Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
At what point to stop comments on a blog? Do too many comments hurt the page?
-
I have a page that's ranking pretty well, and driving sales. That page is starting to get 10+ comments per day and is starting to get quite long. I was wondering if there is a point where I should disable the comments? My gut tells me that people interacting with the page, and Google seeing responses with the users SHOULD be a good thing not bad. But, then I think that a majority of the content of the page is no longer the article, but the comments.
All the comments are good, non spammy and directly related to the topic. People just asking questions, etc. Good engagement, I should be happy right?
-
The only reason why I'd ever disable comments if I'm way to tired of getting them and having to approve them or I decided to stop replying to comments. I'll tell you why.
Your page is ranking well for many reasons. One of the reason is likely due to that its a great piece of content. If it still continues to rank well and drive sales, then the 10+ comments per day obviously aren't harming its ability to do that, so why change the process of accepting comments? In addition, if it is a great piece of content, people are more likely to share it and you'll get more visits. I've seen many blogs where they closed comments because it was already a year or two old and it just seems they don't want to bother with the comments anymore and I really want to provide additional insight and yadda yadda; my comments are not going to hurt your post especially if it adds more unique and fresh content to that page only to help it stay fresh in Google's eyes, right?
Unless you switch the position of your content and the comments around, the comments will have little effect on your page's rank and conversion rate.
If you're happy with the way things are, let the comments keep coming. Use your spam filter, make sure you have "external nofollows" on comment URLs and if you really want to keep the value of your content strong, only approve the really good comments, not just the five word comments like, "wow, what a great post".
Good engagement, you are correct. Fresh & unique content, Google likes. More social signals; a good thing.
-
Yup! That sounds like a good interaction and a lively page that will keep presenting fresh, meaningful content each time it's updated. The only comments I'd worry about are spam (which you've screened) and really off-topic comments, but neither of those seem to be a problem. Since people are commenting under the same topic(s) as the article, it just adds to the page as a whole.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
Translating other people blogpost to other languange and post on our blog
Hi, I am new to the blogging industries. I just want to know if Google penalized me if I translate other people blog post from English to other language and post it on my blog? Please let me know what you guys think. Thank you in advance for your time.
Content Development | | liburanbali1 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
Pages and categories with the same name?
I manage a wordpress based site that is needing to under go a site architecture overhaul. the site is christ.org and one of the problems is it has 89 pages but really only 4 are navigatable (not a word apparently). The site also has over 400 posts so categories and parent pages are both definitely needed. One option is I convert a lot of the pages into posts, but would that happen to break any links pointing to those pages turned posts? Or another option is to keep the pages and posts and create a bunch of subpages, then I would most likely end up with similarly named categories and top level pages. I would guess the name of the category needs to be unique from page titles right? And not just unique but very much differentiated than any page title (not posts but page titles). Maybe what I need to do is convert the pages that are not really unique into posts and put them in the category it fits with. And then keep those that are unique as top level pages. The architecture needs some serious work I think 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | ThridHour0 -
How long should a quality blog post be?
How long should a "quality" blog post be? General advice seems to be that a 300 word post just won't cut it, but advice on the optimum length is vague. I appreciate that all posts are different but is there a rule of thumb, is 1000 words good and 1500 too long...or should they are all aim to be 2000 words? Also with regards to pictures in blogs, can they just be taken from the web or are there sites that I should be using to source the pictures? Thanks
Content Development | | Studio330 -
How do I redirect a page that no longer exists?
I changed the name of a blog article I wrote and the original name is giving a 404 error. I am not sure why it isn't being directed like the other articles I renamed to improve SEO. Since the webpage no longer exists, I don't know how to redirect it. I use Wordpress and Thesis. Thanks!
Content Development | | dealblogger0 -
Onsite Blogging Vs Guest Blogging
Hey all! I have a limited amount of time allocated to writing instructional blog posts for my company. When I complete an article I can do whatever I want with it: pitch it as a guest post on an industry blog, or post it on my company's onsite blog. I know there's not a magical solution regarding the percentage of time one should devote to guest blogging v. focusing on the company blog, but I figured I'd throw the conundrum out to the Mozzers anyway. In your opinion, how many of your writing resources should be devoted to guest posts, and how many should be devoted to maintaining the onsite blog? What if our onsite blog isn't currently receiving a lot of traffic? Thanks! Meg
Content Development | | ClarityVentures1 -
Wordpress Duplicate Pages/ URL's - Help !
Hi guys, I have been running SEOMoz for just over a month and slowly cleaning up one of my Wordpress Blogs. While going through the crawl reports I have noticed that I have duplicate pages showing on the crawl. For example, the main post would be; www.xxxxx.com/blog/post-title Then I see another URL which would be; **www.xxxx.com/blog/page/59 ** When I click on either URL it goes back to the actual post title URL. What's with these page URL's ? Isn't these two URL's showing duplicate content to the search engines ? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | dcc0
