but what about your site? Your site is your headquarters. If you are not encouraging feedback there, what does that do for you – not much.
I am not a person that relies heavily on building my site rank like crazy. I do blog regularly – most might say quite frequently. I love comments. I am not the best at returning as I want to be (and I am working on that), but I have always loved to respond and I love to learn. I also get a chance to connect with others outside the 140 characters.
I'd never turn off my comments, I love to interact with those that take time to post comments on my blog and if they should bother to do it, then it's only fair that I should try to communicate back as much as I can, besides I've found some brilliant blogs through the comments left on mine and made some great blogging friends 😉
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I agree with that. I do not recall ever having turned my blog comments off. It should be something encouraged to promote a community of its on your own site. It just makes a lot more sense to keep it open. If not, just put an ebook together.
Perhaps for those turning their comments off, it might be an annoyance for them to hop into the conversation. However, it should not. For example, as much as Chris Brogan gets a ton of comments, he still jumps in from time to time.
Communication is certainly the key to a blog looking "lived in" if a blog has only posts and no comments, then in my point of view it looks like a blog where the owner doesn't give a damn is only in it to make some money from there ads on the blog, but if there are comments, people will keep coming back just to see what everyone is talking about
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Here is my own opinion about this post:
Blog comments are essential. Blog comments are always and will always be a core part of blogging community. I think, if you have to turn off your comments on your blog, it will be just like a scenario wherein, you don't want to listen nor you don't want anybody or anyone to criticize or praise your post.
And one thing more, I haven't seen any successful or popular blogs with their comments turned off. With that in mind, IMHO, comments are part of successful blogging career.
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I do agree… I think people who turn them off do not want any type of feedback, nor means to grow whether as a person or a professional.
Michael's blog has a good Alexa Rank and gets quite a bit of traffic, but I think he needs to make a choice if he wants to grow as a blogger online, especially since people are becoming more open to blogging and social media marketing. It could literally get him more traffic…. rather than him just focus on the SEO aspects.
Hi Nile, I read the post from Michael Gray also and I couldn't embrace any of his concepts. I'm not an SEO expert and don't intend to be, but as a user of Google search I think that knowing the actual date of an entry is highly relevant. Removing comments from a blog simply to try and "trick" Google into thinking that your post might be newer sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Of course this comment would have made more sense over on Mr. Gray's blog, so sorry I had to unload it here.
In the end as long as we keep writing quality content, the fresh content will bring visitors to our blogs where they can search the archives for older posts.
Thanks for the link to Joost De Valk. I follow his podcast on iTunes and use one of his plugins on some of my blogs.
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Actually… I am fine with you unloading. I do not mind. I blogged about it and kind of unloaded too…lol.
He is in the wrong I say. Comments should definitely stay on, the people shall speak!
i love to interact with my blogger its a kinda personal touch and i love them but not the spammers they are the biggest turn off
I like the way you put it "Your site is your headquarters"..that made me think of how I treasure my blog therefor be also thankful for the comments I receive. I love to interact with people and through my blog I can also share them things..If I turn off my comments, how else would I know if people liked or enjoyed what I post? I'm a stay at home mom and I need to be connected with people even if only on the net.
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I run a Blogger tutorial blog. Most comments are of Q&A nature. Turning off the comments is unthinkable. Besides comments will become a part of content, and content is afterall, king.
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I, too, would have to disagree with that advice and would never consider turning off comments. That's what makes a blog a blog. Without them, a wall is put up between the writer and reader. I agree you can't grow, improve, or even know what people are interested in. It is like turning off Google Analytics and running blind. Karen hit it exactly by saying..you want that "lived in" feeling. That is exactly how I feel when I see a blog with no comments. A beautiful showcase house is dull and boring with no one inside to bring it to life.
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When I originally read Michael’s article I was mad. Blondish.net is one of many sites I have developed. Some I have sold in the past did well in ranking and traffic. They all succeeded because of the feedback. Without it… like most people here have said… the site’s would not have grown.
This is a major reason why I started moving my tutorials from static pages to blog entries. I wanted people to be able to feel free to comment in case they had other suggestions. It just makes sense. 😀
Michael Gray is an idiot. Comments are the very essence of blogging. In fact, it is what I love most about blogging…both giving and receiving.
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Exactly! While he may have a successful site, he also alienates people of the blogging community because he is apparently above feedback. How can the conversation be continued. What use would that post be in 2 years if another person who has allowed feedback is ranking higher.
It makes no sense. Before I stepped into b2, and then WordPress, I had my own comment script that I wrote. It was like Haloscan.com where people could leave comments. The only difference was that the blogs were manually writing into the page while the comments were stored in the database. That was more than 8 years ago…. so even then when the blogging community was just a baby, comments and feedback were just as important.
Absolutely agree with you. Comments make your readers involved into conversation, they get incentive to come back to see if someone reacted on their comments, to follow the conversation. Even from purely SEO point of view, quality comments mean constant updates of your pages, constant inflow of relevant, new and original content. So I cannot even imagine how SEO "guru" can recommend disabling comments if you plan to make your site visited. My blog that stands on old version of Drupal has some problems with commenting, so I cannot solve this matter without assistance of professionals, but all of my other blogs, especially WordPress-powered, all have comments enabled.
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The only posts that I keep comments from are the actual pages that I use to list commercial products on. Other than that I always try to grab eyeballs and clickers by trying to gain as much commentary as I can.
How would a person know if what they were writing about triggered any kind of opposite or common reactions?
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Here is my own opinion about this post:
Blog comments are essential. Blog comments are always and will always be a core part of blogging community. I think, if you have to turn off your comments on your blog, it will be just like a scenario wherein, you don't want to listen nor you don't want anybody or anyone to criticize or praise your post.
Thanks for the link to Joost De Valk. I follow his podcast on iTunes and use one of his plugins on some of my blogs………
Thanks Nile for sharing this with us.
I tend to agree with that blog comments are the soul of a live blog. Comments will allow for the visitors to sound their opinion on what has been written. Also for a blog owner who allows commenting on his blog will surely learn something from the comments and will also enhance its on-line reputation.
Steve
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how commets are important every bloggers must know that
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you can get new point of view if visitors do not agree with you if you turn on comment that’s one way to learn