How Comments Impact Search Engine Rank

Posted in Blogging, Search Engine Marketing by Jeremy Dearringer Saturday, February 27th at 9:56 pm

Does commenting on other blogs help my search engine ranking? Google’s ranking algorithm weighs heavily on relevant links back to your site. Since links back to your site help, wouldn’t it make sense that commenting and leaving your links everywhere would benefit your site? Not exactly.

In this recent video, Matt Cutts (Search Quality for Google) discusses the potential risks of allowing users to post comments with link spam on your blog. You have control over the content on your website, and if Google catches you linking to spammy websites, they’ll likely consider your website spammy as well.

He also touches on the reason Google typically doesn’t penalize your website for spammy in-bounds links. If Google penalized websites for any type of in-bound link(s), then competitors would be building the worst links possible to each other attempting to remove competition from the search results.

There are still plenty of blogs that do not add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to comment links. Why would a blog owner want to do this?

A dofollow blog comment link is a simple reward to users that add valuable comments and feedback. The blog owner gets valuable user-generated comment and the visitor who leaves a good comment gets a dofollow link. Most blogs that allow dofollow comment links strictly moderate those comments and links, so you’re not likely to get away with posting a link unless your comment contributes and adds value to the blog post.

Another reason a blog might allow dofollow comments is if the blog has been around for a long time and the owner doesn’t update the platform often. Believe it or not, there are thousands of blogs that have not been updated since the rel=’nofollow’ attribute was invented. Many of the blogs are still used and new posts are added regularly. Many of these blogs are moderated closely or filled with blog comment spam.

If you’re trying to build your backlink profile I would stay away from blog posts with other spammy comments. You’re not likely to get penalized from posting links next to spammy links, but Google often identifies these spam riddled pages and filters them from their link graph.

In most cases the effort of building your backlink profile by posting blog comment links is not worth the effort as these sites normally contain so many comment links that the PageRank value is divided too much to pass substantial value. Blog comment links with the rel=’nofollow’ attribute will not pass any value to your website.

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Sorry Disqus, I’m a Fan Now!

Posted in Blogging by Douglas Karr Tuesday, June 16th at 3:57 pm

disqusAbout a year ago, quite a few commenting systems popped up – including SezWho, IntenseDebate and Disqus. I was vehemently against all but SezWho since the others loaded comments via JavaScript and did not save comments locally.

The problem with JavaScript is that it’s loaded at the browser, not at the server… so when a search engine crawled the page, it would appear unchanged even though it had comments. A year later and the landscape has changed quite a bit… SezWho is out of business, IntenseDebate was purchased by Automattic, WordPress’ parent company, and Disqus has continued to grow in popularity. Disqus also changed its methodologies – now they also synchronize and display comments server-side.

With all of these issues now resolved, and Disqus’ growing functionality and integration into Social Media, it really makes a lot of sense for WordPress bloggers to install the plugin and integrate the service. I’ve not tried IntenseDebate, nor have I seen too much news or adoption about it… anyone using it?

The kind folks at Disqus even allowed me to export my blog’s content and comments via XML and upload it to their support team. They’re now migrating all of the older comments from my blog into their engine. Pretty cool!

So… to the crew at Disqus, I owe you an apology for giving your application a failing grade. Though it was the right thing to do at the time, I’m a fan now! You’ve got a fantastic product and I love the Twitter integration!

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Thank You!

Posted in Blogging, Homefront, WordPress by Douglas Karr Thursday, November 27th at 11:46 am

I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving… healthy and exceptional children, fantastic friends, and a dream job. As for my blog, the person I owe the most thanks to is YOU! Here is a list of commentors on my blog (in order of number of comments!). Your engagement in this blog is the driving force behind the quality of content that I try to put here day after day.

If you’re wondering how I did this, I ran the following SQL statement against my wordpress database:

SELECT CONCAT('<li><a href="',`comment_author_url`,'">',`comment_author`,'</a><li>') FROM `wp_comments` WHERE `comment_approved` = 1 AND comment_author_url <>'' AND comment_author <>'Douglas Karr' AND comment_type = '' GROUP BY `comment_author`, `comment_author_email` ORDER BY COUNT(`comment_ID`) DESC

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Do Comments equal Conversions?

Posted in Blogging, Business, Marketing by Douglas Karr Tuesday, October 14th at 11:57 am

I did some analysis of my blog this weekend to look for a correlation between my search engine results, my most popular blog posts, the posts with the most comments, and the posts that actually resulted in revenue due to consulting or speaking engagements.

There was no correlation.

Reviewing my most popular posts, you’ll find WordPress Contact Form, Huntington Bank Sucks, I left Basecamp, and the length of an Email Address carry the most traffic. Those posts lead the way for Search Engine Results. Those posts also carry the most comments. However, those posts have only provided a trickle of dollars (and a couple cups of coffee) to my pocket.

IMHO, utilizing comments as the sole measurement of success is common, but leads to the majority of corporate blogs failing.

About 1 out of every 200 visitors comes to my blog and leaves a comment. A small percentage of those are snarky, the majority are folks I have personal relationships with… and very few, if any, do I do business with. In fact, one of my largest contracts this past year was from a post that showed my proficiency in a specific technology (and ranked well), but had no comments whatsoever.

Driving Conversions

The problem isn’t blogging, of course. I’ve got plenty of readership on my blog – but I lack the continuity to consistently write content on subjects that drive conversions to me. As well, I have no call to action on my sidebar.

I’ve always measured my success by the number of RSS subscribers and the engagement (through comments on my blog). I’m rethinking that strategy! If I wish to drive revenue and utilize this as a business blog, I need to target my content to win in search on terms relevant to what drives income. I also need to provide a path on my site to capture and measure those conversions.

I do not believe that comments equal conversions, nor should they be a measurement of your blog’s success.

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