Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
Why I decided to close the comments on blog posts (Wordpress)
It looks like blog posts comments can help with SEO.
The impact is limited, and to be helpful the comments must:
- Contain relevant kewords
- Add real value to the discussion
Thus, comments that say "great article", "thank you" or "you suck / how dare you saying that", add no value.
Most comments fall in one of the above 3 categories, so they add no SEO value or they detract value (while making the page load slower).
There is also the relational value to consider, where someone can send a quick message and I can quickly reply, and I appreciate that a lot. But there is also a forum here, so comments are somewhat of a duplicate.
Furtheremore, if I don't let the short comments pass because they are SEO-negative, people would think "what an ass, why didn't he publish my comment". So the relational view is null, if not even negative.
On the negative side, comments:
- Attract a lot of spam, ant that takes time to remove every single day (around 5-6 a day, in spite I use Sucuri)
- Take time to reply
- Add code to each single page, slowing down the load time
I could take care of the spam side with a plugin, for example Askimet. But then I'd have to add a plugin, and I like to keep the website streamlined.
From a strategic point of view, comments give a feeling of "blogger".
But ThePowerMove doesn't want to be a blog. I write few articles about what I think and how I feel. Most of my articles are practical, and backed by research, personal experience, real-life examples or, ideally, all three of them.
In that sense, comments might send the wrong impression.
That's why, all things considered, I decided to remove comments from this website.
