Comments from Your Blog Visitors

Comments from readers are the lifeblood of your blog. Don’t get me wrong, quality content and traffic to your blog are of prime importance. However if your blog posts do not engage visitors then you are certainly speaking to the wrong audience: the topic you are writing about is not relevant to them. Comments lend to your blog its social media aspect:  giving a voice to your blog readers to share their opinions and  insights around the current subject.

Managing blog comments can be one of the most rewarding experience for a blog owner. Comments  are a feedback and a starting point of  dialog with your blog readers. The number of  comments  left on  a blog post is a testimony of the interest a given blog post has created in the online community.

Of course, just like in any human activity there is a flip side to the coin.
All comments are not equal.
As a blog owner or blog administrator, there are 4 type of comments you will often encounter:

1. Genuine comments left by readers who join and contribute to the conversation.
   This is really a good slice of  your blog visitors’ demographic you should go after. More often, that class of readers become subscribers to your mailing list and will visit your blog more often to read new posts and leave comments.
   They are passionate about the topic and want to be part of this online community.
2. People who leave comments for the sole purpose of getting a backlink to their web site. There is nothing wrong about entirely reading a blog post then leaving a valuable comment to get a backlink to your web site in return. We all want something in return for our efforts. It’s really a win-win situation for the blog owner and the visitor.
3. Subtle spam comments
   Blog visitors who leave those types of comments don’t either bother to read the post you took the time to craft or they just have no interest in the subject of the current blog post. It doesn’t matter to them what the blog article is about, all they want is an outbound link to their website.
   The moment they land in the blog post’s page,  all they look for is whether they is  the comment form. Comments such as “ Great post. Thanks”  or  ”Thanks for this post. I am glad I found your blog” do not add any value to the conversation. It’s spam.
4. The worst offenders
   They are the hardcore  spammers. It’s a breed “hard to kill”. It’s the very same “characters”  filling your email inbox with junk mail. You will come across them anywhere an opportunity exists to make their junk content appear in front of your eyeballs.
   Those spammers will litter your blog comment form with all the garbage they brought with them. Not only providing a link to their web site in the field reserved for that purpose but they also fill the comment box with a bunch of hyperlinks to malicious web sites.

No matter what niche a blog is catering to, the prime objective of any serious blogger is to build an online community of people sharing a common interest around the theme of the blog.
Your blog needs great content that attracts visitors. Comments left by those visitors add more content to the blog – which Internet Search Engines love – raise the level of  the discussion around the current topic and that engages even more readers.

Comments add fresh content to your blog, increase the activity in your blog and generate more traffic and repeated visits. In an upcoming we are going to reveal some o the tools available in your WordPress blog to fight and reduce comment spam.